Norman McLaren at MOMA
Museum of Modern Art honours NFB animation maven
(Source: www.moma.org)
Okay, I suffer from a Norman McLaren fan fixation that can occasionally border on the embarrassing. Well, it's not like his family has filed a restraining order on me (not yet, anyway), but I do think the man was a genius whose contributions to animation stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anyone else involved in the medium. And yes, that includes people like Walt Disney or Hayao Miyazaki.
So what brought out this latest spasm of McLaren fandom? Well, if you're living in the New York area, you owe it to yourself to check out a pair of screenings at NYC's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) on November 29-30th.
The 75 minute program features restored 35mm prints of many classic McLaren shorts that he made for the National Film Board of Canada, including Opening Speech, Stars and Stripes, Hen Hop, Begone Dull Care, A Chairy Tale, Lines Horizontal, Blinkity Blank, La Merle, the Oscar-winning short Neighbors, Synchromy, and Pas de Deux.
The screening takes place in MOMA's Celeste Bartos Theatre, starting at 6 pm on the 29th, and 8:30 on the 30th.
If you don't live in the NYC area, or you're one of the lucky few who have never seen McLaren's animation genius, you can click on the NFB site here, and check out some selected pieces. You'll thank me for it.
