Norman McLaren Movies

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors....

A playful exercise in intermittent animation and spasmodic imagery. Playing with the laws relating to persistence of vision and after-image on the...

Two ballet dancers perform a dance enhanced with surreal after-image visuals.

An experimental film in which both sound and visuals were created entirely by Norman McLaren drawing directly upon the film with ordinary pen and...

An ordinary looking chair refuses to be sat upon.

In this extraordinary short animation, Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren painted colours, shapes, and transformations directly onto their filmstrip....

"Fly too high and you will burn, go too low and you won't breathe." Daedalus weaves a tale of ambition and caution through an ancient myth, set in a...

It's midnight in a graveyard. The principal characters are spooks, ghosts, bats, bells, and, at the end, the sun. As midnight strikes, 12 spooks...

The film's soundtrack is an original musical composition produced with synthetic sound - through photographing unusual geometric shapes and running...

An animation film, made without the use of a camera, in which "boogie" played by Albert Ammons and "doodle" drawn by Norman McLaren combine to make a...

Perhaps the only film whose content is totally based on the musical form known as canon. The first sequence is a simple demonstration of the canon...

In this short film by Norman McLaren, dancers enact the Greek tragedy of Narcissus, the beautiful youth whose excessive self-love condemned him to a...

An experimental film in which both sound and visuals were created entirely by McLaren drawing directly upon the film with ordinary pen and ink. The...

This joyful short animation features a dancing hen that transforms into an egg. The film was made without a camera by Norman McLaren, who drew...

An experimental short film of images and music made by Norman McLaren.

An animated film drawn entirely in pastels. Various fantastical plant-like things "grow" from the ground, eventually launching five spheres. The...

This animated short from Norman McLaren features a human skull cautioning Canadians to “keep their mouths shut” in an effort to end...

One of a series of French-Canadian folk songs, this film was illustrated by Norman McLaren for the Chants populaires series. White gouache drawings...

Pinscreen animation makes use of a screen filled with movable pins, which can be moved in or out by pressing an object onto the screen. The screen is...

Made during WWII