Ballet mecanique (TEFC)

The French cubist painter Fernand Leger collaborated with American photographer Dudley Murphy to produce a dynamic view of modern life in the 1920’s. Using a series of rapidly intercut contrasting images, the film reduces humans to mechanical objects, creating rhythms and patterns of expressive force.

Content notification

Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions.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

This work has not been digitised and is currently unavailable to view online. It may be possible for approved reseachers to view onsite at ACMI.

Learn more about accessing our collection

Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

producer/director

Fernand Leger

production company

Synchro Cine

Duration

00:11:00:00

Production places

France

Production dates

1924

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

016483

Language

English

Subject categories

Experimental

Silent films

Sound/audio

Silent

Colour

Black and White

Holdings

16mm film; Access Print (Section 1)

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/78038--ballet-mecanique-tefc/ |title=Ballet mecanique (TEFC) |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=23 April 2025 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}

France, 1924

Please note