Len Lye - Rhythms

A COLOUR BOX 1935 35mm 4min
KALEIDOSCOPE 1935 35mm 4min
THE BIRTH OF THE ROBOT 1936 35mm 7min
RAINBOW DANCE 1936 35mm 5min
TRADE TATTOO 1937 35mm 5min
COLOUR FLIGHT 1938 35mm 4min
SWINGING THE LAMBETH WALK 1939 35mm 4min
COLOR CRY 1953 16mm 3min
RHYTHM 1957 16mm 1min
FREE RADICALS 1958, 1979 16mm 4min
PARTICLES IN SPACE 1967-71, 1980 16mm 4min
TAL FARLOW 1960, 1980 16mm 2min

“There has never been a great film unless it was created in the spirit of the experimental filmmaker.”
- Len Lye

Len Lye was a major figure in experimental filmmaking as well as a leading kinetic sculptor and an innovative theorist, painter and writer. He pioneered ‘direct film', film made without a camera, by painting and scratching images directly onto celluloid, by reworking found footage, by casting shadows of objects onto unexposed film, and by experimenting with a number of early color techniques.

“All of a sudden it hit me – If there was such a thing as composing music, there could be such a thing as composing motion. After all, there are melodic figures, why can’t there be figures of motion?”
- Len Lye

Contains 28-page booklet with texts by David Curtis, Roger Horrocks and Len Lye on his films.

Published in collaboration with:
The Len Lye Foundation
Le Centre Pompidou (Musée d’art moderne)
Les Editions du Centre Pompidou
The Post Office Film & Video Library 
Shell Film & Video Unit, Shell Services Int’l
The British Tourist Authority
Presented in association with The iotaCenter, www.iotaCenter.org.

A Colour Box, Rainbow Dance, Birth of the Robot, Trade Tattoo and Swinging the Lambeth Walk supplied by the British Film Institute, whose National Film and Television Archive has preserved these films and carried out restoration work on A Colour Box and Rainbow Dance.