Norman McLaren honoured at TIFF
Legendary Canadian animator honoured at Toronto film fest
Jul 20, 2006
(Source: Big Cartoon Database)
Frequent visitors to this site have noticed that I give a lot of props to legendary animator Norman McLaren. That's deliberate, since I think that Canadians don't give their own enough credit. Why isn't this guy a household name? Hell, Cannes and Oscar gave McLaren a lot more love than we do!
Well, the 31st Annual Toronto Film Festival will try to redress that shortcoming by screening "The Best of Norman McLaren," a 76-minute retrospective of some of the animator's best work, including the Oscar-winning Neighbors. Here are the films being shown:
Opening Speech (1961, 6:52): McLaren himself attempts to welcome an audience, but becomes the victim of his own tricks when an animated microphone refuses to keep still.
Stars and Stripes (1941, 2:06): One of McLaren's earliest works, this experiment in film animation -- made without a camera by drawing directly on film -- sees "stars" and "stripes" engaged in acrobatics to the sound of a marching tune.
Hen Hop (1942, 3:40): Hand-drawn with colour added optically, the film plays out as an ever-morphing hen dances to traditional country music.
Begone Dull Care (1949, 7:48): Coupled with music by the Oscar Peterson Trio, the film consists of textured lines and colors painted directly on film, providing an expressive visual counterpart to Peterson's lyrical jazz.
A Chairy Tale (1957, 9:53): In this dialogue-free film, a moving chair refuses to perform its duty when a confused and increasingly aggressive young man (Claude Jutra) attempts to have a seat. Featuring music by India's Ravi Shankar and Chatur Lal.
Lines Horizontal (1962, 5:55): Lines ruled directly onto film move in response to folk legend Pete Seeger's music -- specially composed and performed for the film -- against a backdrop of changing colours.
Blinkity Blank (1955, 5:15): An exercise in perception and the narrative interpretation of disconnected visuals, McLaren's film experiments with the use of intermittent animation and spasmodic imagery. Featuring music by Maurice Blackburn.
Le Merle (1958, 4:39): Animating simple white cutouts on pastel backgrounds, McLaren brings a visual life to an old French-Canadian nonsense song, "Mon Merle," sung in French by the Trio Lyrique of Montréal.
Neighbours (1952, 8:06): When two neighbors discover that a flower has grown in the very middle of their respective properties, each is determined to claim the flower as his own. McLaren adopts techniques commonly used to put drawings or puppets into motion, using them, instead, to animate live actors.
Synchromy (1971, 7:27): McLaren utilizes a variety of methods to make music out of images and have the two coexist in harmony. Having employed optical techniques to compose the film's sound track, McLaren then transferred the images, in multicolor, onto the screen, presenting a pure synchronization of vision and sound.
Pas de deux (1968, 13:22): Delving into a visual study of the choreography of ballet, McLaren exposes the same frames as many as 10 times, creating a multiple image of a back-lit ballerina and her partner against a bare, black stage.
If you still don't know why Norman McLaren rocks, go here or here, or even here.
