La magnifique machine

In the small Ontario town of Echo, deep underground a typical post-war apartment building, there is a machine – massive and seemingly endless. What is its purpose? What is it for?

Under the African sun, a child walks in the desert with his kin. Death is prowling, but a mother's soul resurrected by music will return strength and life to the child when he becomes a man. Inspired by the grace and raw beauty of African rock paintings, Nicolas Brault paints a story without borders, with the humanity and elegance of a universal narrator.

This animated short tackles the twin issues of urban planning and climate change. Set in the imaginary city of Colvert, the film highlights the fact that the way a community is shaped and organized is an important factor in determining its energy consumption, and thus the quantity of greenhouse gases it releases into the atmosphere. Saga City is narrated by Colm Feore and directed by Luc Chamberland.

Produced with the assistance of the National Film Board of Canada's Filmmaker Assistance Program.

The famous Canadian astronaut Kao-Kuk is just coming back from a dangerous deep space mission in a transdimensional rift. But back home at the astro station, a deeper, even more deadly mystery awaits, threatening his impending doom.

This short animation is a dizzying celebration of sound, colour and movement. Here, multitudes of CMYK symbols, pulled off flaps of cereal boxes and other common printed materials, have been isolated and assembled. Freed from their workaday origins, these objects become moving artwork. Coloured dots pulsate, crosshairs roll and primary shapes dance. The result: an unrestrained riot of colour and energy.

Heralding the “end of paper,” this experimental animated short is an abstract exploration of a number of big issues, from the ephemerality of the digital age to the practice of recycling. To create this painting in motion, Theodore Ushev took an animation film festival catalogue and set its pages alight with the broad strokes of a paintbrush.

An opening address, a tribute and highlights of a long and productive career--McLaren on McLaren is Norman McLaren on camera. The occasion is the opening of a prestigious festival in Arnhem, the Netherlands, in November, 1983, marking the tenth anniversary of Holland Animation. The renowned animator pays homage to those who merged their arts with his, and to the National Film Board, which gave him forty-two years of artistic freedom.

Opening with dreamlike images of the city of Siena at night, this short sand animation evolves into a symphony of waving banners, distant voices and galloping horses. Created especially for Italy’s Siena International Short Film Festival.

This short documentary is a film about a film. In 1961, Norman McLaren produced a record of New Yorkers watching his short animation New York Lightboard in action in Times Square. The film within this film was produced as a promotion of travel and tourism in Canada. New York Lightboard Record depicts the reactions—awe, confusion, amusement—of onlookers and passersby.

A hand-made, scratched-on film experiment in intermittent animation. The images are a group of twenty-four visuals, all non-representational, which arrange and rearrange on the screen in many combinations. The result is a changing pattern of sound and image that has its own rhythm for eye and ear.

A superb visual trick that will mystify its audience, this animated film transforms the commonplace into magic.