Tusalava | Len Lye | ACMI collection | ACMI: Your museum of screen culture

Lye’s first film was originally accompanied by live music by Jack Ellit. No score was ever found, so the film presented here is silent, a vision of the beginnings of life on earth - mixing Maori, silent and modernist influences.

Content notification

Our collection comprises over 70,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued since the 1940s. As a result, some items and their descriptions may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.

Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.

How to watch

Access to this work is restricted for legal or cultural reasons.

Learn more about accessing our collection

Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

creator

Len Lye

Duration

00:09:00:00

Production places

Aotearoa / New Zealand

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

B1000450

Language

No spoken word

Subject categories

Experimental

Short films

Short films → Short films - New Zealand

Silent films

Holdings

VHS [PAL]; Copy

Digital Betacam [PAL]; Master

Digital Betacam [PAL]; Sub-master

VHS [PAL]; Reference - timecoded

Please note: this archive is an ongoing body of work. Sometimes the credit information (director, year etc) isn’t available so these fields may be left blank; we are progressively filling these in with further research.

Cite this work on Wikipedia

If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/113994--tusalava/ |title=Tusalava |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=26 September 2026 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}