SEE-
HEAR
FESTIVAL
one of the most awarded filmmakers in the history
of Canadian cinema
Norman McLaren is one of the most awarded filmmakers in the history of Canadian cinema, and a pioneer in both animation and filmmaking. Born in Scotland, he entered the Glasgow School of Fine Arts in 1932 to study set design. His early experiments in animation included actually scratching and painting the film stock itself, as he did not have ready access to a camera. He revolutionized his field with his hand–drawn and hand–painted animated films. He also pioneered the use of pixilation—a filming technique that creates a stop–motion effect—which he used in his Academy Award–winning film Neighbors. In the early 30s he worked as a cameraman in Scotland and England, and in 1936 went to Spain to film the Civil War. He emigrated to the US in 1939, aware that war was imminent, and in 1941, at the invitation of John Grierson, he moved to Canada to work for the National Film Board.
PROJECTS
Neighbours (1952, 8min)
Rythmetic (1956, 9 min)
Pas de deux (1968, 13 min)
Synchromy (1971, 8 min)
Two men, Jean-Paul Ladouceur and Grant Munro (representing French Canada and English Canada respectively), live peacefully in adjacent cardboard houses. When a single, small flower (possibly a psychoactive flower) blooms between their houses, they fight each other to the death over ownership of that flower.
It is an amusing, non-verbal lecture on the subject of mathematics and one of McLaren’s longest animated works. Filmed without a camera or microphone and using McLaren’s scratch sound system, the film is a ‘crazy dance’ of mechanical actions and anthropomorphic gestures made by arithmetical figures and symbols; we hear rhythmic music with clicks or scratching sounds made by ink directly painted on the soundtrack. The filling of the background with bright figures against a dark background evoke a classroom blackboard and the teaching process. Classified as an educational film, it is also regarded as a visual and auditory work of art.
Pas de deux is a short dance film choreographed to Romanian pan pipe music by Ludmilla Chiriaeff. Ballerina (Margaret Mercier) dances by herself (or rather, with images of herself), before being joined by (Vincent Warren), to perform the pas de deux of the title. It was filmed in a studio where the walls and floor were painted black. Lighting was from the sides, so only the dancers’ silhouettes appear, and their images are repeatedly multiplied. The film was photographed on high contrast stock, with optical, step-and-repeat printing, for a sensuous and almost stroboscopic appearance. as choreographed by Ludmilla Chiriaeff.
Synchromy is a visual music film by Norman McLaren utilizing graphical sound. To produce the film’s musical soundtrack, McLaren photographed rectangular cards with lines on them. He arranged these shapes in sequences on the analog optical sound track to produce notes and chords. He then reproduced the sequence of shapes, colorized, in the image portion of the film, so that audiences see the shapes that they are also hearing, as sound.
