Tusalava
- Studio
- Film Society
Synopsis
Abstract animation in which two apparently organic forms evolve in a symbiotic and/or parasitic relationship with one another.
Characters
Two Forms
Credits
Directing
- Director
- Len Lye
Producing
- Producer
- Robert Graves
Writing
- Writer
- Len Lye
Animation
- Animator
- Len Lye
Music
- Music
- Jack Ellit
Production notes
Silent cartoon.
Experiment in abstract animation, drawn directly onto the film. Each frame was painted and shot individually.
The first animated film directed by Len Lye, Tusalava took two years to complete and required 4,400 drawings, each of which was photographed in a process known as cel animation.
Described by Lye as dealing with "the beginnings of organic life."
Premiered at the London Film Society, the film was almost refused a certificate by the puzzled British Board of Film Censors, which suspected that it might be about sex. The board asked Lye for evidence that the film was not salacious. Lye replied that the film "represented a self-shape annihilating an agonistic element." He didn't hear from the board again.
Tusalava used orthodox (camera) animation, but its imagery was a unique mix of Maori, Aboriginal and modernist influences. Tusalava is a Samoan word meaning "In the end, everything is just the same." Lye had recently arrived in London from the South Pacific when he began this film, which draws on Aboriginal imagery- such as the witchetty grub- in its representation of "the beginnings of organic life."
Art critic Roger Fry wrote to Lye, "I thought you had seen the essential thing, as no one had hitherto."
The London Film Society could not afford an optical sound print, so it showed Tusalava with live music written for two pianos by Australian composer Jack Ellitt. However, it was played on one piano instead of the two that Ellitt intended. The score has since been lost. Nonetheless, Lye was happy for the film to be screened later with music by Eugene Goossens.
Lye intended Tusalava to be the first part of a trilogy, with the second showing geology and the sea, and the third dealing with humanized forms. The other two films were never begun, however.
Experiment in abstract animation, drawn directly onto the film. Each frame was painted and shot individually.
The first animated film directed by Len Lye, Tusalava took two years to complete and required 4,400 drawings, each of which was photographed in a process known as cel animation.
Described by Lye as dealing with "the beginnings of organic life."
Premiered at the London Film Society, the film was almost refused a certificate by the puzzled British Board of Film Censors, which suspected that it might be about sex. The board asked Lye for evidence that the film was not salacious. Lye replied that the film "represented a self-shape annihilating an agonistic element." He didn't hear from the board again.
Tusalava used orthodox (camera) animation, but its imagery was a unique mix of Maori, Aboriginal and modernist influences. Tusalava is a Samoan word meaning "In the end, everything is just the same." Lye had recently arrived in London from the South Pacific when he began this film, which draws on Aboriginal imagery- such as the witchetty grub- in its representation of "the beginnings of organic life."
Art critic Roger Fry wrote to Lye, "I thought you had seen the essential thing, as no one had hitherto."
The London Film Society could not afford an optical sound print, so it showed Tusalava with live music written for two pianos by Australian composer Jack Ellitt. However, it was played on one piano instead of the two that Ellitt intended. The score has since been lost. Nonetheless, Lye was happy for the film to be screened later with music by Eugene Goossens.
Lye intended Tusalava to be the first part of a trilogy, with the second showing geology and the sea, and the third dealing with humanized forms. The other two films were never begun, however.