Direction: Norman McLaren

Direction Norman McLaren

Cast Grant Munro · Jean Paul Ladouceur

Synopsis A surreal story of two neighbours' destructive feud over a flower.

Direction Norman McLaren

Cast Margaret Mercier · Vincent Warren

Synopsis Two ballet dancers perform a dance enhanced with surreal multi and after-image effect visuals.

Direction Norman McLaren

Cast Jean-Louis Morin · Sylvie Kinal · Sylvain Lafortune

Synopsis In this short film by Norman McLaren, dancers enact the Greek tragedy of Narcissus, the beautiful youth whose excessive self-love condemned him to a trapped existence. Skillfully merging film, dance and music, the film is a compendium of the techniques...

Direction Norman McLaren · Evelyn Lambart

Synopsis Abstract images drawn directly onto the film are accompanied by three pieces of jazz performed by the Oscar Peterson trio.

Direction Norman McLaren · Claude Jutra

Cast Claude Jutra

Synopsis A young man wishes to sit down on a plain white chair in order to read. The chair resists this whole idea strenuously. Finally the young man admits defeat and sits on the floor. But left on its own the...

Direction Norman McLaren

Cast David Holmes · Anna Marie Holmes

Synopsis Two ballet dancers perform a dance in ghostly slow motion.

Direction Norman McLaren · Evelyn Lambart

Direction Norman McLaren

Synopsis In this animation film, Norman McLaren imparts unusual activity to an old French-Canadian nonsense song. Simple white cut-outs on pastel backgrounds, many by Evelyn Lambart, provide lively illustrations. The folksong "Mon Merle" is sung in French by the Trio Lyrique...

Direction Norman McLaren

Synopsis Norman McLaren used a technique he called the "pastel method" in this film. On an 18"X24" piece of cardboard he painted the picture using chalk and pastels, altering the image for each progressive exposure. The entire process took three weeks.

Direction Norman McLaren · Grant Munro

Direction Norman McLaren

Direction Norman McLaren · Mary Ellen Bute · Ted Nemeth

Synopsis It's midnight in a graveyard. The principal characters are spooks, ghosts, bats, bells, and, at the end, the sun. As midnight strikes, 12 spooks appear, then two ghosts. They move to the music's rhythm. Against the black night, they are...

Direction Jeff Hale · Norman McLaren · Grant Munro · Gerald Potterton

Cast Grant Munro

Synopsis Three separate sequences related to Christmas, animated in different styles: cutout animation of children dancing in the snow to "Jingle Bells," stop-motion animation of toys come to life, and cel animation of a man who seeks the ideal star to...

Direction Norman McLaren

Synopsis The surreal story of a bird and its cage with both their conflict and union.

Direction Norman McLaren

Cast Norman McLaren

Synopsis Norman McLaren's Opening Speech on the Occasion of the First Montreal International Film Festival.

Direction Norman McLaren

Direction Norman McLaren · Evelyn Lambart

Direction Norman McLaren · Evelyn Lambart

Cast Norman McLaren

Synopsis This short experimental animation tempts the eye with gradually unfolding yet increasingly complex movement, colour and sound. Reminiscent of the mid-20th-century style of “op art,” McLaren and Lambart’s film follows a single tiny square as it divides and multiplies, eventually...

Direction Norman McLaren

Synopsis The film's soundtrack is an original musical composition produced with synthetic sound - through photographing unusual geometric shapes and running them through an optical sound head. The images are an artistic rendering of this soundtrack.

Direction Norman McLaren

Synopsis An experimental film of dots animated by being drawn directly on filmstock.