Movies

BBC Four’s new documentary takes us on a journey through more than a century of animation. It examines the creative and technical inventiveness...

A fictional enactment of the deadly contest between a British soldier and a German sniper hiding in a tree. Kill or Be Killed differs from most army...

A 1941 Ministry of Information propaganda film set to the tune of The Lambeth Walk, a popular song from the musical Me and My Girl.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996....

Experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov traces the course of experimental film in America, taking the very personal point of view of someone who grew up...

Correspondence between young lovers nearly ends in disaster through a mistake in postal district. Fortunately the GPO spots the error and all ends...

The story of how newspapers were distributed during the Blitz, stressing the importance of an accurate and objective press on the home front.

This documentary, made seven years after the death of legendary filmmaker and kinetic artist Len Lye, tells Lye's story: from being a young boy...

In this powerful abstract film with a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye scratched "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on to black leather,...

In 1944 Lye moved to New York City, initially to direct for the documentary newsreel The March of Time. He settled in the West Village, where he...

Life’s Musical Minute, recently re-discovered, is a short promotional film of this kind, based on Gene Krupa’s drum solo from...

Len Lye made this experiment in animating poetry circa 1953 utilising a clip of Sir John Gielgud reciting a passage from The Tempest.

While stocking the shelves at work late at night, Mike finds a mysterious tape that calls upon The Peanut Vendor.

This experiment was a “prestige advertisement” for Shell Motor Oil. As conventional animation became dominated by Walt Disney, many...

Lye created a series of scratched images in the 1950s – more regular or geometric than his usual style – to accompany Rock...

Len Lye scraped together enough funding and borrowed equipment to produce a two-minute short featuring his self-made monkey, singing and dancing to...

Master of Motion follows Len Lye, New Zealand's greatest international artist, and showcases his visionary work in film and sculpture and his...

Documentary about women factory workers.

In 1959 the United Nations commissioned Lye to make this one-minute film, “Fountain of Hope,” to publicize United Nations Day (24th...

Surrealism, avant-garde sound montage, and irreverent wit might be the last thing you'd expect from a government-sponsored film about wartime...