Compilation of Len Lye’s works by Roger Horrocks.
‘Every film [I made], I tried to interest myself in it by doing something not previously done in film technique’
– Len Lye
– expand his direct techniques from painting the images of his films to scratching, stenciling and photogramming them
– a pioneer of colour film in the 1930s, taking black and white footage and transforming it into brilliantly coloured Cubist textures, seeking to create a new language of editing
TUSALAVA (1929)
– the beginnings of life on earth. Evolution leads to conflict, and two species struggle for supremacy
– influenced by Australian Aboriginal art and myths of the Dreamtime
– uses Jack Ellitt’s percussive piano score
A COLOUR BOX (1935)
– first direct film. combined popular Cuban dance music with hand-painted abstract designs
– color was still a novelty, Lye’s direct painting on celluloid created exceptionally vibrant effects
KALEIDOSCOPE (1935)
– animated stencilled cigarette shapes experimented with cutting out some of the shapes so that the light of the projector hit the screen directly
– developed a number of other stencils – ‘a yin-yang, a diamond shape, a wheel, a star’ – to complement his handpainted images
– music by Don Baretto and his Cuban Orchestra
THE BIRTH OF THE ROBOT (1936)
– single-frame animation of puppets
– turned to Gasparcolor after using Dufaycolor for his previous two films
– color film was still a complex process (involving the combination of three separate images), but Lye was able to create such a vivid storm scene that reviewers hailed it as ‘proof that the color film has entered a new stage’
– music: Holst’s The Planets
RAINBOW DANCE (1936)
– exploited Gasparcolor system in an unprecedented way – filmed dancer in black and white, then colored the footage during the development and printing of the film – added painted and stenciled development and printing of the film
– Lye disliked naturalism and relished mixing live action with cartoon symbols or juxtaposing positive and negative images
TRADE TATTOO (1937)
– animated words and patterns combined with the live-action footage – to create images as complex and multi-layered as a Cubist painting
– the film sought (in Lye’s words) to convey ‘a romanticism about the work of the everyday in all walks of life
– Music by the Lecuona Band, another Cuban group
N. OR N.W. (1937)
– an experiment in subverting the orthodox language of film editing (which he described contemptuously as ‘the Griffith technique’).
COLOUR FLIGHT (1938)
– Time Magazine (12 December 1938) describe Lye as England’s alternative to Walt Disney, a David-and-Goliath comparison – Disney’s films were ‘the product of a big corporation’ whereas Lye was a one-man band who ‘paints or stencils his designs by hand.’
SWINGING THE LAMBETH WALK (1939)
– The Lambeth Walk – a popular dance of the period with a characteristic hand gesture (the Yiddish ‘Oi!’)
– Lye edited together a number of ‘swing’ versions of the music and combined them with a particularly diverse range of direct film images, scratched as well as painted
MUSICAL POSTER #1 (1940)
– the film alerted the public to the risk that German sympathizers might overhear information about the war effort in everyday conversation
– wartime films did not have to be gloomy – described as ‘a fantastic but effective blending of colour and sound to draw audience interest.’
COLOR CRY (1952-3)
– based on a development of the ‘rayogram’ or ‘shadow cast’ process, using fabrics as stencils
– music by Sonny Terry, he imagined it to be the anguished cry of a runaway slave
TAL FARLOW (1950s)
– created a series of scratched images in the 1950s – more regular or geometric than his usual style
– accompany ‘Rock ‘n’ Rye,’ track by jazz guitarist Tal Farlow
RHYTHM (1957)
– Used rapid editing to speed up the assembly of a car
– music: African drum music
– P. Adams Sitney wrote: ‘Although his reputation has been sustained by the invention of direct painting on film, Lye deserves equal credit as one of the great masters of montage.’
– Jonas Mekas said to Peter Kubelka: ‘Have you seen Len Lye’s 50-second automobile commercial? Nothing happens there…except that it’s filled with some kind of secret action of cinema.’
FREE RADICALS (1958)
– reduced the medium to its most basic elements – scratching designs on black film using a variety of scribers
– this already very concentrated film by dropping a minute of footage
PARTICLES IN SPACE (1979)
– returned to the black-and-white techniques of Free Radicals and his ‘white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches in quite doodling fashion’
– explored some vigorous forms of Abstract Expressionism
– soundtrack: ‘Jumping Dance Drums’ from the Bahamas, with drum music by the Yoruba of Nigeria, and the sounds of Lye’s metal kinetic sculptures
Unknown Thoughts 