A Colour Box (1935)

Animated shapes dance to Cuban music. This was one of the first animations to be painted directly onto the film.

Director:

Len Lye

Storyline

Animated shapes dance to Cuban music. This was one of the first animations to be painted directly onto the film.

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Plot Keywords:

abstract film | experimental film | drawn on film | promotional film | parcel post | 

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Genres:

Animation | Short

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Did You Know?

Trivia

One of the first films donated by their directors to the new archival collection at New York City's Museum of Modern Art, in 1936.

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Connections

Featured in The Eye Hears, the Ear Sees (1970)

User Reviews

Interesting breezy animation but probably worth seeing more for its historical or novelty value

While gentle Cuban music plays, shapes dance across the screen in this film featuring early examples of the animation of Len Lye. This is an early experimentation with the animation style of painting directly onto celluloid and it produces some nicely hypnotic images. The use of music helps because it gives everything a bright, breezy feel that worked for me in so much as it gave the images something to move in front of.

It was a surprise at the end to suddenly have advertisement slogans popping up in the final 30 seconds to inform me how great value my local post office is but then I guess this was actually an advert for the GPO. Despite that this still works as a bit of animation. Simple perhaps but enjoyably effect and the issue of it being a Post Office advertisement only adds novelty value to it. Maybe not worth hunting down but for animation historians it is perhaps worth a look for being one of the first of its type.

Details

Official Sites:

DVD Official DVD

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

October 1935 (UK)

Also Known As:

Цветной ящик

Company Credits

Production Co:

GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit

Technical Specs

Runtime:

3 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Visatone Marconi)

Color:

Color (Dufaycolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1