Len Lye Movies

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.

Intended as a publicity film for Chrysler, Rhythm uses rapid editing to speed up the assembly of a car, synchronizing it to African drum music. The...

Documentary about women factory workers.

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

Animated shapes dance to Cuban music. This was one of the first animations to be painted directly onto the film.

In this powerful abstract film with a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye scratched "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on to black leader, using...

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

The story of how newspapers were distributed during the Blitz, stressing the importance of an accurate and objective press on the home front.

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

Short comedic documentary about crops.

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

A perfect fusion of poetry and film, with dense layered imagery and music from electro pioneers Louise and Bebe Barron. The writer Anaïs Nin...

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...

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

For Kaleidoscope, which was sponsored by Churchman Cigarettes, Lye animated stenciled cigarette shapes and is said to have experimented by cutting...

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

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

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

Documentary about the Kiwi artist Len Lye and his legacy.

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