Lifes Musical Minute - Len Lye (1953) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | In 1944 Lye moved to New York to take up a job directing for the March of Time, a current affairs series. He settled in New York’s West Village and mixed with the artists who would later be known as the Abstract Expressionists (or “New York School”). He encouraged young American film-makers such as Francis Lee and Ian Hugo, and he taught film-making with Hans Richter. Unfortunately the March of Time series came to an end in 1951, leaving Lye out of work. He tried to create work for himself by making sample television ads. Unfortunately, the American corporations and advertising agencies he approached were not interested because they regarded his approach as too avant-garde. Unlike his friend Norman McLaren, who gained support for his experiments at the Canadian Film Board, Lye could not find any sponsors for his films in the USA. Despite countless rejections, he continued to make demos (sample films). Life’s Musical Minute, recently re-discovered, is a short promotional film of this kind, based on Gene Krupa’s drum solo from “Golden Wedding” by the Woody Herman jazz band. It was Lye’s attempt to gain support from Life Magazine.
Particles In Space - Len Lye (1979) optimisticwombatninja08 2023-12-07 | 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 Radicals. Lye created what he called “vibrant little images” or “zig-zags” with a sense of “zizz”. The clusters of small scratches gave the film a unique texture – the images looked rough but were in fact extremely subtle. The title Particles in Space referred to flashes of energy of the kind sometimes seen by astronauts in space. The soundtrack combined “Jumping Dance Drums” from the Bahamas with drum music by the Yoruba of Nigeria and the sounds of Lye’s metal kinetic sculptures. The opening titles demonstrated Lye’s mastery of the scratching of letters and words on film, a method imitated by other film-makers such as Stan Brakhage.
Two Space - Larry Cuba (1979) optimisticwombatninja08 2023-12-04 | Larry Cuba is a computer-animation artist who became active in the late 1970s and early 1980s.Born in 1950 in Atlanta, Georgia, he received A.B. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1972 and his Master's Degree from California Institute of the Arts which includes parallel schools of Dance, Music, Film, Theater, Fine Arts, and Writing. The Cal Arts faculty included abstract animator Jules Engel, Expanded Cinema critic Gene Youngblood, and special effects artist Pat O'Neill.Full-screen image- patterns which parallel the layered continuities of classical gamelan music. Using a programming language called RAP at the Los Angeles firm Information International Inc. Larry was able to systematically explore the classic 17 symmetry groups, a technique used by Islamic artists to create abstract temple decorations. Rendered in stark black and white, the patterns produce optical illusions of figure-ground reversal and afterimages of color. Gamelan music from the classical tradition of Java adds to the mesmerizing effect.
Swinging The Lambeth Walk - Len Lye (1939) optimisticwombatninja08 2023-10-19 | The Lambeth Walk was a popular dance of the period with a characteristic hand gesture and a cry of “Oi!”. Lye had some friends at the British Tourist and Industrial Development Association, and they were shocked to learn that he had no work and was living in poverty, so they arranged for their organization to sponsor this film. The project angered government bureaucrats who could not understand why a film about a popular form of dance was receiving public funding. Lye edited together a number of different jazz versions of the music (including Django Reinhardt on guitar and Stephane Grapelli on violin), and combined them with a variety of hand-painted and scratched images. Lye was particularly pleased with some of the guitar solos (accompanied by a vibrating horizontal line) and double-bass solos (accompanied by a foot-stomping vertical line).
God Bless America - Tadasu Takamine (2002) optimisticwombatninja08 2023-05-06 | Tadasu Takamine began his career as a member of the influential Japanese multimedia-performance group Dumb Type, which has been existed since the 1980s. Currently, he works in diverse media such as installations incorporating video and audio, photography, video, sculpture, and self-directed performances.God Bless America (2002), is a clay animation video proceeding from criticism of U.S. policy surrounding the invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He used about two tons of oil-based clay to make this work, which was entered in the 50th Venice Biennale.
Life Is Flashing Before Your Eyes - Vince Collins (1984) optimisticwombatninja08 2022-08-04 | Following the lyrics of a happy tune, the animation shows how a long blue-haired man's life events come and go before his eyes. A bell, a cup, a duck, a kite and a girl.
Tusalava - Len Lye (1929) optimisticwombatninja08 2022-07-23 | This remarkable animation film was first screened by the London Film Society in 1929. Jack Ellitt’s original piano music for Tusalava has unfortunately been lost. The film imagines the beginnings of life on earth. Single-cell creatures evolve into more complex forms of life. Evolution leads to conflict, and two species fight for supremacy. The title is a Samoan word which suggests that things go full circle. In this film Lye based his style of animation partly on the ancient Aboriginal art of Australia. Tusalava is unique as a film example of what art critics describe as “modernist primitivism”. In contrast to the Cubist painters (who were influenced by African art), Lye drew upon traditions of indigenous art from his own region of the world (New Zealand, Australia and Samoa).
Art of the Sixties (1967) optimisticwombatninja08 2022-02-04 | 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 expanded his realm from the two-dimentional picture frame, climaxed by the artists of the 40s and early 50s, merged color with sculpture, and sought out modern media to express himself. This has produced the characteristic wide spectrum of interest, ideas, and products in contemporary art.
Guitar Drag - Christian Marclay (1999) optimisticwombatninja08 2021-10-18 | This video depicts a pickup truck dragging an amplified, electric guitar tied by a rope across a Texas roadway to its aggressive destruction. The many-layered video work references the practice of smashing guitars during rock concerts and demonstrates Marclay’s interest in inventing new types of sound. The piece was also created in response to the 1998 murder of 49-year-old James Byrd, Jr. of Jasper, Texas by three white supremacists and the tragedy’s widespread repercussions. In an effort to combat hate violence, in 2009 President Barack Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, named in their respective memories. Guitar Drag not only resonates with our aural and visual senses, but also simultaneously investigates multiple layers of history, race, geography, and timely social issues. Since 2000, Guitar Drag has been shown 24 times in museums and galleries, both nationally and internationally, including the Hayward Gallery in London, Gallery Koyanagi in Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Sixteen years after its initial making, Artpace proudly presents the completed version of Marclay’s Guitar Drag for its Texas premiere.
Color Cry - Len Lye (1952) optimisticwombatninja08 2021-07-17 | Lye continued to develop new kinds of “direct film” (films made without a camera). In Color Cry, his first major American film, he found a striking new way to use Man Ray’s “rayogram” or “shadow cast” process, arranging a variety of fabrics and stencils on strips of film. Strips of film with sprocket holes were also used as stencils. Lye synchronised his film to some haunting music by blues-singer Sonny Terry, which he imagined to represent the anguished cry of a runaway slave. Lye used the 16mm format for this and for his other American films.
The Peanut Vendor Complete Directors Cut - Len Lye (1933) optimisticwombatninja08 2021-07-06 | Puppet animation featuring a monkey singing and dancing to the jazz song 'Peanut Vendor'. Film is a recut of the 1934 animation ‘Peanut Vendor’.“Despite the interest generated by his first film, Tusalava (1929), the early 1930s were a difficult time for artist and animator Len Lye. A series of projects were abandoned through lack of funding, and he supported himself by designing book jackets. By 1934 he was doing relatively menial work in the Wembley studios of Associated Sound Film Industries, while trying to convince investors to back his latest project with his long-time friend and collaborator, Jack Ellitt, provisionally titled Quicksilver. Lye had already produced dozens of set and costume designs for this ambitious science-fiction musical comedy but, although an American producer eventually expressed interest, the film that emerged bore little relation to the original concept, and neither Lye nor Ellitt benefited financially.In the meantime, Lye turned his attention to puppet animation. He scraped together enough funding and borrowed equipment to produce a three-minute short featuring his self-made monkey, singing and dancing to 'Peanut Vendor', a 1931 jazz hit for Red Nichols. The two foot high monkey had bolted, moveable joints and some 50 interchangeable mouths to convey the singing. To get the movements right, Lye filmed his new wife, Jane, a prize-winning rumba dancer. Ellitt assisted in synchronising the animation with the music.Lye hoped to use the film to interest advertisers, but again had no success. However, on the strength of the film the head of the newly established Shell Film Unit, Jack Beddington, was later persuaded by Lye's friend Humphrey Jennings to commission Lye to make a short animated advertising film, Birth of a Robot (1935).” http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/531100/index.html
An Optical Poem - Oskar Fischinger (1938) optimisticwombatninja08 2021-02-05 | German-born abstract filmmaker Oskar Fischinger's celebrated 1938 short film 'An Optical Poem' made entirely with paper in stop motion fashion.
Colour Flight - Len Lye (1938) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-12-23 | This riot of colour was a showcase for Lye's hand-painted and stencilled imagery. Like other experimenters of the 1930s (such as Oskar Fischinger), Lye financed his films by finding an advertising sponsor - in this case, Imperial Airways. The soundtrack is a rhumba by the Lecuona Cuban Boys and Honolulu Blues by Red Nichols and his Five Pennies. Time magazine ran a story on the film (12/12/38) which hailed Lye as the English alternative to Walt Disney.
200 - Vince Collins (1975) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-12-10 | U. S. International Communication Agency (formerly known as the Information Agency) grant project – an attempt to liven up the otherwise banal and uneventful “Bicentennial” celebration.
Len Lyes Rhythm Rare First Cut (1957) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-11-08 | The rare first cut of Len Lye's promotional Rhythm that was rejected to be screened on television by the sponsor.
Fiddle-de-dee - Norman McLaren (1947) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-08-23 | A film fantasy of dancing music and dancing color. To "Listen to the Mocking Bird" played by an oldtime fiddler, brilliant patterns ripple, flow, flicker and blend. Norman McLaren, painting on film, translates sound into sight.
Shyness - Les Drew (1996) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-07-15 | This animated short is a parody of the Frankenstein story. Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster only to find out that his creation is too shy to go out and frighten anyone. The good doctor and his malevolent assistant Trevor try to find ways of helping their creation overcome his condition. A film for anyone who's ever been shy.
Dots - Norman McLaren (1940) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-07-02 | An experimental film in which both sound and visuals were created entirely by Norman McLaren drawing directly upon the film with ordinary pen and ink. The main title is in eight languages. Rereleased with multilingual titles in 1949.
Kaleidoscope - Len Lye (1935) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-07-02 | Lye’s second direct film was sponsored by Churchman Cigarettes. At the same time his friend Oskar Fischinger in Germany was also financing his great experimental films by making cigarette commercials. In Kaleidoscope Lye animated stencilled cigarette shapes and is said to have experimented with cutting out some of the shapes so that the light of the projector hit the screen directly. He developed a number of stencils such as “a yin-yang, a diamond shape, a wheel, a star” to complement his hand-painted images. The way these shapes spun and rolled across the screen anticipated the movements of his later kinetic sculptures. Like A Colour Box, this film had music by Don Baretto and his Cuban Orchestra.
Syrinx - Ryan Larkin (1965) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-29 | Borrowing from classical mythology, this very short film illustrates the story of Syrinx, the nymph who attempts to escape the goat-god Pan’s amorous advances by fleeing to a nearby river for help, only to be transformed into hollow reeds. Syrinx is the first film by Ryan Larkin, an Oscar®-nominated director who began his animation career in Norman McLaren’s student group. The technique employed is charcoal sketches on paper; the accompanying music is Claude Debussy’s “Syrinx” for solo flute.
The Farm - Humphrey Jennings (1938) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-28 | Humphrey Jennings takes us to a local British farm where we see what all goes into a hard day's work.
The Birth Of The Robot - Len Lye (1936) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-27 | This experiment with colourful animated puppets was a “prestige advertisement” for Shell Motor Oil. After using the Dufaycolor process for his previous two films, Lye now tried Gasparcolor, another new type of colour film. Making colour films was still a complex process (involving three separate film strips), but Lye succeeded in creating vivid sequences of movement and a storm scene that critics praised as “proof that the colour film has entered a new stage.” Film-maker Humphrey Jennings was an important member of Lye’s team. The music is an abbreviated version of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” suite.
The Sand Castle - Co Hoedeman (1977) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-26 | This short animated film features the sandman and the creatures he sculpts out of sand. These lively creatures build a castle and celebrate the completion of their new home, only to be interrupted by an uninvited guest. Cleverly constructed with nuance, the film leaves interpretation open to the viewer. The film took home an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.
Bead Game - Ishu Patel (1977) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | In this animated short, thousands of beads are arranged and manipulated, assuming shapes of creatures both mythical and real. They continually devour, merge, and absorb one another in explosions of color.
V for Victory - Norman Mclaren (1941) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | This animated short by Norman McLaren is a publicity message for a war bond campaign. Symbols, a stick man and lettering are drawn directly on 35mm film stock and synchronized with a brass band rendition of Sousa's march "The Thunderer."
Neighbours - Norman McLaren (1952) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.
Boogie-Doodle - Norman Mclaren (1941) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | In this short animation film, the "boogie" is played by Albert Ammons and the "doodle" is drawn by Norman McLaren. Made without the use of a camera, Boogie-Doodle is a rhythmic, brightly coloured film experiment.
Hen Hop - Norman Mclaren (1942) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | This joyful short animation features a dancing hen that transforms into an egg. The film was made without a camera by Norman McLaren, who drew directly onto 35 mm movie stock with ordinary pen and ink. Colour was added optically.
Le Merle - Norman McLaren (1958) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | In this animation film, Norman McLaren imparts unusual activity to an old French-Canadian nonsense song. Simple white cut-outs on pastel backgrounds, many by Evelyn Lambart, provide lively illustrations. The folksong "Mon Merle" is sung in French by the Trio Lyrique of Montreal.
Bells Of Atlantis - Ian Hugo (1952) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | A perfect fusion of poetry and film, with dense layered imagery and music from electro pioneers Louise and Bebe Barron. The writer Anaïs Nin provides dialogue from her novella “House of Incest” and appears adrift in the undersea realm of Atlantis before ascending to dry land.
A Colour Box - Len Lye (1935) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | Lye’s first “direct” (camera-less) animation combined popular Cuban dance music with hand-painted abstract designs. Screened in many cinemas in Britain, the film had a huge impact because of its novelty and because it divided audiences – some viewers loved it, others hated it. Colour was still a novelty and Lye’s direct painting on celluloid created brilliant colours. The film won festival awards, though some festivals had to invent a special category for this new style of animation. In Venice, the Fascists disrupted screenings because they saw it as “degenerate” modern art. The film was funded and distributed by John Grierson’s GPO Film Unit on the condition that Lye included a postal advertisement at the end. The film has been restored by the British Film Institute.
Tal Farlow - Len Lye (1980) optimisticwombatninja08 2020-06-25 | Lye created a series of black-and-white scratched images in the 1950s that were more regular and geometric than those of Free Radicals. He combined them with “Rock ‘n’ Rye”, a piece by jazz guitarist Tal Farlow. At that time Lye did not complete the project. He returned to it in 1980 but died before he could finish synchronizing his images to the music. His assistant Steven Jones completed the editing under the supervision of Lye’s widow Ann (who had been closely involved with all of Lye’s American films).
