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Free Radicals
In what is widely considered his greatest film, Len Lye reduces cinema to its most basic elements by scratching designs onto black and white film, using a variety of means ranging from dental tools to an ancient Native American arrowhead. He then synchronised this primitive kinetic dance of white lines and angles to a field tape of the Bagirmi tribe. The title references modern physics: ‘free radicals’ are particles of energy.
Free Radicals won the second prize at the International Experimental Film Competition at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, which was judged by Man Ray, Alexander Alexeiff, and Norman McLaren. Stan Brakhage once described the film as “an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece, a brief epic.”
Bio Len Lye
Len Lye (New Zealand, 1901) was an internationally renowned filmmaker, sculptor, painter, photographer, and poet. In the course of his career, Lye was part of many artist groups, including the 7&5 Society of the 1920s, the surrealist movement of the 1930s, the New York School of the 1940s and 50s, and the avant-garde kinetic art movement during the 1950s and 60s. Free Radicals is widely considered one of his best films.
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- This film was #78 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025