Len Lye Filmes

A fictional enactment of the deadly contest between a British soldier and a German sniper hiding in a tree. Kill or Be Killed differs from most army...

Trade Tattoo went even further than Rainbow Dance in its manipulation of the Gasparcolor process. The original black and white footage consisted of...

This experiment was a “prestige advertisement” for Shell Motor Oil. As conventional animation became dominated by Walt Disney, many...

A tribute to the cameramen of the newsreel companies and the service film units, in the form of a compilation of film of the cameramen themselves,...

Surrealism, avant-garde sound montage, and irreverent wit might be the last thing you'd expect from a government-sponsored film about wartime...

Documentary about the Kiwi artist Len Lye and his legacy.

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...

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

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 scraped together enough funding and borrowed equipment to produce a two-minute short featuring his self-made monkey, singing and dancing to...

Lye edited together “swing” versions of the popular Lambeth Walk (including Django Reinhardt on guitar and Stephane Grapelli on violin),...

A 1941 Ministry of Information propaganda film set to the tune of The Lambeth Walk, a popular song from the musical Me and My Girl.

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

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...

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

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

Rainbow Dance is a 1936 British animated film released by the GPO Film Unit. This is Lye's second film. It uses the Gasparcolor process.

This riot of color was a showcase for Lye’s hand-painted and stenciled imagery. Sponsored by Imperial Airways, it incorporates the...

Experimental documentary about recycling.

BBC Four’s new documentary takes us on a journey through more than a century of animation. It examines the creative and technical inventiveness...