Norman McLaren Movies

An ordinary-looking chair refuses to be sat upon.

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

In this early film Norman McLaren shot crystal formations through a low-power microscope, using polarized light with the lower part of the picture...

Animation featuring dancing black and white shadows.

A portrait of John Grierson, the first Canadian Government Film Commissioner and founder of the National Film Board in 1939. Interweaving archival...

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

Norman McLaren instructs Grant Munro on the movements he is to make. The film technique for Two Bagatelles is pixillation, where the actor is...

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

An abstract animation by Norman McLaren, who was born in Scotland in 1914. His interest in filmmaking began early in life after he became acquainted...

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...

Taking "Isle of the Dead," a work by the Swiss symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin as his starting point, Norman McLaren creates a deeply...

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

A documentary showing Norman McLaren working on the hand-drawn sound process he uses for his short film, Loops.

Norman McLaren was a cinematic genius who made films without cameras, and music without instruments. He produced sixty films in a stunning range of...

A color cocktail by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart, translating into moving patterns of color and light the moods of music written for a jazz...

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...

Experimental film showing a day's activities at the Glasgow College of Art.

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...

A slow-motion study by Norman McLaren of the pas-de-deux adagio, one of the most exacting and difficult dances of classical ballet. A ballet...

"Fly too high and you will burn, go too low and you won't breathe." Shot in just seven consecutive days during the summer of 2023, it concludes the...