Len Lye Movies

Lye completed his last great film a few months before his death at the age of 78. The film returned to the black-and-white techniques of Free...

This documentary, made seven years after the death of legendary filmmaker and kinetic artist Len Lye, tells Lye's story: from being a young boy...

Len Lye usually timed his films with great care to match their soundtracks, but for All Souls Carnival, he and composer Henry Brant worked...

Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their...

In 1944 Lye moved to New York City, initially to direct for the documentary newsreel The March of Time. He settled in the West Village, where he...

Lye created a series of scratched images in the 1950s – more regular or geometric than his usual style – to accompany Rock...

This film documents the major directions in modern American art during the first seven years of the 1960s. The keynote is that the artist has...

Len Lye made this experiment in animating poetry circa 1953 utilising a clip of Sir John Gielgud reciting a passage from The Tempest.

Correspondence between young lovers nearly ends in disaster through a mistake in postal district. Fortunately the GPO spots the error and all ends...

Life’s Musical Minute, recently re-discovered, is a short promotional film of this kind, based on Gene Krupa’s drum solo from...

A British WWII propaganda short warning citizens that Nazi sympathizers could be listening to their everyday conversations to discover important...

While stocking the shelves at work late at night, Mike finds a mysterious tape that calls upon The Peanut Vendor.

Short comedic documentary about crops.

This was another sample promotional film, which Lye offered to television stations. He scratched some dramatic black-and-white abstract images,...

Len Lye made Pictures for Percussion as a sample for television stations while living in the United States.

In 1959 the United Nations commissioned Lye to make this one-minute film, “Fountain of Hope,” to publicize United Nations Day (24th...

Documentary about New York night clubs.

Experimental documentary about recycling.