All language subtitles for Creative Process - Norman McLaren [1990][Donald McWilliams]

Our guest today may
look young

for a pioneer,

but a pioneer he is.

A pioneer in motion
picture techniques.

Norman Mclaren

of "the national film
board of canada"

creates

some of the most
unusual movies.

Many people, like me,
think they're wonderful.

Other people don't
understand them.

This is where I spend most
of my time in filmmaking,

in front of this machine,
and by this bench.

Without taking the film
out of the machine,

I can just pull it out here,

and I can draw or
scrape away images here,

and as soon as i've
scraped away a few,

sometimes just one that
I scrape, I can run it.

[Narrator]: This is a photo of
Norman Mclaren, the filmmaker,

taken at his christening in
stirling, Scotland, in 1914.

19 years after
the birth of cinema.

[Mclaren]: If there's a
technical thing invented,

a person with an artist's nature
is likely to take it and use it.

You're getting young
artists using computers,

they make a new kind of
animation, a new type of film.

That's the way it should be.

if I was growing up now,

I would go right in and try

to do things with a computer.

But one is a child of one's age.

one is born at a certain time,

one uses certain things.

Mclaren's conscious
interest in the arts

was awakened

in his early teens when he read

a modern poem breaking the rules

he was being taught at school.

Excited by a cartoon
in "Punch" magazine

satirizing modern art,

Mclaren began to abstract

his school drawing
and painting projects.

At 18, Mclaren enrolled in
the "glasgow school of art".

[Mclaren]: I didn't get
enjoyment from drawing

from plaster casts,
or life models,

or from what I learned.

[Narrator]: So, after one year,
Mclaren decided to specialize

in interior design,

and produced,
according to one teacher,

fantastic schemes for
interior decoration, furniture,

and goodness knows what else.

This multi-sensory cocktail bar

incorporated coloured smoke
fountains, scents and sound.

[Mclaren]: But I discovered

great works of cinema, those
of pudovkin and eisenstein.

I know they did have
a terrific impact.

The intimacy of
the intercutting,

the wide variety of viewpoint
of the subject matter,

cutting from one
thing to another

is similar to
the mental process.

It's instantaneous.

A sudden juxtaposition
of two things

very different from each other,

as in a dream.

Its spirit's able to jump around

with extreme rapidity

in spite of the laws of logic.

[Narrator]: A filmmaking club
had been started at art school

and, galvanized by
Mclaren's energy,

it produced several
films over three years.

Mclaren's first film
was "seven 'til five".

[Mclaren]: My very simple camera

couldn't do animation,

so I just relied upon
discontinuous cutting

to cover one day

in the life of an art school.

And I realized that
here is a new area

that's not really been explored.

It had just been invented

about 20 or 30 years ago.

So much has been done
in drawing and painting

for thousands of years.

So many styles that I considered
it at that age a dead art--

drawing and painting.

The new art of the
future was movies.

And I thought
I will make movies.

On the second film

I got a camera which
could do fade-ins, fade-outs,

double exposures, split frame,
and a single frame at a time.

That was the first opportunity
I had to animate.

Objects usually,

plates from the table,

the instruments of the orchestra
coming out of their boxes...

At the end of the film,
the camera goes to bed.

The bed clothes come up over it.

These came just
spontaneously to me.

I just thought in
terms of animation.

[Narrator]: At the third
"Scottish Amateur Film Festival",

the adjudicator was documentary
filmmaker John Grierson.

He was scathing in his
criticism of Mclaren's joy,

"camera makes whoopee".

[Mclaren]: Grierson said:
"you've got lots of imagination,

"trying new things, but totally
undisciplined, unharnessed.

"you don't know how
to make a film,

we're going to knock
some discipline into you."

These were his very words:

"knock some
discipline into you."

[Narrator]: Mclaren
worked for Grierson

at the "british
general post office".

Mclaren learned the
craft and discipline:

editing, writing and
directing documentaries.

In october 1939,
he emigrated to the USA

to continue his work
in experimental film.

In 1941, he moved to canada.

Grierson, the founding head of
canada's government film agency,

the "National Film Board",

asked Mclaren to come and make
films of an experimental nature.

Mclaren would stay at the "NFB"
until his retirement in 1984.

during those 43 years,

he founded the "NFB
animation department",

made 50 films and received over
200 awards for his achievements.

In the early 1700s

a jesuit priest, louis
Bertrand Castell, wrote:

"What stranger exercise
could be inspired

"in the whole field of art
than to make sound visible,

"to make available to the eye

those many pleasures
which music affords the ears."

In 1953, Norman Mclaren
wrote to a friend in Scotland:

"More than anything
in the past years,

"what has moved me
most and to tears

"has been the death
of Kathleen Ferrier.

"first when I heard of it,
and the other evening again,

"when there was a memorial
program on the air.

"I can't express my feelings,

"except to say that I weep
bitter tears of the sadness

when I hear her sing
and think of it."

Music was the central love

in Mclaren's life and work.

Music of all sorts and across
many cultural boundaries.

[Mclaren]: In my teens,
before the "Art School",

I used to hear music,
for the first time,

coming from the radio
stations of europe.

As I shut my eyes, I saw
the play and dance of forms.

[Narrator]: Yhis multi-sensory
reaction to stimuli

is called synaesthesia.

[Mclaren]: Music can do
all kinds of things.

The tempo can be slow or fast,
can accelerate, decelerate,

can be pianissimo or fortissimo.

I could visualize the
equivalent of these things

in the picture area.

Things could skip
and leap about joyfully

or they could drag
themselves tragically around.

There's lots of adjectives
that you can apply to music

and to the movement

of the shapes and forms
in an abstract film.

The pieces that excited me, i
wanted to express them visually.

[Narrator]: Debussy's
"L'apres-midi d'un faune"...

Cgany interpretation
of hungarian folk music...

Scottish rhapsody...

[Mclaren]: It was only

when I joined the
"Film Society in Glasgow"

that I saw the
first abstract film,

Brahm's fifth
hungarian rhapsody,

made by Oscar Fischinger.

I said: "that's it,

film is the medium to express
my feelings about music."

What may be half of my
whole output of films

is the expression of
the spirit of music.

"Je la menai
aupres d'une fontaine"

"Je la menai
aupres d'une fontaine"

A long time ago,

in the thirties, shortly
after I began making movies,

I discovered
surrealist painting.

One of the surrealists
whose work I very much admired

was Yves Tanguay.

So one day in 1944,

I decided to improvise
a moving growing landscape

in a surrealistic manner.

And this is it.

It's much influenced

by the way tanguay uses space
and forms in his paintings.

I must confess I don't really
know what any of it means.

It all comes out
of my subconscious.

I call it "Tanguay
landscape test".

It never got any further
than what you see now.

A problem with
making a surreal film

is keeping up the inspiration
while constantly improvising.

[Narrator]: The surrealist
idea of subconscious

as a source of
artistic inspiration

was the major force in
Mclaren's creative process.

It would remain an influence
through his career.

[Mclaren]: Surrealism meant

cutting down the conscious
control of what was happening.

I had tended to be an
improviser in earlier films,

so this fitted in with
the idea of surrealism.

You let what's next come
out of your subconscious.

Having seen just one or
two surrealist paintings

released me to make films

Iike "Love on the wing" where
the image keeps metamorphosing.

[Narrator]: "Divertissement",
by Jacques Ibert,

was the musical inspiration
for "Love on the wing".

Mclaren's loud entry into the
world of experimental cinema,

his first professional step as
a maker of fancy and fantasy.

[Mclaren]: A
sudden juxtaposition

of two things very different
from each other as in a dream.

The spirit is able to jump
around with an extreme rapidity

in spite of the laws of logic.

[Narrator]: Mclaren used

a technique of
filmic metamorphosis,

or continual change, to
make his surreal cinema.

He had discovered
metamorphosis in 1937

in films by Emile Cohl.

The french animator had used
the technique as early as 1908.

Here, in the film "Fantasmagorie".

Mclaren said Cohl's
animation was a revelation

which impressed him deeply,
and greatly affected his work.

Here was animation
at its purest and best,

unadulterated and unaffected
by the ideas and methods

of other media
and earlier times.

It rejoiced in the fact
that it was drawn with a line

and that the line could move.

It breathed with this knowledge,
and it followed the logic of it.

The "British postmaster general"
forbade the distribution

of "Love on the wing".

too freudian, he said.

The fore-ground images
in "Love on the wing"

were made without a camera

by drawing directly
with a pen onto the film.

Mclaren would perfect
this technique in new york.

Mclaren had emigrated
to the USA in 1939

with Guy Glover,

his lifetime companion
and creative confidant.

several years later,

Mclaren spoke of those
new york days in an interview.

"I had a terrible time during my
first trip there in the 30's,"

he recalled with a smile.

"I made those guggenheim films
while I was nearly starving

"in a little room
on 1 25th street.

"all I had was a pen,
some dyes, a plain table,

"a sloping bench with a
groove for sliding film

"and a wire coat hanger.

"but later", he mused, "I moved
to the oldest house in flushing.

it had lovely
fir trees and birds."

Mclaren bent a
surprisingly muscular wrist

slowly flexing five
tapering fingers.

"it had birds

Iike silver falcons."

during his two
years in new york,

Mclaren drew seven
films directly onto film.

he was encouraged

by hilla von rebay,

curator of the "museum
of non-objective painting",

now the "guggenheim".

the museum bought
most of these films,

featuring them on programs
of non-objective cinema.

it's a very simple
machine,

not much to it.

this is the film.

it runs through a
holder over here.

and there's a light

that shines through
glass in my holder.

I use pen and india
ink --

just an ordinary
pen.

I draw on each frame
of film,

making each drawing slightly
different from the one before.

after drawing that,
I pull the film up

and draw the next
second.

[interviewer]: it sounds
most interesting.

it seems to be a most
satisfying business,

painting straight
onto a film like that.

[Mclaren]: don't let the
complexities of filmmaking

get you down.

I try to preserve in my
relationship to the film

the same closeness and intimacy

that exists between
a painter and his canvas.

in normal filmmaking,

there's a series of optical,
chemical, mechanical processes.

and these stand between the
artist and his finished work.

how much simpler it is for
an artist with his canvas.

so I decided to throw away
the camera and work on the film.

and if I don't like
what I do, I rub it out.

[interviewer]: it sounds simple.

it must be simpler
for you than for me.

[Mclaren]: well...
yes. um... um...

you can turn me into
anything you like:

Ioaf of bread, bike,
stylish hat, roastbeef,

thrilling book, comfy seat,
yard of cloth, pound of cheese,

ticket to a movie or
anything you please.

[Narrator]: Mclaren once said

"handmade cinema was
like watching thought.

if thought could be seen."

[Mclaren]: I wasn't
aware of the general line

of what was going to happen
1 0-20 seconds from now.

I was always aware of how
things were developing:

this is going to happen
in the next five seconds.

but a minute from now in
the film, I didn't know.

the subconscious plays
a very important role.

it perhaps has the whole
thing pretty well formed

from start to finish.

it's a matter of
the consciousness

not knowing that form
but creating it

and getting uncomfortable,
nervous or neurotic even,

if it's going wrong.

[Narrator]: when Mclaren was 18,

he wrote a story
about life in 2066.

the function of art in
Mclaren's brave new world

was to make life gloom-proof.

Mclaren looked back
with amusement

on this fantasy of a teenager,

excited by anything
that was new.

for the most part, Mclaren's
public art was one of fancy,

of wit and of hope.

rarely did his films
show his suffering.

this he kept for
his private drawings.

this surreal footage,
"the head test",

dates from the 1940s
and was left incomplete.

the hand-drawn films were the
expression of his idea of cinema

as an art of movements
designed through time.

Mclaren also thought of cinema

as motion and change
painted with light.

this footage dates from 1943

and is the first
test for the technique

in which he metamorphosed light
and shade in a pastel drawing.

he called this technique
"chain of mixes".

this test led directly to the
film "la-haut sur ces montagnes".

Mclaren's interest in the
metamorphosis of light and shade

was aroused by the
scottish environment

of his formative years.

[Mclaren]: our house,

it had a big square garden.

this is a square lawn,

a path around it, and my
mother's sunniest flower beds,

she gave over to roses.

her great interest
was in gardening.

at adolescence, the big
change came over me.

I remember the day and the
experience where it hit me.

it was a lovely,
brilliant, sunny morning

going out into the
back garden of the house.

suddenly everything
seemed magical.

the drops of dew on the grass

and the shapes of the flowers.

but that morning it
just overwhelmed me,

and I went indoors

and tried to write a
poem expressing this.

Iike in my bedroom,
the first thing I did

once I became
adolescently sensitive

was to jump out of bed,
-- the window was wide open --

Iooked to the east
and to the west,

to the distant hills
with a few clouds over them.

the play of light
and shade on the hills

continued to
affect me very much.

[Narrator]: stirling landscape,
painted by Mclaren in 1947.

[Mclaren]: 20 years ago
I went over to visit my parents

and several of us took a walk.

it was windy,
beautiful blue sky,

great scudding cumulus clouds,

and the play of light
and shade, and the wind...

I was just utterly thrilled.

if "la-haut" had been in colour,
it would have been like that.

[Narrator]: although
"la-haut sur ces montagnes"

was inspired by Scotland,

it was one film in a series
of french-canadian folk songs.

[compere:] when disney and
his animators turn out a film,

they do thousands of
individual drawings.

but that is not your technique.

[Mclaren]: no, in this film
I used one drawing

and made thousands of
changes on the one drawing.

this is the drawing I used.

it's a bit of cardboard, with
a chalk representation on it.

I used black and white chalk,

and during the
photographing of the film,

I would change the drawings.

if the sun was rising
on this mountain scene,

I would add white chalk
to highlight the mountains.

very edges of things.

I might lighten a whole area.

then, i'd stop drawing

and let the cameraman
shoot part of the picture

in this condition.

he'd blend it into
the previous condition.

we'd stop the camera,

and i'd start changing
the picture again.

I might lighten up the sky.

it's a series of
constant changes

to the same
basic drawing.

that's right.

photograph each
change.

yes.

and after I lightened up the sky

and the mountains
a little bit more,

we'd photograph some more.

then we'd stop the camera again,
and i'd add some more detail.

I might introduce
some clouds in the sky.

and i'd change every part
of the picture a little bit.

and then, say I was wanting
to introduce a sunset,

I might rub the
existing chalk away.

the cameraman would photograph
the picture in that stage,

mixing it with the previous.

and so on it went;

Iittle by little, the
picture would change.

[Narrator]: in 1966,

Mclaren began a
metamorphic film, "the seasons",

in which he explored the
light and colour of canada.

he feared this almost formless
abstraction would be boring.

he put the film to one side,
taking it out from time to time

in the hope of an inspiration,
which never came.

Mclaren readily admitted
to the painterly influence

of the 19th century
english artist j.w. turner,

on his attempt to
capture the seasons

in this impressionistic manner.

in the mid-1 940s,
Mclaren and evelyn lambart

shot tests for a folk song film,

Ia poulette grise.

they made slides of hens,

which they projected onto
undulating corrugated board.

they were unhappy
with the results,

so Mclaren decided to use
the chain of mixes technique.

picasso said:

"it would be very interesting
to record, photographically,

"not the stages of a painting,
but its metamorphoses.

"one would see, perhaps, by
what course a mind finds its way

"to the crystallization
of its dream.

"the picture is not thought out
and determined beforehand;

"rather while it is being made,

"it follows the
mobility of thought.

"finished, it changes further,

"according to the condition
of him who looks at it.

a picture lives its life
like a living creature."

[Mclaren]: when I see a painting
done by some other artist,

I don't think of all the
stages that led up to that.

but in my own experience
of doing paintings,

i've been very conscious that
I build the thing up gradually

and change it here and there...

it slowly evolves.

that process seems to be more
important than the final result.

i'm not a good painter, that's
one of the symptoms of it.

I don't know when to stop.

the changing around fascinates
me more than the result...

which naturally led to trying
to channel this into filmmaking.

and the film that, in my
opinion, does that best

is "poulette grise".

[Narrator]: the roots
of Mclaren's interest

in the metamorphosis of
light and shade and imagery

Iay in the scottish
environment of his youth.

but the idea to use film

to explore this interest
came from seeing this film,

"night on bare mountain",
in the late 1 930s.

[Mclaren]: I think an abstract,
a so-called abstract film

can have human feelings.

in other words,

the things that you see on
the screen may be abstract.

if you looked at a frame
of film, you'd say:

that doesn't mean anything;
there's no images there.

but once the thing
goes into motion,

the things that are there,

no matter what kind
of shape they may be,

can behave in a
human or animal way,

which echoes something
quite human in a person.

[don mcw.]: would you
say there's a connection

between your films and dance?

in many of them, the
abstract films, like...

good gracious,
i've forgotten its name!

[don]: "fiddle dee-dee"?

[Mclaren]: "fiddle dee-dee", no.

"begone dull care" is more
like wild folk dancing.

i'm confused,

because "begone
dull care"

is more abstract

than "fiddle-dee-dee" which
is sort of a dance melody.

[Mclaren]: it's a dance melody,

but it's a very simple melody
and it's a very simple film.

it doesn't have
all the features,

promontories and
crags and lowlands

of "begone dull care".

when, in london,

I went to the ballet,
i'd never seen ballet before.

I was utterly fascinated because
I saw several types of ballet.

but I was more interested
in the non-dramatic ballet,

the ballet of movement

and the creation
of the choreography

and the changing forms
and patterns on the stage.

even if i'd been born
when I was born, in london,

and could have
gone to the ballet

from the age of eight or ten,

I might have wanted
to be a ballet dancer

and eventually a choreographer.

when doing "hen hop",

I felt that I was
that hen doing the dance.

after all, before i
went to make "hen hop".

I selected the music, and
the music was a scratchiness

and its silly, fiddly tune
made me think of hens.

I always think of hens
as stupid, silly creatures.

I went to an experimental
farm near ottawa,

and asked to spend a day in
the hen houses, drawing hens.

I went in there, and caused
the greatest disruption

between these 200 hens.

because they didn't accept me.

there was great
cackling and fluttering

and flying from roost to roost.

they moved so fast
I couldn't draw any.

but after half an hour
they settled down,

they seemed to
accept me as a hen.

I studied their postures
and watched their movements,

and got imbued with the
spirit of their henliness.

I think!

in a way, when you're
animating a creature,

if the creature is moving,
you are that...

you feel the motion.

your feet on the floor
and your back to the wall

and over the left
with your corner's all

a hand to your partner
grand jangle

right go left

go right to the buggy
left to the wheel

go all the way around
on the ball of your heel

put your wooden leg up
and your cork one down

hurry up girls
you'll never get around

[Narrator]: in 1 946,
picasso saw "hen hop".

he is reported
to have exclaimed:

"finally, something new
in the art of drawing!"

[m. isacsson]: where
did you get the hen?

[Mclaren]: you're
going way back.

ask my psychiatrist
why I chose a hen!

I wanted a simple image,

not a human image
because it's too complex

to manipulate,
so many parts to move.

you can draw a hen
in a few lines,

it's much easier to do
hundreds of drawings.

birds idea took my fancy,

particularly hens because
i'm always amused by hens.

they're stupid,
they make funny sounds

and behave in a rattly way,

if they're running
or scratching...

[Narrator]: Mclaren once said

he thought his mother
thought she was a bird.

[Mclaren]: it's a form of dance.

that's my way of
thinking about film.

there are other films,
dramatic films,

where speech is important.

but I never use
speech in my films.

I couldn't.

i'd feel it an intrusion
of a very alien kind.

[Narrator]: Mclaren would
send letters to friends.

sometimes fancy,
rather than words,

would express his feelings.

[Mclaren]: one
aspect of creativity

relates to esthetic value,

the making of
something beautiful.

you can find that in flowers.

if you've ever
imagined yourself a bee

and come in right
close to an iris,

it looks terribly exciting...

all this little tube that
gets narrower and narrower...

all the colours reflected...

it's really a wondrous invention

by the great inventor.

animals too, show this
evolutionary creativity.

take for instance
tropical birds of plumage.

take the bower bird of
australia which make a nest...

the little hole and the
little platform in front.

it decorates its nest
with little berries,

beads and flowers, and
little bits of coloured glass,

and a little platform
for the bower birds

to dance a mating dance.

it's all very pretty.

what's the point of it?

the point is sexual
attraction and reproduction.

so, I think in the world of
plants and flowers and animals,

you get creativity.

it's built into
them structurally.

mind you, I think
maybe creativity in man

is structurally built into him,

because some men and women
are more creative than others.

they have an urge to
make not just beauty

but humour, tragedy, if
it's literature, or fantasy.

they have an urge
to make something.

[Narrator]: octavio
paz once said:

"a chained man need
only shut his eyes

to make the world explode."

paraphrasing octavio paz,

Iouis bunuel, that spanish
master of cinema, said:

"the white eye of the screen
need only reflect the light

that is properly its own
to blow up the universe."

paraphrasing bunuel,
we would say:

"the white eye of the screen
need only reflect the light

that is properly its own
to create a new universe."

in 1 969, glenn gould,
canada's master of the keyboard,

had a weekly program

on the radio of the "canadian
broadcasting corporation".

[Announcer:] the art of
glenn gould, take 1 5.

a talk with the composer

of that intriguing
bit of anti-melody,

filmmaker Norman Mclaren.

[gould:] it's the music
track which he designed

for his six-minute
masterpiece called "mosaic".

[Announcer:] I haven't seen it.

[gould:] in that film, a man
walks in from the stage right,

and launches a spherical object

against no
discernible background.

exeunt stage left, leaves
the object to multiply

and to create a world of its own

until he reverses
the stage directions.

I have a feeling that
you have, if only tacitly,

been influenced by schoenberg,

or the schoenbergen
principle of music,

because there is an inclination
in your films to make one cell,

one cellular idea

responsible for
everything that happens.

"mosaic" is like that,
and "spheres" too.

one motion inaugurates
all the other motions.

this was the principle in
which schoenberg believed,

and the thing he strove for.

[Mclaren]: what's influenced
me in that direction

has been my contact with
hindu classical music.

because there you get
one germ in the raga,

and that germ is developed
and developed and developed.

and it builds all the time.

it's not an a, b, a,
it's just a constant build.

you start on a film.

and once you make
an initial statement,

it forecloses all
sorts of possibilities.

you're narrowing
down the channel

in which you can progress.

it's like starting off
a melody in one key.

you could go off at a tangent,

then come back, and
go off at another tangent.

it's a theme and variation
built into the structure.

a great work often
uses very few elements,

it may do a theme and variation,
or a rondo form or sonata form.

many of the structures in music
I found helpful as guidelines

for structures in abstract
films or in films in general.

there are two kinds
of abstract film.

one is pure abstract film.

the images, you
cannot recognize them

as anything else
than what they are.

they don't suggest human beings
or any kind of creatures.

and they don't
move with anything

but geometric kind of
movement, like the film "lines".

"horizontal lines",
"vertical", "mosaic" and "spheres".

the others are abstract films

where there are objects
which are identifiable.

i'm thinking of "rythmetic".

there are numerals.

and in numerals, by their
behaviour, and action,

perform as if they're animals or
human beings pushing and shoving

and reacting and
fighting with each other.

in my abstract films,

the elements, like a
blue dot and a grey dot,

take on a personality by
virtue of their movement.

the images or forms
may be abstract,

but movement is non-abstract;
it's humanly motivated.

the motion is separate

from the particular
shape or form that moves.

it is this motion which
is at the heart of cinema

and that makes film
such a powerful medium.

[isacsson]: animated film
is an illusion of movement.

[Mclaren]: all film
is a kind of illusion,

because you have just 24
stationary frames a second.

so when it's screened, you
get the illusion of movement.

if I were asked the
definition of animated film,

it is where you can stop
between any frame of film

and the next frame of film,

and make a
controlled adjustment.

[isacsson]: that's
what you have been doing?

[Mclaren]: it's manipulating

the difference in pure,
straight animation,

where you move what's
in front of you a little

and take another frame,
move it again...

or if the movement
has been drawn in advance,

you are in complete control
of the frame to frame motion.

and for full animation you have
to do 24 moves per every second.

[don]: is collaboration
important in your process?

[Mclaren]: it's very important.

[don]: what about the role

that evelyn lambart
played in your films?

[Mclaren]: her role was immense,
except for the last ten years,

when she started
making her own films.

we got together in the forties.

we worked out tests
for "poulette grise"

before I arrived at
the final decision.

she started kind of
as an assistant,

but more and more we fitted in

and in some films
she was co-directing them.

one thing was that
she was very methodical.

terribly systematic,

had lots of things on hand,

protractors and compasses

and the other instruments.

we felt the same
way about colour.

she came into the
designing the use of colour

in "mosaic",

where there's little flickers...

when the dots crowd together,

you get a little
clump of flickers.

so we shared ideas and opinions.

and... um...

and... um... she was a...

I felt the value
of a second person

provided that other person

felt the same way about art and
colour and about movie movement.

and there she was...

there's grant munro.

with grant, it's collaboration

and sometimes it's co-direction,

sometimes he's
become the editor.

I think i've made more films
with people than working myself.

in the early days,
it was just myself.

but regardless
of that,

the films carry
your stamp.

[Mclaren]: maybe i've
had the general idea.

that's so with eve lambart.

I said how about trying
to make a minimal film...

this is before the minimalist
movement in graphic arts...

I wanted to use a single line,
moving, bending and wiggling it,

and try to keep up the interest.

I said: "I don't think
we can keep it up

for more than a minute."

we tried various things,
and it just became boring.

we decided we'll start
with a single line,

then make it two, then four,
seven and more complex buildup.

[don]: are you thinking
about boring the audience

or boring you?

[Mclaren]: boring the audience.

there's an audience
somewhere in my mind,

but for "lines", "vertical",
"horizontal" and "mosaic",

it would interest
people who were interested

in art maybe,
a limited audience.

[don]: does that worry you

that the audience
may be limited?

[Mclaren]: no, most people can't
be interested in everything.

they tend to be interested
in, say the dance or something,

rather than sports or golf,
or interested in cooking.

but if they're interested
in film and movement

and art in general,

there'd be a fair number of them
interested in those films,

I thought.

but we were doing it more
to amuse ourselves, I think.

[Narrator]: it is possible a
seed for Mclaren's minimalism

was planted during
his 1 935 trip to russia,

where he saw paintings by
the constructivist movement.

they astonished the
21 year old Mclaren.

[Mclaren]: the russians...

interestingly, logically
related in the gallery,

starting from a realistic
painting to simplified realism

to semi-abstract to
completely abstract

to getting sparser and
fewer geometric forms.

and at the end of the gallery,
was this black canvas.

[Narrator]: in 1 961,
a mathematician called briggs

saw "lines vertical"
and "lines horizontal"

at the "cork film festival".

he wrote: "these films
seem in many ways

"the culmination of
Norman Mclaren's search

"for the ultimate in an art
that he has made his own.

"he has stripped the animated
film to its barest essentials,

"in the same way that the more
advanced abstract painters

"have stripped pictorial art.

"but in his march along
the last ridge to the summit,

"he may have left behind
his popular touch.

he is likely to find himself
almost alone on everest."

all I can say is that...

maybe it is the
spirit of the times,

the era, the age you
live in, affects you.

it's difficult for an artist
to escape the effects of the art

that's going on around
him and being done.

he's part of the movement.

[don]: bussoni wrote once that

"creative power may be
more readily recognized

the more it shakes itself
loose from tradition."

[Mclaren]: on the whole
that's a correct statement.

but there are exceptions.

one great exception is bach.

he was by many of
his contemporaries

considered an old fuddy duddy,

still rummaging around
in those counterpoints.

[don]: do you think an artist
should recognize a tradition?

[Mclaren]: it's a matter
of his own feeling.

if he finds other possibilities
within that tradition,

he should pursue them.

if he gets tired, as I do
making a film in one style,

when it's finished,

I want to do something
completely different,

with a different technique
and a different theme.

[don]: you are a filmmaker,
a 20th century art form.

where is the tradition
for you to break?

[Mclaren]: that's why
I chose film.

because there are
very few traditions

in filmmaking...

here's a medium that's
full of possibilities.

it's just beginning
to be explored...

Iong after I realized that,
I saw the work

of early french pioneers doing
trick film work, I realized

that they'd realized some of
the possibilities immediately.

[Narrator]: the opening moments
of Mclaren's "pas de deux".

there are two sections.

in the first, the awakened
girl dances narcissistically.

in the second section,

a young man appears,

and gradually she realizes

that her happiness lies
in the love of another.

the growing love is expressed
with the multiplied image

created by Mclaren
on the optical printer.

he consciously
took his inspiration

for the multiplied imagery

from earlier attempts
in photography and painting

to capture all the phases

of a motion in a single instant.

this multiple image
photograph of a fencer

was taken by french physiologist
etienne-Jules marey

in the late 1 880s.

marey also took this
diagrammatic photo

of a man walking.

duchamp described
his 1 91 2 painting

"nude descending a staircase"

thus: "a static composition of
indications of various positions

taken by a form in movement."

harold edgerton's 1 930s
stroboscopic photographs

were a major influence in
the gestation of "pas de deux".

this edgerton photo
of a drum majorette

was pinned to the outside
of Mclaren's office door.

Mclaren's first multiplied image
tests were done in the mid-50s.

he multiplied in the
optical printer marks

which he had engraved
on black film.

he used that technique briefly
in his 1 955 "blinkity blank".

in 1 961, Mclaren and grant munro

applied the multiplied
principle to live action.

an action was filmed
in slow motion.

this filmed image

was superimposed upon
itself several times,

but always with a delay
of a few frames,

so that the viewer sees all
the stages in the movement,

as in stroboscopic photography.

in 1 965, Mclaren
did further tests

with dancers from
"les grands ballets canadiens"

in order to perfect the lighting

and to establish the ballet
steps, movements and tempi

best suited to his
theme and technique.

only after these final tests

did Mclaren feel
ready to carry out

his transformations of the
common place into "pas de deux".

[Mclaren]: a work
of art has to have

cohesiveness and consistency,

but not so much cohesiveness and
consistency as to become boring,

and not so much non-cohesiveness
as to fall apart...

it has to be organically linked,

and yet it must have surprises
in it that you don't expect,

but surprises that are
relevant to the whole work.

he was looking
at his rushes,

Iight had got
into the camera.

so these original
rushes were spoiled.

everybody was kind
of sad about it...

except Norman.

Norman was saying:
"but you notice how,

"when it gets that light colour,
it becomes kind of ghostly...

if we would want to do that,
I know what to do now..."

he was thinking what it was
instead of what it wasn't.

[Mclaren]: this x-ray
of my head was taken in 1 955.

i'd gone to

hospital because I was
suffering from headaches.

they took many views of my head.

they gave me the
plates afterwards.

I was going to fling them out...

it is sort of a portrait of me.

I filled the head with doodles.

I improvised anything
that came into my head.

of course, there are very
few things drawn here,

while my head is swirling
with thoughts.

I was working on a film
called "one, two, three",

which I got stuck on.

i picked it up again,
that became rythmetic.

there's a noughts
and crosses game

that represents my interest
in things that are puzzling.

also you notice
there's the clocks.

that indicates my obsession
with time in filmmaking:

the number of seconds,

the number of frames and
24 frames in every second.

the chain of film from my eye

that goes up and
turns into letters...

at that period, I was getting
mail from all over the world

wanting to know
about my techniques.

that disturbed my process
of filmmaking and thinking,

so I wrote technical notes
on every film I made,

which could then be sent out.

there's a stairway
which turns into film.

that meant I was trying
to get better and better

with every film I made.

of course, this being 1 955,

I was keenly aware
that the atom bomb

might destroy
not just my films,

but all the films
that filmmakers have made.

right at the very top is
a little flower with wings,

that represents hope, I think...

coming up from my neck are
the feelings of my heart,

which don't seem
to be very strong...

that represents a
hope that my films

would move people,

not intellectually
but emotionally, more.

I was conscious that I had a
tendency to become too abstract,

and there was the urge
lurking in my subconscious

of wanting to put more
human emotion in my films.

and of course the hens' feet

which start from
the feet of a man

and grow into a bush
or a flower, I suppose...

I don't know.

these are just random
interpretations

of the things I doodled.

[Narrator]: the teenage
Mclaren read a book about

a synaesthetic art,
colour music,

in which sound and colour

were believed to be
directly equivalent.

he was greatly influenced
by this idea.

his high school painting,
"the walls of jericho",

was conceived of as music,

the curves representing tempe,

the area and
saturation of colour

representing volume and pitch.

in 1 949, Mclaren
and evelyn lambart

made "begone dull care"

in which they totally
ignored the frame line

and painted and scratched
directly onto the film.

Mclaren once said
"begone dull care"

was his colour music
dream come true.

it was painted
to a musical script

improvised by oscar peterson.

[Mclaren]: many people
wrote theories

about colour, music and pitch.

I have no precise
theory about this,

but with sections of music
which are very low in pitch,

I will use dark colours.

if there is high pitch music,

i'll use light colours like

yellows, whites,
very pale blues.

in "begone dull care",
I was conscious

of manipulating
colours this way,

but you can't push it too far

or you end up with
an impossibility.

[Narrator]: Mclaren's first
hand-made film experiments

were done at art school.

Mclaren, the art student,

could draw and paint

the motions and colours
he saw in his mind's eye

directly onto movie film.

[Mclaren]: everything
was projected

at a frantic motion.

but we found that when we used
very fast popular music,

and what was in front
of the eye was so fast

that there's a more than 50%
feeling of synchronization.

it had no form.

it wasn't a work of art.

it was an endless

band of effects,

but since it was startingly
new at that time, in 1 935,

everyone was interested in it.

[don]: were you surprised
the first time you saw it?

[Mclaren]: happily so...

we found the reaction
very stimulating.

if you can do something
so simply

with movie as to excite people,

with movie you've got
a field of excitement

Iying there to be explored,

compared with in a painting...

in fact, I felt that painting
was a dead or a dying medium

which to me is partly true,
I still believe that.

[don]: why?

I think fewer people
take interest in it

and with the advent
of tv, even more so.

we don't experience
the same thrill

as a medieval
church-goer would have

when going into church and
seeing a stained glass window

or a painting of
a biblical scene.

something new in
their experience.

there's always an element
of newness in a work of art.

if it's not new, it's a
refinement of something old.

for instance,

I consider a jackson pollock,

no matter what
its size and price,

to be of the same ilk
as a piece of marble.

superb graining and
colouring and detail.

people of the 20th century
are not the first to appreciate

a jackson pollack kind of art.

in the villas of pompei during
the first period of decoration,

the walls were
panelled with just...

they weren't marble.

they were painted
to imitate marble.

just as jackson pollack
wasn't imitating anything,

but he was creating
his own marble.

[Narrator]: in the early 1 940s,

Mclaren was introduced
to the tesseract,

or the hypercube, by fellow
animator george dunning.

Mclaren was always fascinated
by "trompe l'oeil",

and the tesseract
particularly caught his fancy.

he made several over the years
out of balsa wood.

they would hang from the ceiling
in the homes of friends,

and in 1 971, he designed
this large aluminum tesseract

for the lobby of
"The National Film Board".

Mclaren used the tesseract

as the basis for the
design of many things,

Iarge and small,
including a house.

I go in the west
door,

you go in the east.

I walk down
the corridor

and go into
the second room

on the right on
the ground floor.

you go up one flight

and take the first
room on the left.

we find ourselves
in the same room,

the one with the
broken window pane.

you are one floor
higher than me,

but we are also
in the same room.

are we therefore also
on the same floor?

this incompleted film,
"the corridor",

uses a technique invented
by Mclaren in the 1 930s,

the travelling zoom.

his intention was gradually
to make the corridor disappear,

so that the viewer's
initial imprisonment

would give way to the freedom
of the infinity of space.

Mclaren once said his
fascination with space

came from being accidentally
locked in a cupboard

when he was seven years old.

some years after,

he pooh-poohed this explanation,
saying his fascination was,

rather, aroused by
surrealist painting

and also by those cartoons

in which disney created
an illusion of deep space

with the multi-plane technique.

"a la sante de ses soeurs
et de ses freres"

"a la sante de celui
que son coeur aime"

"c'est l'aviron
qui nous mene mene mene"

"c'est l'aviron
qui nous mene en rond"

Mclaren's first film based
entirely on this technique

was the 1 944 "c'est l'aviron".

on large
flat black cards,

I painted
small details

of the landscape.

a tree here
and a house there.

on each card

there was a
separate detail.

here a cliff,
there a tree.

we photographed these cards

by approaching the camera
gradually towards it,

what's called a zoom.

instead of photographing
all these cards,

one after the other
on the same bit of film,

we overlapped the
photographing of each card.

[gilmour]: the feeling
of a canoe.

how did you get

the canoe effect?

the canoe is very simple...

very economical.

to put the canoe into the film,

we wound the film in the camera
back to the beginning again

and photographed
the entire length,

with me holding the canoe
and moving it up and down.

with the motion
of the water...

to the rhythm of the song...

he would invent a new world,
for instance, in "spheres",

everything goes
at the same rate,

it never changes rate.

and the effects are the result
of making everything move

according to the laws
of that world.

most people will pretend
to invent a world,

and then put
events in that world

that belong to this world.

the same old drama...

he visualized what
would be a real event

that could only happen
in that world.

and then dramatized that.

[Narrator]: in 1 949,
Mclaren and rene jodoin

animated a film,
"chalk river ballet",

in which metal cutouts
represented atoms in space.

they had decided to animate
entirely in constant motion.

it would be an
experimental abstraction

with none of the animal-like
or anthropomorphic movement,

at that time so characteristic
of Mclaren's films.

the shooting completed,
they thought it boring

and put it aside.

Mclaren looked at it
from time to time,

and it was always boring.

but when watching the film in
1 967, it no longer seemed so.

Mclaren combined the
cutouts with backgrounds,

including a travelling zoom shot
originally for "c'est l'aviron".

he asked glenn gould
to provide the music,

three of bach's 48
preludes and fugues.

[gould]: I was flabbergasted
by the degree to which you came

with a prepared concept.

you told me that you concocted
the visual track 20 years ago...

you then decided to make it
assimilate three bach items,

which were not in your mind
at the time of its composition.

it was so remarkably done
that one couldn't imagine

that they hadn't grown
out of one initial idea.

I admit that ears and eyes
can be generous...

but this wasn't generosity.

the pivotal idea on the screen
allied with changes of harmony

that were the significant ones.

what plotting goes in
to make it happen?

[Mclaren]: the essential thing
is that I had 48 to choose from.

and that's a lot.

[gould]: so a ratio
of 1 6 to 1 applies...

[Mclaren]: the picture
was worked out rhythmically,

and it so turned out

that I found those particular
fugues and the prelude,

which seemed to vibe.

[Narrator]: a major art
movements of the 1 960s

was minimalism.

upon reflection, Mclaren no
longer found "spheres" boring

because it was
a minimalist film,

and expressed an aspect of the
artistic spirit of the 1 960s.

in the mid-1 940s, Mclaren
began "dans un petit bois",

a fiendishly complicated film
which combined non-stop zooming

with a multi-plane setup.

"the little wood"
was made of cutouts,

animated on 1 2 panes of glass.

as the camera travelled,

panes of glass were removed.

the shooting was "wearing
him down with cares".

he had completed an introduction
and two verses when,

one day, he was liberated
from all those cares.

evelyn and I were
working

in a very hot studio

above the
"metropolitan store".

we were working at
the front.

we didn't see Norman,

but he climbed up
the ladder

to reach the camera,

fell off the ladder

through the sheets
of glass...

we ran in expecting
the worst;

Norman was sitting
in this mess

Iaughing and
laughing...

he said: "thank god,
now I don't have

to make the damn
thing."

"dans un petit bois"

"voulez-vous savoir mesdames"

"dans un petit bois"

"voulez-vous savoir
ce qu'il y a"

"il y a un petit arbre"

"un petit arbre
d'amour mesdames"

"il y a un petit arbre"

"un petit arbre d'amour joli"

"dans ce petit arbre"

"voulez-vous savoir mesdames"

"dans ce petit arbre"

"voulez-vous savoir
ce qu'il y a"

"il y a un petit nid"

[broken glass]

I remember the "NFB"
picture

about cancer...

there was one remarkable shot
in that about a scientist

exploring cancer, and going
into a cell of a human body.

[Mclaren]: the principle
of animation behind that

was the same as
in "c'est l'aviron".

[gilmour]: a little
paddle song first and,

in the same technique,
a cancer film.

each new technique

created by Norman,
perhaps in the form

of an entertaining
trifle,

is very soon after
adapted and used

by other film
workers,

so that the screen
is increasingly used

for more serious
purposes.

[Narrator]: in 1 986,
"mcgill university" established

the "Norman Mclaren award"
to be presented annually

to the student whose work
demonstrates social concerns

similar to those
of Norman Mclaren.

i'm very touched about this,
and I appreciate it very much.

[Narrator]:
this Mclaren painting

dates from the late 1 920s,
when he was in high school.

it is full of optimism
as he traces the history

of the era of invention
and industrialization,

and the promise of
a prosperous future.

on the back of this 1 939
pastel are written the words

"drawn the night
hitler invaded poland".

[p. raymont]: were you
inspired by the politics

of these russian films?

[Mclaren]: certainly I was.

born in 1 914, when I grew up...

I was a teenager during
the great depression.

and I had my first
experience of the slums.

I met a communist
in stirling by chance.

he said: "i'd like you to come

"from your middle class home

to see how most
of the people live."

I was shocked, that's when
I started thinking politically.

what can be done about it?

the economic system was wrong.

Iike many young people,
in the great depression,

our minds went to russia

as a possible experiment
along new economic lines.

my father,

a staunch conservative
and pillar of the church,

was greatly concerned about my
left-wing thoughts and feelings.

I wanted to go to russia...

he said: "fine,
i'll give you money,

"you'll see how they live,
and you'll be cured

from thinking that communism
is a good thing."

I went to russia

for a film and theatre festival.

I had a marvellous time!

I wasn't cured

but I began to get cured when
the purges happened in russia.

[Narrator]: returning from
russia and still at art school,

Mclaren and helen biggar,
a sculptor, made "hell unlimited".

the left wing in britain
was now joining

with liberal and conservative
groups against fascism.

biggar and Mclaren stood apart.

they accused capitalism,

whether in germany, in japan,
or in the democracies,

as flourishing from
the sale of arms

to all sides in a
potential conflict.

unpolished though
the filmmaking was,

the courageous and unequivocal

positions taken by
Mclaren and biggar

have given it a unique place

amongst british political
films of the 1 930s.

in 1 936, when I was working
at the "gpo" film unit,

Grierson called me and said:

"would you like to go to spain

"as a cameraman
with ivor montagu?

"we want you to go there
for three weeks,

"and record the civil war,

"go to alicante

and then to madrid."

we filmed, brought the
footage back very quickly

and edited it very quickly

into a film

ivor montagu did.

and we showed it around
trade union meetings,

and liberal groups
in order to collect funds

for "the red cross" and
the "international brigade".

Iife was hard; there
was very little bread,

no meat, no heat.

it was in november, very cold.

there was bombing
of civilian citizens.

this was the first time.

we would have a taxi,

as we were travelling,
we would notice

if there was smoke coming up,

we'd go to where the smoke was

and photograph the results
of the bombing.

people being pulled
out of the houses,

dead bodies, people wounded...

and we'd try to... we were
newsreel photographers.

[Narrator]: money was raised at
screenings of "defence of madrid".

the public discovered
commercial newsreel companies

were not telling the full
story of the war in spain.

the horror of the civil war
profoundly affected Mclaren.

back in london,

he was plagued by nightmares.

when, in 1 939,
germany and russia

signed a non-aggression pact,
Mclaren, with many others,

felt betrayed.

he embraced pacifism and,

following the outbreak
of world war ii,

he emigrated to the USA
and later...

during the war years
in u.s.a. and canada,

Mclaren's films indicated
none of these emotions.

[Mclaren]: I realized
the necessity of the war

because of what hitler was
doing to the racial question.

so I cooperated
with the war effort,

but no more than I had to.

I wasn't an enthusiastic
cooperator,

the cooperation I was asked
to do was very simple:

make light films
with wartime messages

Iike buying savings bonds,

keeping your mouth shut...

[Narrator]: an interview
in "liberty" in 1 947:

"once, I took a very lively
interest in politics

"and in the world around me.

"things were wrong,

"I wanted to do something.

"I joined a radical
party in Scotland,

"and was fair set to become
a reforming young zealot.

"then, as time passed,
my passion for creative work

"grew so strong it usurped
my active political interests.

"now,I feel I can be of more
value making an artistic

"rather than a political
contribution to society.

is that bad?"

in 1 949, however,
Mclaren found himself in china

at the climax
of their civil war.

it would be a watershed
in his life.

Mclaren's reputation
as a filmmaker

who made much from little,

had been noted by the
chinese government and "unesco".

he ran the audio-visual section
of the "healthy village project".

in 1 953, he went to india
in a similar capacity

with edward ardizzone.

Mclaren trained
artists and teachers

to produce materials
for use in rural areas

in conjunction with the work

of medical and
agricultural experts.

Mclaren realized that
the use of indigenous means

of communication was the key
to a successful rural education.

so he and the chinese artists
invented ingenious variations

on the wall poster

and the scroll.

[Mclaren]: I taught
them some things,

but they taught me more

about communicating with
people of other races

and languages.

[Narrator]: although "the healthy
village project"

took place during
the chinese civil war

between the nationalists
and the communists,

it had an impressive impact.

its philosophy became the
basis for "unesco" projects.

[Mclaren]: three months
after I went there,

communists took over
our particular town,

so I was living
under the new regime.

I saw what it was doing,

talked with many people
and heard their stories,

particularly people
between 20 and 30.

I tended to identify myself
with what was going on there

because I thought what was
happening was very good.

almost the day I left china,

the korean war broke out.

I came back to north america
and felt great tension

about war in general.

the tension that was produced
from my experience in china,

plus my return to an environment

where the newspapers were saying
something totally different

from what i'd been used to,

that tension produced
the film "neighbours".

[Mclaren]: I can't
judge my films,

but if all my films were
to be destroyed, except one,

I would prefer
to have "neighbours"

because it has a strong
social message

about the covetous of man,

about the irrationality
of using violence

to solve problems;

it's a human statement
which reveals human nature,

which none of my other films do.

winning an oscar didn't
mean anything to me,

I didn't know what it was.

it's not important,
but the film is important.

[Narrator]: thirty years later,

"neighbours" is still capturing
audiences universally.

it was not, however,
John Grierson's favourite.

[Grierson]: he was proud
of making "neighbours".

he thought it was
an important film.

I thought it was very naive.

I wouldn't trust Norman
as a philosophic thinker.

Norman is for "hen hop".

Iet's face it,
"hen hop" is wonderful,

it's an absolute joy to me.

that is his basic gift,
he's got joy in his movement,

he's got loveliness
in his movement,

fancy in his changes.

that's enough.

[Narrator]: in 1 971,
Mclaren was asked

why he hadn't made any more
films like "neighbours".

that's because the life
I lead here

doesn't bring it out of me.

I shuttle back and forth
between home and the "NFB",

and lead a relatively
quiet existence

with a few intimate friends.

i'm not out in the world
meeting people,

or in a different culture.

and the only films which
concern human beings,

apart from some
very early films,

is "neighbours, "chairy tale"
and "pas de deux".

[millar]: "chairy
tale" is the story

of a man who goes
to sit in a chair,

and the chair responds by
not wanting him to sit on it.

yes.

do you feel sympathy
for inanimate objects

as much as for animate ones?

I have sympathy for things
that are sat upon.

Iike chinese villages?

yes, the exploited,

the underdog.

yet, your films have not really
exploited this theme very much.

is it because you're a fatalist?

no, it's because I get
interested in abstraction.

i've always been interested
in abstraction

since the age of about 14 or 1 5.

it's a very important area.

it's like music,
which is an abstraction.

it doesn't refer to things
outside of itself.

[Narrator]: in 1 972,
Mclaren made "ballet adagio".

during the same period,

he observed that if he were
to make any more abstract films,

it would be to the
detriment of his soul.

[Grierson]: Norman is not
a person who is tragic.

he suffers, but to suffer
is not to be tragic.

he suffers because,
like all artists,

he finds it difficult
to get what he wants

or to get the effect
that he wants.

the ease of his life
at the "film board"

makes his esthetic
life difficult.

he is the most protected artist
in the history of the cinema.

he's under no great
pain and suffering.

and that makes him suffer.

that's one of the paradoxes.

the certainty of his life
may not be good for him.

I don't know...

[Narrator]: this is
Mclaren's visual outline

of his 1 983 film "narcissus".

he first proposed a film
based upon this myth in 1 959.

it was to be a half-ballet,
half-pantomime film to music.

a youth wrestles with all
the aspects of his personality

in his search for maturity,
for friendship and love.

technically, Mclaren
intended to use

the optical and mechanical
processes of cinema in new ways.

the proposal evolved into
two films: "pas de deux," 1 967,

and "narcissus", 1 983.

central to both these films

was Mclaren's conviction
that narcissism,

an excessive self-love
or self-concern,

was the major personal
contemporary sin;

that the wages of narcissism

was separation from
one's fellow creatures.

Mclaren followed the traditional
outline of the myth

in which a youth rejects

the love of woman...

and man...

then falls in love
with his own self.

as he was making plans
for "narcissus",

Mclaren spoke to a journalist:

"the film is a reflection

"that i'm coming to the end
of a whole span of my life.

"I have been very narcissistic
myself at one level,

"though not on the surface.

"once I had many potentialities,

"but the one I developed
was narcissism.

"and maybe that wasn't so bad.

every artist must be
somewhat narcissistic."

during the production
of "narcissus",

Mclaren observed that, nowadays,

there are artists
who are alienated

from the general public.

and yet they create
great things.

they are primarily in love
with their capacity as artists.

they have fallen in
love with their art.

but the narcissist can turn into

a great contributor to human
culture and to human society.

in june 1 986, two years after
his retirement from filmmaking,

Norman Mclaren was
still improvising

for the camera.

action!

in a conversation
with his friends

Guy Glover and Claude Jutra,
Mclaren observed:

"an artist may be like a person

"who hears music
and starts to dance.

"he may be dancing
for his own satisfaction,

"but what motivates him to dance

"also motivates hundreds
of other people to dance.

"the artist is only speaking
some kind of common language,

"speaking to himself,
expressing something.

"yet, other people recognize it

"and realize that,
in this person's dancing,

there is something
new and different."

captions performed by
cnst, montreal