The Birth of a Robot is a bizarre, fantastical advertisement for Shell Oil in which surrealist stop-motion figurines act out a disjointed myth of how robots came to be, and in which Shell Oil keeps the world turning after a sleepy god retired from the wheel.

Trust Len Lye to turn an advert into modern art. This surrealist experiment with collage and color processes was assisted by the great British documentarian, Humphrey Jennings, and was a whirlwind success. The short apparently screened at over 300 cinemas, reaching audiences of around 3 million!