(Pro)Motion Pictures: Len Lye in the Thirties

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For example, the major critical and historical studies of the British Documentary Movement during the inter-war period mention Lye's work either fleetingly (Low 1979 Lye, Len. 1984. “Song Time Stuff (Selections) [1937]”. In Figures of Motion: Selected Writings, Edited by: Curnow, Wynstan and Horrocks, Roger. 114–125. Auckland: Auckland UP. [Google Scholar] 103–107; Sussex 1975 Ward, Paul. 2005. Documentary: The Margins of Reality, London: Wallflower. [Google Scholar] 84–85; Ellis 2000 119), or not at all (Lovell and Hillier 1972 Low, Rachel. 1979. The History of British Film 1929–1939: Documentary and Educational Films of the 1930s, Vol. 2, London: Allen & Unwin. [Google Scholar]; Kuhn 1980 Kuhn, Annette. 1980. “British Documentary in the 1930s and ‘Independence’: Recontextualising a Film Movement”. In Traditions of Independence: British Cinema in the Thirties, Edited by: MacPherson, Ed. Don. 24–33. London: BFI. [Google Scholar]; Swann, 1989 Watson, Paul. 1997. “True Lyes: (Re)animating Film Studies”. In Art & Animation (Art and Design supplement) Edited by: Wells, Ed. Paul. Vol. 12, 46–49. [Google Scholar]; Aiken 1990 Aiken, Ian. 1990. Film and Reform: John Grierson and the Documentary Film Movement, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Winston 1995 Winston, Brian. 1995. Claiming the Real: The Griersonian Documentary and Its Legitimations, London: BFI. [Google Scholar]). In more recent times, Ian Christie (2000 Christie, Ian. 2000. “Colour, Music, Dance, Motion. Len Lye in England: 1927–44”. In Len Lye, Edited by: Horrocks, Roger and Bonhours, Jean-Michel. 186–190. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou. [Google Scholar]), Jamie Sexton (2001 Sexton, Jamie. 2002. Grierson's Machines: Drifters, the Documentary Film Movement and the Negotiation of Modernity. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 11.1: 40–59. [Google Scholar] 256–265; 2008 Strom, Gunnar. 2003. The Animated Documentary. Animation Journal, 11: 46–63. [Google Scholar]), and Michael O’Pray (2003 Rees, Al. 2007. “Frames and Windows: Visual Space in Abstract Cinema”. In Avant-Garde Film, Edited by: Scheunemann, Dietrich and Graf, Alexander. 55–75. Amsterdam: Rodopi. [Google Scholar] 44–47) have engaged more readily in the relations between Lye's film-making and alternative film culture in Britain and in the 1920s and 1930s. As this reference to O’Pray indicates, Lye's films from the 1930s fare better in treatments of experimental filmmaking (e.g. Le Grice 2002 Leslie, Ester. 2002. Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde, London: Verso. [Google Scholar] 70–73; Rees 2007 Rose, Barbara. 2000. “Len Lye: Shaman, Artist, Prophet”. In Len Lye, Edited by: Horrocks, Roger and Bonhours, Jean-Michel. 216–222. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou. [Google Scholar] 55–64; Curtis 2007 Curtis, David. 2007. A History of Artists’ Film and Video in Britain, London: BFI. [Google Scholar]). 2. “The direct application of paint to the surface of film transformed the dynamics of the graphic film. Color could be rendered more vivid than it could by the photographic process; the different kinds and densities of paint opened a range of texture hitherto ignored; and above all the problems of shape, scale, and the illusions of perspective which the early graphic film-makers inherited from the painterly and photographic traditions could be bracketed by an imagery that remained flat on the plane of the screen and avoided geometric contour” (Sitney 2002 Sussex, Elizabeth. 1975. The Rise and Fall of the British Documentary: The Story of the Film Movement Founded by John Grierson, Berkeley: U of California P. [Google Scholar], 233).