“Roger Horrocks’
short Len Lye primer is a great introduction to the visionary work of
one of New Zealand’s – and the world’s – great
filmmaking geniuses. Like his contemporary Norman McLaren, Lye wouldn’t
allow received wisdom about cinema – including the small detail
of needing a camera to make a film – to stand in the way of his
creativity, and he pioneered a dazzling range of different experimental
techniques, including scratching or painting directly on film, manipulation
of colour processing, puppetry and, in his photographed films, radically
disjunctive and percussive editing.
Given the astounding range encompassed by Lye’s filmmaking practice,
which was in turn only one aspect of his artistic endeavour, it’s
often hard to form a coherent picture of what made him tick. Horrocks’
inventive quasi-biopic excels at joining the dots, tracing the roots
of Lye’s diverse artisitic practice to his everyday experiences
and alertness to the hidden patterns in the world around him. Len
Lye: Art That Moves is the ideal springboard for a renewed appreciation
of the brilliance of an amazing body of work, and the film will be followed
by a selection of Lye classics and rarities. – Andrew Langridge
programme includes
A Colour Box
Lye’s pioneering hand-painted film, and pioneering music video,
co-opted by the British GPO as an advertising film.
Rainbow Dance
A richly saturated, stylized ‘film ballet’.
Trade Tattoo
In Trade Tattoo, [Lye] transformed the Technicolor
process into a kind of Cubist machine which could swallow naturalistic,
black-and-white images – scenes of mail-sorting, cargo loading,
steel milling and other types of work – and convert them into
multi-coloured fragments – Roger Horrocks, We Live in Two
Worlds
Atomic Power (March of Time)
One of Lye’s more uncharacteristic commissions, a newsreel ushering
in the atomic age.
Color Cry
Inspired by Man Ray's "shadowcast" experiments, Len Lye discovered
a whole range of new applications for this process in Color Cry
and created the best and most elaborate "shadowcast" film
ever made. – Canyon Cinema
Free Radicals
One of the greatest of all direct films. Lye’s throbbing,
pulsating scratches leap off the screen with the vividness of 3D. “An
almost unbelievably immense masterpiece (a brief epic)” –
Stan Brakhage
Rhythm
Lye synchronises documentary footage from an automobile factory
with African drumming. A masterpiece of rhythmic montage.
Tal Farlow
A sublimely elegant jazz film
Particles in Space
More nebulous and freeform than Free Radicals, Particles
in Space is energised by waves of tiny handmade dashes that float,
spark, flicker and disintegrate to the sounds of steel drums. –
Brett Kashmere, sensesofcinema.com
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