Movies: Grant Munro

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower....

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 lit from the side so that the pins cast shadows....

Three separate sequences related to Christmas, animated in different styles: cutout animation of children dancing in the snow to "Jingle Bells," stop-motion animation of toys come to life, and cel animation of a man who seeks the ideal star to top hi...

An animated cartoon to help children explore why and how animals move as they do. A little boy discovers that he cannot compete with a monkey, a snake or a horse by imitating the way they move. He can only outdistance them when he climbs into a vehic...

In this short animation film, Norman McLaren presents the first 3 of the 5 categories of motion: constant, accelerated and decelerated. Various types of acceleration and deceleration are demonstrated, and examples are shown of how these types of moti...

Norman McLaren was a cinematic genius who made films without cameras, and music without instruments. He produced sixty films in a stunning range of styles and techniques, collecting over 200 international awards, and world recognition. In Creative Pr...

Window shopping children watch as toy soldiers come to life and fight a war with all its unvarnished ferocity and horror....

A chain-smoking woman has an encounter with a vampire....

Norman McLaren instructs Grant Munro on the movements he is to make. The film technique for Two Bagatelles is pixillation, where the actor is animated frame by frame, as in the film Neighbours/Voisins....

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 "Frere Jacques" where four cubes dance and combine with one another on a checkerboard. The second seque...

This short puppet animation from the fifties tells the story of Magic Bow, a First Nations boy endowed with magic gifts. Magic Bow is in the big city for the first time, thrilling audiences with his tricks at the Wild West Rodeo. Outside the arena, c...

An unconventional version of The Christmas Carol....

Features clips from 21 documentary and animation film classics, interviews with NFB filmmakers past and present, and incisive commentary from film critics and historians on the role and influence of the NFB during its first half century of existence....

The first part of this series by Norman McLaren deals only with tempo. It starts by showing the disc travelling in one move (1/24 of a second) from A to B, and progressively demonstrates slower and slower tempos....

A cemetery in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada is seen through the eyes of its former superintendent....

Grant Munro dances to New Orleans jazz music....

Stop-motion, pixillation and other trick photography methods are used to depict situations on a farm....

The third in a series of five colour films that offer an introduction to the basic techniques of film animation. McLaren explains and demonstrates different aspects of movement that are essential to the animator’s art. In this case it is the pause an...

In this fifth part, Norman McLaren deals not with motion (if motion is defined as a change of location in two- or three-dimensional space) but with change--change in the amount and color of light within an otherwise static screen. Normally, the anima...

In this fourth film, Norman McLaren explains and illustrates composite motion, where two of the categories of motion occur simultaneously in one action, such as the motions of jointed or pivoted parts (as occur in animal and human movements). Also sh...