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An experimental short film by New Zealand avant-garde artist Len Lye is one of 25 classic works selected in 2008 for the National Film Registry in the United States.
Under the terms of the US National Film Preservation Act, each year the Librarian of Congress names 25 films
to the registry that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant, to be permanently preserved.
For his four-minute film Free Radicals, begun in 1958 and completed in 1979, Lye made scratches directly into the film stock.
These scratches became "figures of motion" that appear in the finished film as horizontal and vertical lines and shapes dancing to the music of the Bagirmi tribe in Africa.
Among the other films selected by Congress Librarian James Billington in Washington DC were The Asphalt Jungle, Deliverance, A Face in the Crowd, The Invisible Man, Sergeant York and The Terminator.
The films span the period 1910-1989, with 2008's selections taking the number of motion pictures in the registry to 500.
Christchurch-born Lye became a naturalised US citizen in 1950 and died in New York in 1980.
His films are already held in archives such as the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Pacific Film Archive at University of California's Berkeley campus.
His sculptures are in many prominent US collections as well as the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth.
Mr Billington said the National Film Registry, which Congress established in 1989, stood "as a matchless record of the amazing creativity America has brought to the movies since the early 1890s".
"Both as a public-awareness tool and as an educational learning aid for students, the registry helps this nation understand the diversity of America's film heritage and, just as importantly, the need for its preservation.
"The nation has lost about half of the films produced before 1950 and as much as 90 per cent of those made before 1920. In addition, more and more nitrate-based and acetate-based films are deteriorating with the passage of time."
The Librarian of Congress makes the final selection, after reviewing hundreds of titles nominated by the public and consulting members of the National Film Preservation Board and the library's motion-picture staff.
- NZPA
