La boîte

In Co Hoedeman's animated short about a troupe of marionette acrobats, everything that can go wrong does. No matter what the ringleader does, each act goes awry until we begin to wonder who's really running the show. Even when Marianne, the master puppeteer, emerges at the end of the show to take her final bow, those little acrobats still seem to have a mind of their own. Brilliantly executed, this film dissolves the boundaries between theatre and animated film to create a magical experience.

The protagonists of this animated short are Russian dolls, also known as matryoshka dolls, or babushka dolls - sets of beautifully painted wooden dolls of decreasing sizes that nestle one inside the other. Here, the dolls dance, twirl and swirl to Russian tunes before hopping back into the mother figure.

This short children's film by Co Hodeman tells the story of 2 children and their encounter with an angry dragon, all represented by colourful building blocks.

Octopus-like puppets cut from foam rubber are the central characters in this delightful underwater fantasy with its message about ecology and conservation. Two Grotoceans sent on a special mission find all kinds of surprises awaiting them as they roam the sea in search of treasure.

The magical fingers of master animator Co Hoedeman, whose film The Sand Castle won an Oscar in 1979, has created yet another world of piquant creatures. Papier mâché puppets ride machines and manipulate robots strange to the human eye. A great masquerade is in the planning, and the air crackles with excitement. Plunged into the joys and frustrations of creating costumes, the zealous puppets produce a bumper crop, each one more elaborate than the last. The film illustrates the creative process, with its inevitable pitfalls and rewards. It says that to create is to be alive.

In this short animation, a little girl wonders aloud about herself and the world while a storm rattles the night sky. The film, which explores thoughts of the universe without making concessions or providing answers, is based on Michèle Lemieux’s Gewitternacht, a children’s book first published in 1996 and translated into 13 languages.

This animated short about literacy introduces us to Meena, a young girl who hates books even though her parents love to read. Books are everywhere in Meena's house, in cupboards, drawers and even piled up on the stairs. Still, she refuses to even open one up. But when her cat Max accidentally knocks down a huge stack, pandemonium ensues and nothing is ever the same again.

Part of the Talespinners collection, which uses vibrant animation to bring popular children’s stories from a wide range of cultural communities to the screen.

This short experimental film from Peter Foldès (Hunger) hails from the very early days of computer animation. Created entirely on a computer belonging to the National Research Council of Canada, it registered hundreds of movements to produce a fluid, evolving effect with images seamlessly morphing into one another.

This short animation was created using tests created in the production of A Chairy Tale (1957) by master of animation Norman McLaren. Flocons is set to the music of Tchaikovsky and features none other than Canadian filmmaker Claude Jutra, who plays a character imprisoned in the celluloid on which McLaren paints directly. Flocons aims to celebrate the 100th anniversary, in 2014, of Norman McLaren’s birth.

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.

This film is part of a series of television programs including interviews with the directors of short animated films as well as the films themselves. This video includes 2 animated shorts: Quilt (by Gayle Thomas), an animated tribute to patchwork quilting and Scant Sanity (by John Weldon), an exploration into the nature of the mind and reality in which a person seeking job counseling receives psychiatric treatment instead, thereupon becoming convinced of the reality of his own internal world.