Norman Mclaren

  thanks to Marja-Leena Rathje

I discovered Norman Mclaren in the early 1970s when I was playing around with film making. Zoe was studying film making at that time and was watching Norman Mclaren films. Wonderful films done very simply. From Marja-Leena's post:

NFB is celebrating 65 years of Animation and I discovered that we can view four of McLaren's films on the Focus on Animation pages, small scale or full screen size. Blinkity Blank and Hen Hop< are delightful and lively - don't forget these were done by hand in 1955 and 1942 respectively, long before the digital era. Le Merle is a simple and delightful animation based on an old French-Canadian nonsense song, Mon Merle. I plan to show these to my grand-daughter sometime soon. The Oscar-winning fourth film Neighbours/Voisins (1952) is disturbing and a powerful parable on how easily humans can go into battle! Still very timely viewing but not for young children. (Maybe some world leaders we know should watch it!)

Mclaren literally drew directly on the film stock or he would scratch the emulsion on the film stock. Go look at these wonderful pieces of animation.

Norman McLaren
Overview of work

  thanks to Marja-Leena Rathje