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Neighbours

Norman McLaren, 1952, 8 min 6 s
In this Oscar®-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion ...
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In this Oscar®-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.
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  • Neighbours/Voisins

    Neighbours/Voisins

    Norman McLaren here employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower. Film without words.

    Buy it now

The following DVDs may also interest you :

Norman McLaren - The Master's Edition/Norman McLaren - L'intégrale
Norman McLaren - The Master's Edition/Norman McLaren - L'intégrale

Norman McLaren is Canada's best known filmmaker. From his early experiments in Scotland in 1933 to his final NFB film in 1983, McLaren produced an extraordinary body of work. A master of experimental film and remarkable innovation, McLaren's work has been admired admired worlwide. Picasso once said, "Finally, something new in the art of drawing."

Buy it now
Creative Process: Norman McLaren
Creative Process: Norman McLaren

This unique film probes the mind and ideas of cinematic genius Norman McLaren, whose influence on the art of flimmaking is recognized worldwide. In a career spanning half a century he produced sixty films, which collected over 200 international awards. Animation artists continue to be inspired by his innovative concepts and techniques. Drawing on McLaren's private vaults of experimental footage and uncompleted productions never seen on the screen, the film is a fascinating look into McLaren's creative process and the art of animation at its most inventive.

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Albert Ohayon By Albert Ohayon
Canadian theatrical distributors were not too impressed when they were shown Neighbours in 1952. Most thought it of poor technical quality as well as gruesome. Most American distributors agreed, yet the film was picked up and shown theatrically stateside, leading to a surprising Academy Award for Best Short Documentary. The Oscar® led to theatrical showings around the world. Interestingly, the film was censored by an American educational distributor, who felt that the scenes of the women and babies being attacked were too much to show to children. It wasn’t until 15 years later that Norman McLaren would restore the film to its original version.
Donald McWilliams By Donald McWilliams
McLaren had been very intrigued by French trick films from the early 1900s in which everyday objects were animated frame by frame. He did some experimenting in his student films, and later he animated a household of furniture in a film for the General Post Office in London. He then wondered about the possibility of animating people frame by frame. This curiosity culminated in the extraordinary parable Neighbours, in which two men behave like cartoon characters in a tale both funny and ferocious. McLaren called the technique pixillation. The term is now universally misspelt as pixilation, which has an entirely different dictionary definition. McLaren made the term up from the word “pix,” an abbreviation for picture.
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