A film fantasy of dancing music and dancing color. Listen to the Mocking Bird played by an oldtime fiddler, brilliant patterns ripple, flow, flicker and blend. A Norman McLaren painting on film, translates sound into sight.
This wartime publicity trailer by Norman McLaren focuses on wartime inflation and the role of price control. Single-frame animation is used with pen drawings made directly on 35mm film stock. Music is by Louis Applebaum, a leading composer and advocate for the arts in Canada.
Pinscreen animation makes use of a screen filled with movable pins, which can be moved in or out by pressing an object onto the screen. The screen is lit from the side so that the pins cast shadows.
This documentary short illustrates the thematic role of war in the works of filmmaker Norman McLaren, from his traumatic experiences in the Spanish Civil War to the Korean conflict, which inspired him to make Neighbours.
An experiment in pure design by film artists Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart. Lines, ruled directly on film, move with precision and grace against a background of changing colors, in response to music specially composed for the films.
This uncompleted film uses a technique invented by McLaren in the 1930s; the travelling zoom. McLaren's intention was to make the corridor gradually disappear so that the viewer's initial imprisonment would give way to the freedom of infinite space.
This publicity clip for Canada Post is Norman McLaren's first film for the NFB. For this animated short, McLaren drew symbols by pen onto clear 35 mm stock, which was then superimposed on a photographed painted background. Benny Goodman's rendition of Jingle Bells provides the accompaniment. (NFB)
In Là-haut sur ces montagnes, Mclaren used for the first time a chain-of-mixes (chiaroscuro) on a pastel-drawn landscape. The idea for such a technique had been planted by seeing Alexandre Alexeïeff’s Night on Bare Mountain in the late thirties.
A gay fantasia of patterned sound in which Norman McLaren salutes the West Indies, painting the spirit of fiesta on film to the lively beat of an island tune by Trinidad's Grand Curacaya Orchestra.
