Free Radicals (1979 film)

Last updated
Free Radicals
Directed by Len Lye
Music byBaguirmi tribe of Africa
Release date
  • 1979 (1979)
Running time
4 minutes
CountryUnited States

Free Radicals is a black-and-white animated film short by avant-garde filmmaker Len Lye. [1] Begun in 1958 and completed in 1979, Lye made the film by directly scratching the film stock. The resulting "figures of motion" are set to music by the Baguirmi tribe of Africa. [2]

Contents

Production

In Experimental Animation: the origins of a new art, Len Lye recalled making Free Radicals:

"I made Free Radicals from 16mm black film leader, which you can get from DuPont. I took a graver, various kinds of needles. (My range included arrowheads for romanticism.) You stick down the sides with scotch tape and you get to work with scratching the stuff out. … … You hold your hand at the right height and act is if you were making your signature. It goes on forever. You can carry a pictographic design in your head and make a little design. You can't see what you're doing because your hand is in the way. That's why those things have that kind of spastic look." [3]

Legacy

In 2008, the film was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation. [4] [5]

Free Radicals appears on the DVD Rhythms, a collection of short films by Lye. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra</i> 1928 film

The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra is a 1928 American silent experimental short film co-written and co-directed by Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapić. Considered a landmark of American avant-garde cinema, it tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star; he fails and becomes dehumanized, with studio executives reducing him to the role of an extra and writing the number "9413" on his forehead.

<i>A Movie</i> 1958 experimental collage film directed by Bruce Conner

A Movie is a 1958 experimental collage film by American artist Bruce Conner. It combines pieces of found footage taken from various sources such as newsreels, soft-core pornography, and B movies, all set to a score featuring Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drawn-on-film animation</span> Animation technique

Drawn-on-film animation, also known as direct animation or animation without camera, is an animation technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on film stock, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects are photographed frame by frame with an animation camera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Len Lye</span> New Zealand artist

Leonard Charles Huia Lye was a New Zealand artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture. His films are held in archives including the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Pacific Film Archive at University of California, Berkeley. Lye's sculptures are found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Berkeley Art Museum. Although he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1950, much of his work went to New Zealand after his death, where it is housed at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth. He is best remembered for his 1933 short film "experimental Animation 1933," better known as "The Peanut Vendor."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Experimental film</span> Cinematic works that are experimental form or content

Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.

<i>Empire</i> (1965 film) 1965 American black-and-white silent art film by Andy Warhol

Empire is a 1965 American black-and-white silent art film by Andy Warhol. When projected according to Warhol's specifications, it consists of eight hours and five minutes of slow motion footage of an unchanging view of New York City's Empire State Building. The film does not have conventional narrative or characters, and largely reduces the experience of cinema to the passing of time. Warhol stated that the purpose of the film was "to see time go by."

Nostalgia, styled (nostalgia), is a 1971 American experimental film by artist Hollis Frampton. It is part of his Hapax Legomena series.

Structural film was an avant-garde experimental film movement prominent in the United States in the 1960s and which developed into the Structural/materialist films in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.

Su Friedrich is an American avant-garde film director, producer, writer, and cinematographer. She has been a leading figure in avant-garde filmmaking and a pivotal force in the establishment of Queer Cinema.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie Menken</span> American filmmaker (1909-1970)

Marie Menken was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and socialite. She was noted for her unique filming style that incorporated collage. She was one of the first New York filmmakers to use a hand-held camera and trained Andy Warhol on its use. Her film Glimpse of the Garden was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Storm de Hirsch</span> American poet and film director (1912–2000)

Storm de Hirsch (1912–2000) was an American poet and filmmaker. She was a key figure in the New York avant-garde film scene of the 1960s, and one of the founding members of the Film-Makers' Cooperative. Although often overlooked by historians, in recent years she has been recognized as a pioneer of underground cinema.

Swedish artist Gunvor Grundel Nelson was born in 1931 in Kristinehamn, Sweden, where she now resides. She has worked as an experimental filmmaker since the 1960s. Some of her most widely known works were created while she lived in the Bay Area in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, where she became well established among other artists in the avant-garde film circles of the 1960s and to the present. As of 2006, she has to her credit 20 films, five videos, and one video installation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chick Strand</span> American film director

Mildred "Chick" Strand was an American experimental filmmaker, "a pioneer in blending avant-garde techniques with documentary". Chick Strand contributed to the movement of women's experimental cinema in the early 1960s–1970's. Strand's film making and directing approach incorporates personal elements from her own life experiences and societal forces and realities. The film Elasticity (1976) is an example of Strand's attempts at autobiographical work that also incorporates Strand's specific standpoint on certain social issues. Feminist issues and anthropological inquiries about the human condition are frequent themes in Strand's films. However, because Strand's films and work were often deeply personal and subjective, they were often rejected from male-dominated academic circles of anthropologists and critiqued for being non-academic works.

The Lead Shoes is a 1949 experimental film directed by Sidney Peterson at Workshop 20 at the San Francisco Art Institute. The film was made using distorting lenses. The film is a 17-minute black and white short.

Tarantella is a five-minute color, avant-garde animated short film created by Mary Ellen Bute, a pioneer of visual music and electronic art in experimental cinema.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Breer</span> American painter (1926–2011)

Robert Carlton Breer was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor.

Non-narrative film is an aesthetic of cinematic film that does not narrate, or relate "an event, whether real or imaginary". It is usually a form of art film or experimental film, not made for mass entertainment.

<i>Peyote Queen</i> 1965 American film

Peyote Queen is an experimental short film by Storm de Hirsch, produced in 1965.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ayoka Chenzira</span>

Ayoka "Ayo" Chenzira is an independent African-American producer, film director, television director, animator, writer, experimental filmmaker, and transmedia storyteller. She is the first African American woman animator and one of a handful of Black experimental filmmakers working since the late 1970s. She has earned international acclaim for her experimental, documentary, animation, and cross-genre filmmaking productions. Her work, as well as her efforts as one of the first African American woman film educators, have led some in the press to describe her as a media activist for social justice and challenging stereotype representations of African Americans in the mainstream media.

Modernist film is related to the art and philosophy of modernism.

References

  1. WorldCat.org
  2. The Third Eye
  3. Russet, R (1988). Experimental Animation : origins of a new art. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN   0-306-80314-3.
  4. "Cinematic Classics, Legendary Stars, Comedic Legends and Novice Filmmakers Showcase the 2008 Film Registry" News from the Library of Congress (30 December 2008)
  5. "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
  6. Re:Voir Vidéo + The Film Gallery