Outsider Cinema

Direct animation

Animation made straight onto the film strip, painted or scratched frame by frame, with no camera involved.

Technique · Two filmmakers in the guide

Len Lye painted A Colour Box directly onto film for the GPO Film Unit in 1935, and Norman McLaren took up the method soon after, later carrying it to the National Film Board of Canada. Lye went on to scratch white lines into black film for Free Radicals.

Because every frame is made by hand, the image never sits still: colours boil, lines jitter, and the music seems to drive the paint. It needs no camera and little money, so students and artists keep rediscovering it.

Films to start with

In the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.

  1. A still from A Colour Box.

    A Colour Box

    Len Lye · 1935 · 4 min · 35mm, colour

    Painted straight onto the film without a camera and cut to a Cuban dance record. The GPO Film Unit released it as an advert, and the parcel post rates appear at the end.

  2. A still from Begone Dull Care.

    Begone Dull Care

    Norman McLaren · 1949 · 8 min

    Made with Evelyn Lambart. Paint, ink and scratches on the film strip swing in time to the Oscar Peterson Trio, slowing to scratched dots for a slow middle passage. They worked in sections of about five seconds, playing each one back against the music on a Moviola.

  3. A still from Free Radicals.

    Free Radicals

    Len Lye · 1958 · 5 min · 16mm, black and white

    White lines scratched into black film, jumping to African drum music. Lye cut a shorter version in 1979.

Where it led

Lines from these films into work you may already know.

Nearby

Movements, forms and techniques that share filmmakers or methods with this one.

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