Free Radicals

Free Radicals (1958)

In this powerful abstract film with a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye scratched "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on to black leather, using a variety of tools from saw teeth to arrow heads. The first version of the film won a major award at the International Experimental Film Festival Held in Brussels in 1958 in association with the World's Fair. Stan Brakhage described the film as "an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece".

Date of release
1958-04-23
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (72)
Runtime
5m
Genres
Animation, Music
Director
Len Lye

Interesting facts

Free Radicals is a black-and-white animated film short by avant-garde filmmaker Len Lye. Begun in 1958 and revised 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.

Production

In Experimental Animation: the origins of a new art, 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.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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