Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for Free Radicals
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
1958 · FILM

Free Radicals

Directed by
Runtime
5 min
AnimationMusic

Synopsis

In this abstract film accompanied by a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye created "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on black leader using a range of tools, including saw teeth and arrow heads. The first version of the film received a major award at the International Experimental Film Festival held in Brussels in 1958, which was associated with the World's Fair. Stan Brakhage described the film as "an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece."

Credits

Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 1

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).

Help complete this page

We’re missing mpaa rating, logline. Sign in to add what you know.