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.
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.
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:
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)
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)
Jacques Drouin en relief
(Guillaume Fortin, Canada, 2009)
Jacques Drouin – Séquences animées (Guillaume
Fortin, 2009)
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.
