Caroline Leaf Filmography / Filmographie de Caroline Leaf

DVD : Caroline Leaf : Out on a Limb / Sur la corde raide (Les films du paradoxe, France, 2009)

View films on NFB / ONF

• Sand or Peter and the Wolf (USA, Harvard U, 1969)
• Orfeo (USA, Harvard U, 1970)
• 2 clips for Mr. Roger’s Neighbourhood (USA, PBS, 1971-2)
• How Beaver Stole Fire (Communicado, Inc. , 1972)
• The Owl Who Married a Goose / Le mariage du hibou : une légende eskimo (Canada, NFB, 1974)
• The Street / La rue (Canada, NFB, 1976)
• The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (Canada, NFB, 1977)
• Interview (Canada, NFB, 1979)
• Kate and Anna McGarrigle (Canada, NFB, 1981)
• The Right to Refuse (Canada, NFB, 1981)
• An Equal Opportunity (Canada, NFB, 1982)
• Pies (Canada, NFB, 1983)
• The Owl and the Pussycat (Canada, Canada Council, 1985)
• The Fox and the Tiger (Canada, NFB, 1986)
• A Dog's Tale (Canada, NFB, 1986)
• Two Sisters / Entre Deux Soeurs (Canada, NFB, 1990)
• I Met a Man (USA, MTV, 1991)
• Bell Partout (Luxembourg, La fabrique des images, 1992)
• Fleay's Fauna Centre (Australia, 1994)
• Brain Battle (USA, Acme, 1995)
• Radio Rock Détente (Canada, Les Productions Pascal Blais, 1995)
• Drapeau Canada (Canada, Les Productions Pascal Blais, 1996)
• Absolut Leaf (SwellProductions, 1998)
• Odysseus & the Olive Tree (Canada, NFB, 2001)
• Slavery (USA, Acme, 2004)

Le mariage du hibou : une légende eskimo by Caroline Leaf, National Film Board of Canada

Two Sisters by Caroline Leaf, National Film Board of Canada

The Street by Caroline Leaf, National Film Board of Canada

Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969)

I cannot hear the lyrical melody of Rossini’s Ranz des Vaches (Call to the Dairy Cows) from William Tell (1829) without bursting into a fit of giggles.  This affliction dates back to my early childhood.  My parents were elementary school teachers in London, Ontario.  In those days, educational films were distributed to schools via a 16mm film library held by the London Board of Education.  For my birthday party one year – I believe I was turning 9 or 10 years old – my parents brought a projector home with a collection of animated shorts for my friends and me to watch.  The only film that I recall from the party is Marv Newland’s classic Bambi Meets Godzilla (バンビ、ゴジラに会う, 1969).  If you have not yet seen it, it only lasts about a minute and a half and can be viewed on Vimeo.

The film was made while Newland was still a student in California – he talks about it a little bit in an Anifest interview here – and quickly became a cult classic.  In today’s world in which the internet is patrolled by over-zealous corporations protecting their copyrights and infringing upon freedom of artistic expression, it is doubtful that such a film could be made without the threat of a lawsuit.  Newman did not ask Disney or Toho for permission for his send-up of / homage to their iconic Bambi and Godzilla characters. 

The main conceit of the film is that more than half of the less than two-minute film is taken up by hilarious opening credits and closing acknowledgements.  This is partly a commentary on the growing length of film credits (in the early days, films only credited key people, but by the 1960s the opening and closing credits were getting longer), but it is mainly a suspense technique leading up to the extremely quick “action” of the film.  The opening credits are drawn out for 50 seconds, eliciting chuckles from the audience first when they notice that Marv Newman has done everything, and second when the jobs credited become ludicrous. 

At the 50 second mark, the credits are interrupted by the sudden appearance of Godzilla’s foot flattening poor, unsuspecting Bambi like a pancake.  The “action” lasts just under 2 seconds, then after a few beats for the audience to get over their shock / laughter, the acknowledgements appear, thanking the city of Tokyo for the loan of their most infamous Kaiju.  While watching the film online recently, I got nostalgic for the old 16mm projectors because at my birthday party, in addition to re-watching the film several times, we also watched it backwards and laughed ourselves silly at the sight of Godzilla’s foot going up off-screen and Bambi popping back to life again.  Alas, such joys are not to be had with digital media.  I also miss the whir of the projector and the tactile pleasures of spooling the film into the projector.  It is sad that movie projectors are going the way of the dodo bird, for they bring much pleasure to many.

Marv Newland (マーヴ・ニューランド) is an American-Canadian filmmaker, who has had a long career making short commercials for both private and public broadcasters in the US and Canada.   In the course of his career he has done everything from drawing storyboards for Barbapapa at Toonder Studios (Netherlands) to making delightful animated shorts for the NFB.  His animated adaptation of Gary Larson’s Tales from the Far Side (1994) for TV won him the Grand Prix at Annecy in 1995.  He currently teaches Classical Animation at the Vancouver Film School.  A limited edition DVD of his collected works, The Best of International Rocketship became available earlier this year.  See Cartoon Brew for more info.

Read the rest of this review was originally published on my sister blog Nishikata Film Review on 28 November 2013.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Pinscreen Animation / Écran d’épingles

Pinscreen Animation / Écran d’épingles

Pinscreen is an extremely rare but truly beautiful method of animation.  Currently the only pinscreen still in use is in Montreal, where Michèle Lemieux produced her innovative recent short film Here and the Great Elsewhere (Le grand ailleurs et le petit ici, 2012).  It won an Animated Dreams Special Mention at the Tallin Black Nights Film Festival and was nominated for the prestigious Annecy Cristal and the Jutra Award for Best Animated Film. 

Pinscreen animation was invented in France in the early 1930s by the Russian artist Alexandre Alexeïeff and his American partner Claire Parker with additional design input by his first wife, the artist Alexandra Grinevsky.  Alexeïeff was an engraver and he sought a technique that would resemble animated engravings.  The result of their experiments with the pinscreen resulted in Night on Bald Mountain (Une nuit sur le mont Chauve, 1933), inspired by the compositions of the same name by Modest Mussorgsky.  The film was a critical success but because of the time-consuming, and therefore costly, nature of the technique, it did not catch on with other artists.

In 1940 Alexeïeff fled war-torn Europe for the United States with Parker, to whom he was now married, his ex-wife and their daughter Svetlana Alexeïeff Rockwell.  Norman McLaren at the NFB was an admirer of their work and in 1943 the film board invited the couple to come to Canada to produce their second pinscreen film In Passing (En Passant, 1944).  Although they were to return to France in 1946, Alexeïeff and Parker’s ties to Canada remained strong.

 

Read about my encounter with their pinscreens at the Cinémathèque Française in 2012

In the late-1960s, one of McLaren’s regular collaborators at the NFB, the musician Maurice Blackburn, tried his hand at pinscreen using a smaller version of Alexeïeff and Parker’s original device.  The result was an experimental short called Ciné-crime (1968) with was animation expert Marcel Jean describes as an “extremely complex concrete soundtrack” (source). 

In 1972 the NFB bought the NEC pinscreen and in honour of the occasion, Alexeïeff and Parker were invited to return to Canada to give workshops to NFB filmmakers.  McLaren recorded this occasion with his short documentary Pinscreen (1972) which is available on Disc 7 of Norman McLaren: The Master’s Collection and the DVD Alexeïeff: le cinéma épinglé  (FR/EN). 

This event turned out to be crucial to the future of the pinscreen as an art, for the young Montreal animator Jacques Drouin decided to try his hand with the technique, creating the short film Trois exercices sur l'écran d'épingles d'Alexeïeff (1974).  After this introductory exercise, Drouin became more ambitious and created the poetic film Mindscape (Le paysagiste, 1976) which went on to win 18 international awards including the Special Jury Prize at the inaugural Ottawa International Animation Festival.   Drouin then took pinscreen animation a step further by adding colour through filtering his light sources and collaborating with Czech animator Břetislav Pojar to create Nightangel (L’heure des anges, 1986), in which Pojar’s puppets perform against metamorphosing pinscreen backgrounds. 

Mindscape by Jacques Drouin, National Film Board of Canada

With Drouin’s retirement from the NFB in 2005, it seemed as if the time of the pinscreen was coming to an end, but Michèle Lemieux’s glorious Here and the Great Elsewhere breathed new life into this mesmerizing artistic medium.  Under the guidance of Jacques Drouin, she has described how she “instantly fell in love with it” and learned how “you are the protector of the instrument before you are an artist working on it.”  (Source: The Atlantic)  It is hoped that Lemieux will continue to make pinscreen films and will pass on her passion for the instrument to a new generation of Canadian animators.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

related terms:

pinboard, chiaroscuro, gravures animées  (animated engravings), pin art, digital pinscreen, Nagelbrett-Animation / Nadelwandanimation (DE)

Key names:  

Alexandre Alexeïeff (RU/FR, 1901-1982) & Claire Parker (USA/FR, 1906.1981): “the artist and the animator”

Jacques Drouin (CA, b. 1943)

Michèle Lemieux (CA, b.1955)

DVDs:

Alexeïeff: le cinéma épinglé  (FR/EN)

Jacques Drouin Complete Pinscreen Works (FR/EN)

Key films:

Night on Bald Mountain / Une nuit sur le mont Chauve

(Alexeïeff and Parker, France, 1933)

In Passing / En passant

(Alexeïeff and Parker, Canada, 1943)

The Nose / Le nez

(Alexeïeff and Parker, France, 1963)

“Prologue” of The Trial

(Orson Welles, France/Germany/Italy, 1962)

Ciné-crime

(Maurice Blackburn, Canada, 1968)

Pictures at an Exhibition / Tableaux d'Exposition

(Alexeïeff and Parker, France, 1972)

Trois exercices sur l'écran d'épingles d'Alexeïeff

(Jacques Drouin, Canada, 1974)  Watch/Buy : NFB

Mindscape / Le paysagiste

(Drouin, Canada, 1976) Watch/Buy : NFB / ONF

Three Moods / Trois thèmes

(Alexeïeff and Parker, France, 1980)

Nightangel /L’heure des anges

(Bretislav Pojar and Drouin, Canada, 1986)  Watch: ONF blog

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse / Les quatre cavaliers de l'Apocalypse

(Jean-François Mercier, 1991) Watch/Buy : ONF

- documentary with pinscreen animated sequences by Drouin

Ex-child / Ex-enfant
(Drouin, Canada, 1994)  Watch/Buy : NFB / ONF

A Hunting Lesson / Une leçon de chasse 
(Drouin, Canada, 2001)  Watch/Buy : NFB / ONF

Winter Days / Jours d’hiver

(冬の日/Fuyu no hi, Kihachirō Kawamoto, Japan, 2003) Order DVD: FR / JP

- pinscreen vignette by Drouin

Imprints / Empreintes 
(Drouin, Canada, 2004)  Watch: NFB / ONF

Here and the Great Elsewhere / Le grand ailleurs et le petit ici
(Michèle Lemieux, Canada, 2012)

Watch/Buy : Trailer, download, and DVD

FR: Revue de tournage, download, et DVD, Bande-annonce

Documentaries:

Alexeieff at the Pinboard (A Propos de Jivago, France, 1960)

Pinscreen Tests (NFB, Canada, 1961)

Alexander Alexeieff: The Pin Board (Nick Havinga, USA, 1966)

Pinscreen (Norman McLaren, Canada, 1972)

24 idées / seconde - Écran d'épingles (Éric Barbeau, Canada, 2006)

Watch/Buy : NFB

Jacques Drouin en relief (Guillaume Fortin, Canada, 2009)

Warch/Buy : NFB

Jacques Drouin – Séquences animées (Guillaume Fortin, 2009)

Watch : ONF

Resources:

• Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker correspondence with Cecile Starr: Guide.  Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Cambridge, MA.
• Bendazzi, Giannalberto.  Alexeïeff:  Itinéraire d'un maître - Itinerary Of A Master.  Paris: Dreamland, 2001. (EN/FR)
• Bendazzi, Giannalberto.  “Claire Parker, An Appreciation.” 1.2 AWN. 1886.
• Blair, Iain.  “NFB pushes Canadian artists in edgy direction.” Variety. 4 June 2012.
• Doll, Susan.  “The Unique Pinscreen Animation of Alexandre Alexeieff and Clair Parker.”  Movie Morlocks.  24 August 2009.
• Furniss, Maureen. Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics. rev ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2008. 54–57.
• Jean, Marcel.  «Techniques: Écran d’épingles.»  ONF: Objectif Animation.  Accessed: 22 June 2014.    
• Jean, Marcel.  “Techniques: Pinscreen.”  NFB: Focus on Animation.  Accessed: 22 June 2014. 
• Lang, Maggie.  “It Took 240,000 Pins to Make the Most Innovative Short Film of the Year.”  The Atlantic.  28 Dec 2012.
• «"Le Court s'anime#10" : focus sur une technique, l'écran d'épingles » ciclic. Accessed: 22 June 2014.
• Lopez, Pedro Faria.  “The Pinscreen in the Era of the Digital Image.” Writer 2001. 1999.
• Lussier, Judith.  «Michèle Lemieux, seule utilisatrice d’écran d’épingles au monde.» Urbania.  11 janvier 2013.