Making Movie History: Grant Munro

Director and Animator Gerald Potterton recalls arriving at the NFBs celebrated Animation Studio and some of his forays into live action fiction.

This interview is part of Making Movie History: A Portrait in 61 Parts.

This short film paints a portrait of Oscar®-winning filmmaker Co Hoedeman (The Sand Castle, Ludovic). It focuses on 3 aspects of his life – family, farm, and studio. We see excerpts of his work and watch him create a new animation clip.

This feature-length documentary shines a much-deserved spotlight on Evelyn Lambart, who stood side-by-side with Norman McLaren for 21 years. Dubbed The First Lady of Canadian Animation, Lambart was an accomplished animator in her own right. This compilation, playfully contextualized by filmmaker Donald McWilliams, aims to prove just that.

This feature length documentary is a journey into Norman McLaren’s process of artistic creation. A cinematic genius who made films without cameras and music without instruments, McLaren produced 60 films in a stunning range of styles and techniques, collecting over 200 international awards and world recognition. Drawing on McLaren's private film vaults, a gold mine of experimental footage and uncompleted films, this film explores McLaren's methods, including his celebrated "pixillation" technique.

This documentary shares a behind-the-scenes look as husband and wife Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker demonstrate the pinboard technique of film animation they invented together. With a group of NFB artists and animators, they share and explore the techniques and astounding visual effects achieved by filming patterns and shadows created using 240,000 pins.

Celebrated animator Kaj Pindal reflects on his arrival at the NFB, his signature cartoon style and and some of his early works including the Oscar nominated What on Earth!.

This interview is part of Making Movie History: A Portrait in 61 Parts.

A detailed retrospective of the animation film at the National Film Board of Canada, of the techniques employed, and of the men and women who used and sometimes invented them. Documentary footage explains the techniques, and clips from NFB films illustrate the often spectacular results. Topics include Norman McLaren, hand-drawn-on-film and pixillation techniques, the "sing-along" animated songs of the 1940s, Alexandre Alexeieff's pinscreen, and Evelyn Lambart's fairytale improvisations.

Jacques Drouin's artistic trajectory is closely tied to the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen. No other filmmaker has employed the device with such dedication since Alexeïeff himself, who created the design in 1931. Consisting of a perforated board with 240,000 adjustable pins, the pinscreen can be manipulated to create evocative moving images. Having made a series of notable pinscreen films with his wife Claire Parker, Alexeïeff gave one of his 10 prototypes to the NFB. Intrigued by its creative potential, Drouin made good use of the precious item--to the great pleasure of its elderly inventor--crafting remarkable animation like Mindscape (1976) and Imprints (2005). Now recognized as the leading master of the technique, Drouin was called upon by the French Film Archives in Paris to oversee the 2007 restoration of their own pinscreens.

This interview is part of Making Movie History: A Portrait in 61 Parts.

Director and writer Carol Geddes reflects on telling stories from an aboriginal perspective as a filmmaker in the NFBs North West studio.

This interview is part of Making Movie History: A Portrait in 61 Parts.

Morten Parker recalls the early days of documentary filmmaking at the NFB, including the making of his Oscar nominated film The Stratford Adventure.

This interview is part of Making Movie History: A Portrait in 61 Parts.

Producer Michael Scott reflects on moving from the NFBs head office in Montreal to help set up the NFBs Prairie studio in the late 1970s.

This interview is part of Making Movie History: A Portrait in 61 Parts.