Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Tereza Janáčková

Specific Features of Canadian Animated Film Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr., Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr.

2011

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Tereza Janáčková

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. for his encouragement and his helpful advice. I also want to thank to my friends for their patience.

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Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...... 6 2. Basic information ...... 11 2.1 What is animation? ...... 11 2.2 Author animation ...... 13 2.3 The status of animated film ...... 15 2.4 Where does Canadian animation stand in the scope of the world cinema? .... 16 3. NFB ...... 17 3.1 Pre-NFB era ...... 19 3.2 NFB- legislation ...... 22 3.3 System of work at the NFB ...... 30 3.4 Working system in the animation department ...... 31 3.5 NFB now ...... 34 4. Case studies ...... 36 4.1 Two Sisters (1991) ...... 37 4.1.1 Synopsis ...... 37 4.1.2 Mise-en-scene ...... 38 4.1.3 Characters ...... 39 4.1.4 Style ...... 41 4.1.5 Genre ...... 43 4.1.6 Technique ...... 44 4.2 Mighty River (1993) ...... 46 4.2.1 Synopsis ...... 46 4.2.2 Mise- en- scene ...... 47 4.2.3 Characters ...... 49 4.2.4 Style ...... 52 4.2.5 Genre ...... 55 4.2.6 Technique ...... 58 4.3 When the Day Breaks (1999) ...... 59 4.3.1 Synopsis ...... 60 4.3.2 Mise-en-scene ...... 60 4.3.3 Characters ...... 62

4 4.3.4 Style ...... 64 4.3.5 Genre ...... 65 4.3.6 Technique ...... 67 4.4 The Hat (1999) ...... 69 4.4.1 Synopsis ...... 69 4.4.2 Mise-en-scene ...... 69 4.4.3 Characters ...... 70 4.4.4 Style ...... 72 4.4.5 Genre ...... 74 4.4.6 Technique ...... 75 4.5 The Imprints (2004) ...... 76 4.5.1 Synopsis ...... 76 4.5.2 Style ...... 77 4.5.3 Genre ...... 79 4.5.4 Technique ...... 81 5. Filmic specifics ...... 82 5.1 New techniques ...... 83 5.2 Metamorphosis ...... 85 5.3 Documentariness ...... 89 5.4 Darkness and light ...... 93 5.5 ―Ugly‖ characters ...... 95 6. Canadian specifics ...... 97 6.1 Landscape ...... 98 6.2 Isolation ...... 102 6.3 Non dramatic stories, psychological focus ...... 105 6.4 Strong emotions , taboo topics ...... 106 6.5 Diversity ...... 109 7. Conclusion ...... 110 8. Works cited and consulted ...... 114 List of abbreviations AB: Animated Bestiary CGMPB: Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau CPR: Canadian Pacific Railway NFB: National Filmboard of Canada UA: Understanding animation

5 1. Introduction

The usual stereotypical image suggests that Canada is the home of ice-hockey, vast northern woodlands and eccentric independent films. Even those who resist stereotypes and take other landmarks of Canada into consideration would not think about Canada in connection with animated films. Yet, Canada has a wide internationally recognized animation platform, which essentially attracts the attention of two groups of people. The first one comprises a relatively limited number of animation professionals and academic scholars and the second one is formed by numerous laic public or simply the fans. Both groups hold different views on Canadian animated films but usually agree on one point: there is ―something‖ intriguing about Canadian animated films. As a fan and at the same time as a cultural studies researcher, I would like explore in this thesis what that

―something‖ is.

As animation studies is a relatively new field and most of the scholars come from the US, Canadian animated films are definitely not their chief focal point. There are not many that would deal specifically with Canadian animation, and those that do tend to create either biographies of Norman McLaren, the founder of Canadian animation, or small-scale individual case studies inserted in publications dealing with animation in general. Another type of literature available on Canadian animation lies in annexed chapters shortly touching on animation in studies focused on Canadian feature films.

What is missing is a theoretical work that would link the case studies and minute dollops in feature film studies together in an overall picture, explaining where the animated film stands in Canadian culture; if it is specific and why it is so. This thesis should work as a kind of introductory guide that would provide a common ground for the above mentioned types of further reading, so that the readership could see the

6 reasons behind including a particular Canadian film or author in the already existing books on animation.

The primary focus of this thesis is to characterize Canadian animation, identify its specific visual, technical and thematic aspects. By specific I mean not only those features which differentiate animated films from other art forms but also features specific to Canadian animation. Characterisation of visual specifics will include an in depth analyses of colour, mood and overall stylistic approach. Technical aspects will be dealt with synchronically i.e.: What is the method used in creating a given film? In which way was it shot, what is the timing, spacing and editing like? The diachronic component will also by mentioned: i.e. In what way did Canadian animators contribute to the development of certain animation techniques? Did they bring anything new to the field? The semantic component will be studied in the simple terms of what is being told and how is it being told. The main goal of this thesis thus remains in the realm of animated film and can be summed up in one simple question: Are there any formal or contentual features that make Canadian animation outstanding in the context of animation as an art form?

Secondary but no less important aim broadens the primary premise that Canadian animation has a certain set of specific features even further to the realm of social studies. Except for exploring the animation attributes, the thesis will analyse what actually makes Canadian animation Canadian. The presupposition is that animated film may thematically overlap with some of the other art forms such as film, literature, painting that form Canadian culture. Canadian culture is extremely diverse, full of contrasts and paradoxes, defined by its multicultural nature. The reason why the question of Canadiannes of animated films originated in Canada is labelled as secondary is not because it was less important but because it is rather difficult to define.

7 The aim therefore is not to state features that are universally applicable to all the films but rather analyze tendencies that resonate through Canadian culture and identify features that surpass the usual categories of being Canadian. Besides dealing with the reflection of Canadian society in animated film, this thesis will touch upon the role of animation in constructing the meaning of Canadian nation, mainly in connection with the role played by the National Film Board of Canada.

As a fan I would like to present as many of the films as possible. As a critical researcher, however, in order to enable an in-depth study rather than just a descriptive parade of animated films I am obliged limit the field of research. Out of the hundreds of auteur animations that were studied, five films were carefully chosen for the primary analysis. In order to keep the thesis up to date, the films examined will be those dated from the 1990s onwards: Two Sisters (1990), Mighty River (1993), When the Day

Breaks (1997), The Hat (1999) and Imprints (2004). With regard to such criteria as national and international critical acclaim, more or less even representation of

Francophone and Anglophone authors, men and women filmmakers and the opportunity to present the various forms Canadian animation can take, the main criterion for the choice was that the films represent a sum of recurrent traces that have resonated through

Canadian animation since its very beginnings in the 1940s. It does not mean that the films comprise an exhaustive list of all the features that mark Canadian animation.

Rather than that, the selected films display a vast majority of them and therefore serve as a suitable study material. Besides these, other films will also be mentioned in order to get as complex a picture as possible.

Animation is a special medium that came into existence by ―cross-breeding‖ several fields of culture. Depending on the technique used it may combine (puppet) theatre, music, literature (adaptation), drawing or painting. It shares a great deal of its

8 characteristics with live action cinema and therefore some of the methods for examining live-action cinema are also applicable to animated film. In the case of this thesis the examination method will be formal and thematic analysis as presented in Gianetti and

Monaco. As for the animation specific components such as line, colour or kinetics of a character Furniss‘s analytical technique will be used. As for the nature of drawing and painting history of art methods will be employed to deal with the individual aspects of style, materials and technique used. The overarching methodological approach, however, is the recent ―scale‖ approach, which was put into practice by Furniss in her book Art in motion. This approach is extremely convenient in dealing with animation because, as was mentioned earlier in this paragraph, it is a complex composition of various other cultural fields and therefore eludes conventional grouping the subjects of study or conclusions drawn into separate categories or the use of ―black and white‖ system of binary opposites, neither of which reflects the actual state of things. The approach lies in putting the examined object on a scale concerning one theme in all its width, which enables the inclusion of experimental works that would otherwise had to be placed within several groups. In practice it means that instead of operating with such labels as animated films created by 2 D techniques and animated films created by 3 D techniques, each film will be put on a scale ranging from 2 D to 3D generated films.

Such a scale automatically covers also films that experiment with both ways of animation.

The springboard of this thesis will be the first chapter in which introductory data and the necessary definitions will be provided. As definitions are scarcely accurate and oftentimes boring, only the key terms such as animation or auteur will be defined and explained. Rather enumerating definitions, in the first chapter the current situation of animated film as such will be described and its main problems identified. Besides

9 giving an overview of the situation of animated film globally, in the first chapter I will also touch upon up-to date issues concerning animation and explain reasons for such a choice of the topic. Last but not least the animation in Canada and its relationship to other animated cinematographies will be illustrated.

Most people do not notice the producer in the credits. Why should they, it is usually an investor, who makes (or loses lot of money) on someone else‘s work. The second chapter is devoted to the biggest producer of Canadian animated films, who, however, is not in it for business but for spreading the good name of Canadian culture – and –

(except for showing the work of invitees) presents its own work. Most of the films chosen for deeper analyses and also many of the films, which are used as a support data in this thesis, were produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). This institution played a major role in forming the animation environment in Canada, the second chapter will take you on a short tour though its history, which is to a great extent the history of animation in Canada.

Canadian animation has a variety faces therefore the best solution would be to present all the films made there but there is not space to fit them all in this thesis.

Another extreme would be to analyze one artist, which would answer questions about the change of personal style but the crucial question of what is the nature of Canadian animation and why has it been so successful on international festivals when e.g. the US and Japan are much more popular animation bastions than Canada is (UA 3). To build a solid basis for answering these questions the third chapter will present the analyses of the five films. Besides the traditional formal and stylistic analyses attention will be paid to the techniques used as Canadian animators pioneered as inventors and refiners of animation techniques.

10 Contrary to the preceding analytical chapter, the fourth chapter will be mostly synthetic. Recurrent thematic and formal concepts of the given films will be presented and confronted with the concepts present in animation globally.

The fifth chapter will repeat the synthetic pattern but instead of keeping within the boundaries of animation, it will offer a view into Canadian culture as such. It will deal with some of the thematic and formal notions of Canadian animation in relation to the typical attributes of Canadian society, which form the basis of Canadian culture.

The very last sixth chapter will admonish of the conclusion presented in the individual chapters, which should piece by piece put together the puzzle of the

―something intriguing‖ about the Canadian animated films. After the answer is found, the reader can find out what thorny way lead to conclusions in the list of works cited and consulted.

2. Basic information

2.1 What is animation?

There are various definitions of animation, none of which is perfect because it is extremely difficult to compose one. Out of many, which are available the closest to reality is the one presented by the International Organisation of Animated Film (the

ASIFA), which says that ―The art of animation is to create moving pictures using all methods, except live action1‖ Sounds nice and maybe also 98 per cent true but still there are techniques such as pixilation, which uses live action footage as a primary material that is to be edited or further artistically processed into animated film. A slightly improved definition could thus sound: The art of animation is to create moving pictures using all methods, except further unprocessed live action.

1 www.asifa.net, qtd. in Czech in Kubíček: 9

11 Animated film is not the only output of animation. Animation as a means is also used in creation of computer games, internet webpages or live-action films, which further complicates its already complicated status as an art form. Even though in the last

20 years the field gained enormous recognition for the most part thanks to computer assisted animation techniques and 3 D computer technologies, it is mostly viewed not as art but only as a technical component – an invisible trick component of live-action films. While watching a live-action movie, the viewer is not aware that what is going on is not a live-action but actually animation. At present the boundaries between live action and animated cinema are blurred because of the immense popularity of computer assisted tricks. Animation is thus limited to being a method of creating live action cinema instead of a means of creating animated films as a new art. For the purposes of this thesis the extremely broad meaning of animation will be limited to animated film only, more specifically with those called auteur animations.

This thesis is therefore concerned solely with animation as a self-confessed medium that openly proclaims its metaphoric nature. By metaphoric I mean the main actual difference from live –action cinema which is mimetic rather than metaphoric. Live- action simply tries to make the impression of being real, whereas animation does not have the ambition of appearing real. Instead it opens symbolic both visual and semantic communication channels that scarce or not so pronounced in live action cinema.

Another interesting item on the list of differences between live-action and animated films lies in the assumption that animated film is not able to make the viewers identify with the main hero/heroine and thus is not able to generate strong emotions among the audience. The assumption is originally based on the fact that animated film is rarely feature length and so the audience does not have much time to identify with the main character. Alexei Orlov and Czech theorist Jiří Kubíček support their assumption also

12 by a high degree of stylisation in animation, which as they say, prevents from conveying deep strong emotions such as fear or horror. The Orlov/Kubíček assumption is to be challenged in this thesis as Canadian animated films are extremely good example of the fact that well-handled metaphorical communication on the symbolic level can make up for the length and also mimetic qualities of feature films.

2.2 Author animation

The notion of the author has always been a complicated one. As there is no single author in feature film, there is no single author in animation. Even if a film is written, directed, edited and animated by the same person, the music and sound as such is usually done by somebody else. The defining features of the film are, however, configured in an individual mode. The same person defines the overall nature of a film and chooses collaborators to help to finish the film but eventually it is always a group effort as well as in e.g. feature film making.

The feature film has its own theory concerning authors. The French auteur theory or policy was defined by Bazin: ―The Politique des auteurs consists, in short, of choosing the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard of reference, and then assuming that it continues and progresses from one film to the next‖ (Bazin qtd. in Monaco 410). The assumption concerns usually the figure of the director and follows the development of his or her creative potential. Rather than a theory the auteur scheme is considered a policy because it selectively takes into consideration only the parameters of a given auteur filmography which fit the idea that a director repeats and develops certain thematic and formal patterns as if it concerned a painter or a visual artist. The auteur theory or rather policy is not always relevant as in some cases a stylistic of thematic relationship among a director's earlier and contemporary films can be traced, in other

13 the artistic or cognitive value of a work is more important than the name of the director as famous as he or she may be. The auteur policy is thus disputed in feature film.

In animation, however, it may find its validation. In the case of animation the policy again becomes a useful theory because many of the directors are also writers and at the same time designers. The researcher does not have to choose traces of personal expression but such traces are naturally present there if the film in question is hand made. It is the same as examining a series of paintings of a given author, development in style, stylistic modes adapted to various occasions and tendency to repeat certain topics are inherent part of hand-made animation.

Not only hand-made films but also puppet and computerized animations fall under the category of author film. Here the contesting category is literature as the specificity of narration, language codes, ideas conveyed are the features defining an individual authorial style. Authorial style influences the way a work is accepted by the audience.

As an explanation I would again, use a definition concerning the French auteur theory in feature film. Again, it is wholly applicable to animated film: ―Once it was understood that a film was the product of an author, once that author's voice was clear, then spectators could approach the film not as if it were reality or the dream of reality, but as a statement by another individual‖ (Monaco 410). This quotation not only defends the author theory but also explains that the major difference between live-action and animated cinema does not have to be to the disadvantage to animation. The mode of narration and its relevance to the real-life reality is not as important as what is being said. To be willing to listen to what is being said, sometimes the audience needs to know, who is saying it and here the personality of the author comes into play.

The personality of an author is important not only for the audience but also for animation as such. It presupposes a talented individual, whose work can be recognized

14 and placed in the modern art canons. It elevates animation to the status of an art form rather than craft that is produced in a manufacture style, which is the case of the big studios such as Disney or Pixar in the US. The reasons, why animation in Canada did not develop the same way as in the case of its southern neighbour but went on the path of auteur animation will be explained in the chapter about the National film Board of

Canada.

2.3 The status of animated film

Historically, animated film did not enjoy much recognition. In the broad context of culture it was almost invisible, hidden in the shade of live action film. Since its origins, animated films have not been perceived as a separate entity, let alone art. At first, they were only an interesting component of vaudeville shows, later a slapstick comedy for children. The screenings were scarce. Recently, animated films have regular presence in cinemas. Nevertheless, the way animated films are presented to broad public, with the exception of specialised festivals of animated film, acknowledges the existence of animated film as a separate entity but unfortunately contribute to its stereotypisation.

Mostly it is presented as a light hearted amusement or limited to the genre production for little children. Try to stop for a while and realise what was the last animated short or feature screened in your local cinema? I bet it was some Disney/Pixar produced nice and witty animal or toy story packed with gags and unmistakably closed by a happy ending. On television? Maybe it was some of the Tom-and-Jerry type slapstick series,

Saturday morning cartoons, bedtime stories for children or fairytales.

Almost the same situation is in Canada as the cinematic industry is taken by the most part by the US production. Canadian animated shorts as sometimes on as a part of

Canadian version of the Sesame street broadcast for children, which does not step outside the range of ―fairytale‖ category. Fairytales, slapstick comedies, gag packed

15 animated features – all of these have their legitimate place in culture. All of these have been studied by animation scholars which have emerged over the last two or three decades. And all of these place animated films under the stereotype of light-hearted amusement. But still…is there more to animated films than just amusement? Can animation have serious artistic, sociological and social meaning? These are some of the questions that are to be answered by this thesis.

2.4 Where does Canadian animation stand in the scope of the world

cinema?

It is necessary to realize that what we are dealing with here is an extremely small segment of film production. Animation is marginal within the whole scope of the cinema and Canadian animation is marginal compared to the large-scale US, Russian and Japanese animated productions. In response to the fact that Canadian animation is tiny compared to the great animation giants but still highly innovative and creative

Edgar Dutka even gave Canadian animation the title of being a ―little miracle2‖ in the history of animation when dealing with it in the chapter of his book Minimum z dějin světové animace.

It is not only the size that matters. Canada‘s closest competitor, the US, has also much longer tradition of creating animated films. In 1940s, when McLaren founded the animation department in Canada, animation was already well established within the US film framework. The most notable example is of course Disney studios. By that time

Disney had already released the famous and internationally awarded feature length

Snow white (1937) and Pinocchio (1940). It was Disney that dictated the stylistic trends

– shapes, proportions, or kinetics. It developed the aesthetic of cuteness and gained control over the market. Other great animation countries such as Japan or Russsia saw

2 Malý zázrak v dějinách animace

16 the economic potential and chose to follow to a lesser or greater extent the practices established by Disney.

Not only that the US countries have become the hatch of animation, the rules of creating animated films were also defined there. It was the Disney studio that established animation workshops as a manufacture, having codes for almost everything from the layout, character movement to the techniques used. There has been no room for experimentation. In Japan the second largest animation producer of the world, the situation is more or less the same. Japanese animation called manga has its specific tightly given set of rules that leave no space for individual expression. Maybe because

Canada discovered the art of animation later than those two, maybe because its film production was not a famous, already well established, money making business,

Canadian animation environment came into being as a creative process of talented individuals rather than a manufacture with a given set of rules.

3. NFB

In order to understand the specific environment in which Canadian animated film has developed, it is necessary to examine the role of the National Film Board of Canada

(NFB). It is an organization that has greatly influenced, if not determined, the both the position of Canadian film as such on the cinematographic map of the world and mainly the position of animated film within the scope of Canadian cinema. This chapter is therefore devoted to its historical development and an in depth analysis of various NFB aspects. The chapter will provide explanation of the socio-historical conditions that lead to the creation of the institution through, as was hinted above, analysis of NFB‘s impact on the general level i.e. the function of the Board in positioning the Canadian film within the scope of the world cinema and finally, and most importantly, it will deal with its essential role in forming the current position of animation in Canadian cinema.

17 In the world there are various different kinds of institutions sheltering filmmakers.

The various kinds of institutions can be placed on a scale reaching from private to state based institutions. At the very beginning of the scale there are private companies, in the middle there is a number of various non-profit civic associations, fan clubs promoting independent animation and amateur animators' clubs and at the very end of the scale there is a third group formed by different national state based institutions. Everywhere in the world, including Canada, various organisations at various points of the scale coexist in one country at the same time. In most countries, however, there is one prevalent tendency to incline to a certain place of the scale, which does not mean that there are not any other kinds of institutions. In case of Canada this means that the NFB is the main and most influential institution but there are also many other. Why should the Canadian NFB make difference?

Taking a closer look on the scale and the way institutions from different parts of the scale work in filmmaking, one can see what makes the NFB different. Examples from the beginning of the scale can be best seen in the land of Canada‘s southern neighbour, in the US. Most of the film production there is run by private studios, which have their objectives and regulations. This means that they have to respond to the demand and make films that are likely to be attended by the audience. Instead of bringing in their own ideas, filmmakers have to anticipate and match requests of the audience. Despite these limitations, private studios can be a source of innovation as they invite experts from abroad to share their knowledge.

Civic associations and various non-profit cultural groups usually allow "their" filmmakers to create as innovative or as daring films as they want but they have limited budgets, which, among other things, results in the fact that their films are not widely known in public.

18 At the opposite end of the scale there are state based institutions. Interestingly, state based institutions, as well as the above mentioned private companies, also have an agenda. However, it is significantly different than the one of the private studios. Instead of creating films to satisfy public demand and thus generate profit, they try to influence audiences in order to reach certain changes in social climates of the respective countries. In some cases the aim is to gain support for schemes introduced by the government. This is the model that we know from the Czech Republic or e.g. Russia.

Such institutions offer their filmmakers safe funding and relatively sufficient amount of creative time, which also brings innovative potential but only in extremely rare cases do they invite artists from abroad for long term cooperation.

Contrary to both groups at the ends of the scale the NFB filmmakers are not obliged to create according to the public demand and are limited only by the amount of the state subsidies not by the amount of revenues gained. In comparison to non-profit associations it has the means to make its filmmakers publicly known and, most importantly, it is renowned for its innovative methods created thanks to large-scale international cooperation. This does not mean that there are no problems in the NFB or that it is the best animation related institution in the world. It means that the NFB evolved in a very specific creative environment for Canadian and non-Canadian animators alike.

3.1 Pre-NFB era

It may seem rather superfluous to start from the very dawn of institutionalized

Canadian cinematography but it is rather important to do so because some of the tendencies can be observed Canadian cinema are deeply rooted in the earliest history of its institutions. As elsewhere in the world, film became a powerful tool and goals of the film creating institutions (along the whole scale) played an important role in the film

19 history. In comparison with other countries, animation was marginalised in the early

Canadian institutions. Therefore this section concerns Canadian film as whole and is devoted to defining the environment, in which Canadian animation originated and which formed some of its specific features.

The first big renowned organization to be interested in film making was the

Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) at the beginning of the twentieth century. Among others, the CPR supported also the first documentary films made by James Freer.

Freer‘s films not only documented the reality of life in the then Canada but also contained a secret message. They were aimed at attracting immigrants to populate the west. Freer‘s work lay foundations for two tendencies which constantly re-appear in

Canadian cinema: the realistic focus and propaganda. The CPR supplied the third: filmmakers of non-Canadian origin. With the exception of a few filmmakers, the CPR

―films were almost entirely the work of British and American filmmakers.‖ (Morris 45).

Canadian government came to the decision that this practice had to be changed because the government sensed the possibility of using cinema as a means of self-representation.

After several attempts to create various government film committees, the Canadian

Government Motion Picture Bureau (CGMPB) was established in 1918 (Wise 231) and fulfilled the role of the state patronage over Canadian cinematography. This seemingly small modification represents an important step that significantly marked all the subsequent stages of institutionalisation of Canadian cinema. Film stopped being perceived by the government only in connection with their railroad goals but gained attention of the government on its own, separately from the railroad business. The important thing is that in comparison with other countries, where such ideas as state protected cinema came much later, or with their direct neighbours, the US, where the films were being funded and advertised from private resources, Canada created a

20 relatively secure environment for the filmmakers backed by money provided by the government. Sadly, it was too late to establish control over Canada's national film market. Prior to establishing the CGMPB the major US companies such as e.g. the

Paramount pictures entered into agreements with Canadian companies and thus started the U.S. dominance on the Canadian film market, which has not been overcome till present times.

―Vertical integration of the three principal sectors in the motion picture industry – production, distribution, and exhibition- had started in the U.S. film industry and was extended into Canada between 1920 and 1930 as if there were no borders between the two countries.[...] By1925, five years later after vertical integration with an American major film corporation began, 95 percent of all films exhibited in Canada were supplied by major U.S. film companies.‖ ( Pendakur 59)

The CGMPB leadership did not have the courage to compete with the fast developing

Hollywood studios. They ―believed in encouraging Hollywood companies to film on locations in Canada‖ (Morris 232) because ―if you knew enough of the economic structure of international (i.e. Hollywood) film industry it seemed foolhardy to do battle.‖ (Morris:232). So the CGMPB slipped into a sort of inertia, which was interrupted in 1938 by the arrival of John Grierson, who was invited on behalf on the

Canadian government in order to awaken Canadian film. Grierson wrote a critical sixty- page report on the CGMPB (in)activity stating that ―it lacked a considered directive policy with regard to Canada as a whole [and] there was no strong, creative film unit, to carry out the policy‖ (Morris 233). Grierson‘s report was not only critical of the past but also forward looking. It outlined the basis of an organization that would be supported by the state and would be able to gain the necessary power in order to revive the Canadian film industry.

21 3.2 NFB- legislation

The then to–be organization had to achieve at least three essential goals in order to be more successful than its predecessors. Firstly, it had to find a gap on the US dominated market, where its production could flourish. It was the time when the cultural and economic pressure of Hollywood and other big US studios was increasing.

The year of NFB‘s founding, 1939, just happens to be the most productive year in American film history. The Hollywood studio system manufactured over five hundred feature films that year. Canada in its entire film history to that point had made only sixty feature films, none of them the kind of memorable movies that attract worldwide attention. (Breitinger 221).

Judging by the figures presented by Breitinger, Canada had problems to compete both in quantity and quality of feature films. The clear futility of efforts to break this impasse broke the neck of the CGBMP and many private investors. Grierson was a great advocate of documentary filmmaking, which was, for reasons to be discussed later on in this chapter, to become the field, where the NFB could succeed because Hollywood studios concentrated predominantly on feature films rather than documentary films.

Secondly, it was necessary attract audience to its production, and, last but not least, as

Grierson mentioned in his report, a considered directive policy backed up by the state was a must. As regards the last mentioned, Grierson used a very powerful tool to put his theory in practice: legislation. Of course, by then film acts have already been passed in various other countries3, so why is the Canadian cinema legislation unique? The film acts outside Canada deal with quota for the proportion of national production in the film theatres, or state the rules of censorship but the Canadian National Film Act is the only one that designs a clear strategy of creation, funding and ideology, which the Canadian

3 In Britain the Cinematograph Film Act of 1927 was passed even more than ten years earlier. It was amended and later repealed by Films Act 1960.

22 film should pursue. Moreover, it appoints an organization, which will help to achieve the goal:

National Film Act passed on May 2, 1939, gave the National Film Board the authority to ―initiate and promote the production and distribution of films in the national interest and in particular to produce and distribute and to promote the production and distribution of films designed to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations‖ (Magder 1993, 52 qtd. in Gittings 79)

By clearly designing its place among the various governments‘ interests as regards culture, the act constitutes the considered directive policy backed up by the state that is one of the three essential pillars of successful existence of the organization. It ensures that the government will shelter the NFB production but by the same token the phrase

―in the national interest‖ suggests that the government reserves the right to exert control over it.

The control did not lie in censorship but rather in putting through a certain agenda that was suitable for the government. Drawing on the propaganda tradition of the past that had dealt with the promotion of immigration to the under-populated west parts of the country (i.e Freer‘s documentaries), the NFB production used similar means but shifted the focus. In 1939, the country needed to present itself to the world the difficult times before the WW II. NFB interpreted the phrase ―in the national interest‖ as ―the creation and dissemination of government film propaganda: for promoting national unity and preparing the country for its role in international affairs and the upcoming war‖ (Breitinger 221). On September 10, only four months after passing the National

Film Act, Canada declared war on Germany. As the was perceived as something very distant by the majority of Canadians, it was necessary to generate solidarity feelings with those directly affected by the war, explain restrictions and re-focusing of the production mainly on the war efforts and make the public accept these measures. The

23 NFB launched a massive visual campaign which did not consist solely in film material.

Surprisingly, much of the NFB work lied in posters, leaflets, photographic reports and travelling exhibitions. This documents that at that time the chief aim of the NFB was not to promote and support the development of Canadian film art but rather serve the government purposes.

Nevertheless, the war and the propaganda also contributed to finding a specific focus of the film industry in Canada. It is one of the several reasons for the prevalence of the ―realistic cinematography‖ over fiction films because documentary shorts and later newsreels seemed to be the best suiting the propaganda purposes. Apart from

―promoting national unity‖, they also sought ―to interpret Canada to Canadians and other nations‖. In other words there was a need to prove a distinct Canadian culture, independent of British and US influences. ―A new world order was in the making, and

Britain‘s relationship with her dominions was being re-examined on both sides. The images of Canada sent overseas by the NFB also served as a contrast to the predominance of powerful images coming from the U.S (nfb.ca/history n.pag.).

Members of the Board were very well aware that they are not able to break into the US feature film hegemony and so they decided to gain fame elsewhere. Thus the status of documentary films changed from a mere ―accessory‖ to a massive poster and leaflet campaign to one of the two main fields of NFB‘s interest.

The people got accustomed to watching documentaries about war heroes and also information broadcasts regarding food rationing, government vouchers etc.

Alongside with these materials, the NFB opened a new channel of visual communication. In 1941 the second main field of NFB interest was established, which was the animation department. In 1941 the department consisted of one single person, its head, at that time already well-known animator, Norman McLaren. The NFB

24 appointed him to choose artists for the newly established department. But there were no animators in Canada (McWilliams ―Interview‖). When McLaren came to Canada, there were no official animation studies taught at any of the Canadian universities. The department was built up from the scratch. The first members of the NFB animation department were picked up from art schools by McLaren. And McLaren chose wisely –

Grant Munro, René Jodoin4, George Dunning were amongst others (McWilliams n.pag.). Again, the NFB commissioned execution of propaganda and information animated shorts. The message stayed the same as in documentary shorts but the audiences were suddenly confronted with utterly new forms for them. Instead of watching fighting soldiers and tired factory workers, they got to see playful and colourful ―advertisements‖ on government policies.

The newly appointed boss of the animation department started his cooperation with NFB with extremely short, roughly 2 minute-long, pieces such as Mail Early

(1941), V for Victory (1941) or Five for four (1942). It is vital to point out that these short pieces were the only representatives of colour film at that time. Moreover, these short films were created without words, only with background music and therefore were able to overcome the linguistic barrier and could be shown to both English and French speaking audiences. There was a shortage francophone films at that time5, so the openness of animation to various audiences was crucial.

Mentioning the audience, it was not an easy task to get the films to the people after the vertical integration of the three major cinematic sectors was carried out by the

US companies on the Canadian film market. The Film act of 1939 gave NFB the right not only to produce but also to distribute Canadian films, so the NFB had to find its

4 Jodoin later became the head of the French unit of the split animation department in 1943 see page 27. 5 The only francophone member of the board at that time was Philéas Côté, who worked as a director of distribution and later also as a documentary filmmaker. (nfb.ca/history)

25 way. Although the NFB managed to get some access to the usual network of cinema theatres, it devised their own screening spaces independent on the big US distribution companies. Eugene Waltz even considers this new distribution strategy to be the core of

NFB‘s success in Canada.

The NFB succeeded, it could be argued, not because it produced new kinds of films but because of the new audiences it created – in church basements, town halls, school gyms, union centres and backrooms throughout the country. And this network thrived due to the enthusiasm and dedication of the itinerant projectionists who staffed it. (Breitinger 221-222 )

The NFB employed travelling projectionists, who arranged screenings paid by the NFB.

The alternative screening rooms were used not only in big cities but also in urban and rural areas, where there were no cinema halls at all. This time it was not important to overcome the US dominance on the cinematic market but rather to get the NFB educational and informative messages across to the audiences spread far across the country. Screenings were, in fact, social events, which brought people together and made them ponder on ideas presented in the films. The idea of national unity presented in the film materials together with the distribution strategy capable of bridging the vast geographical and also cultural distances between the people in the audience worked extremely well. ―Most of all, the Film board was making Canadians feel connected6 in a country whose devouring geography constantly conspires to make them feel disconnected.‖ (Evans 4)

The understanding and connotations of the wording used in the 1939 film act underwent many transformations according to the social and cultural issues that emerged over the years. The Act of 1939 appointed NFB to promote national unity.

Concerning national unity, it was unity in the sense of national state independent of

British political and US economical influences. Concerning Canadian society, it was

6 original italics

26 anything else than a unified homogenous entity. There have been enormous language and cultural differences among various inhabitants of Canada. Ever since the term

Canadian nation came into being, it became almost synonymous with the term multicultural society.

However, during the 1940s and 1950s it was too early to talk about multiculturalism and embrace it as a national policy. At first even the NFB was blind to the various cultural and ethnic groups in Canada. Most of the production was made in

English for mainstream Anglophone audience. However, later on the meaning of the famous phrase from the Film Act of 1939 "interpret Canada to Canadians" changed. It was no longer aimed at creating the notion presumably homogenous Canadian culture but rather at understanding the various constituents of Canadian society. Together with literature and other art forms, it significantly contributed to the inclusion of all nations and various ethnic and religious groups in the Canadian multicultural society.

In 19437 the ―French unit‖ was established, although at that time under

Anglophone supervisors. Many of the French staff were unhappy about the fact that they were forced to speak and think in English but at the same time they made fun of it.

They: ―punned that the letters ONF, Office National du Film, really meant Organisation non-francais.‖ (Evans 34) When the NFB moved its headquarters from Ottawa to

Montréal in 1956, it freed itself from the Anglophone supervision. ―If the Film Board were to operate effectively within the framework of the bilingual and bicultural postulates (…) there was only one place to go and that was Montreal.‖ (Evans 18).

Since then the French Unit flourished and produced many valuable films.

Regardless of the French unit, the animation department has already been producing short films in both English and French. When there ceased to be the need for

7nfb.ca/history/1940-1949/

27 wartime propaganda, the Animation department created series of animated songs Let’s ll Sing Together (1944-45) and Chants populaires (1944-45). In 1966 the animation department split into English and French departments. The change seems to be rather an important psychological moment, than a major millstone in the NFB animation production. It was the first time, when the Francophone animators had their independent unit and were led by French-speaking René Jodoin instead of Anglophone Norman

McLaren.

Despite the split, the studios remained in close cooperation and the practice of adding credits in both and sometimes even multiple languages continued. In many cases, two dubbings, English and French were made for the same animated film.

Nevertheless, in the case of Canada bicultural environment is a misnomer. As is evident from recent studies8 Canada managed to adopt a kind of hybrid inclusive identity, which was to be addressed in the NFB production. The obsolete idea of bi-cultural Canada absolutely excluded the Inuit, First Nation peoples. NFB's main form of addressing the

First Nation‘s cultures was documentary filmmaking starting with such documentaries as The People of the Potlatch (1944) and flourishing since 1970s onwards with such documentaries as Christmas at Moose Factory (1971), which was a debut of First

Peoples artist Alanis Obomsawin of Abenaki Nation9. In animation unfortunately First

Nations peoples‘ the culture(s) rather underrepresented. There are only a few animated films, which draw on the First Nations or Inuit cultures and there is no indigenous animator, I know of, so the themes are grasped and worked on by people outside the indigenous community. The two NFB animators known for portraying Inuit legends are

Co Hoedeman of Dutch origin (e.g. The Owl and the Lemming(1971), The Owl and the

8 See Ertler, Keller, Kyloušek et al.

9 The working conditions and creative freedom in the NFB evidently appealed to Obomsawin. The cooperation lasts for more than 30 years already. Her latest documentary Our Nationhood (2003), was also made for the NFB.

28 Raven (1973), Lumaaq or The Man and the Giant(1975)) and Caroline Leaf born in the

US (The Owl Who Married a Goose(1974)). Despite being created by people of non indigenous origin, these animated shorts often have soundtracks created by the indigenous people, which literally as well as metaphorically enable the Inuit and First

Nations people to have a voice.

Even though there have not been any indigenous animators in the NFB, various other voiceless people of Canada were the co-operators of the NFB. They were either immigrants like McLaren himself was or members of minority groups. There have been various religious groups such as Mennonites and Jews, immigrants and second generation immigrants with the ―hyphenated identities‖ such as Indian-Canadians,

African-Canadians, Armenian- Canadian, Polish-Canadians etc. These people have both insight in the mainstream culture and offer views on similarities and differences between the legacies of the culture named in the first part before the hyphen in comparison with mainstream culture. Many of the renowned filmmakers recruit from these groups and thus the multicultural Canada to mainstream Canadians. The most notable example of filmmakers with such "hyphenated" identity in the animation department is Indian-Canadian artist Ishu Patel, who incorporates eastern visuality and

Indian philosophy in some of his works.

The 1939 FilmAct urges the NFB to: ―to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations”. The latter part of the phrase in italics establishes the NFB as a national organization that is also openly oriented on other countries besides Canada i.e. it allows for cultural export. One of the ways to export NFB production was to invite artists from abroad for short term, usually three months, contracts. These invitees exported the result of the cooperation with NFB to their respective countries. Some of the filmmakers also stayed in Canada and thus became part of local minority culture. Having completely

29 different socio-cultural background, they were able to present Canada to Canadians from a completely different point of view. This decision to launch worldwide international cooperation is the actual millstone in NFB history; a millstone that has shaped the very nature of Canadian cinematography. Since the very beginning the NFB was understood as a multi-cultural project NFB gathered around Canadian culture and many artists from abroad were and are being invited over the course of years to cooperate with the NFB offer their view of the culture. Interestingly, among those invited was the famous Czech animator Břetislav Pojar, who together with Canadian

Jacques Drouin created the internationally acclaimed Nightangel (1986).

The actual export of Canadian production is still dominated by US based film studios. As regards the export of NFB material shortly after the NFB was established,

―Over the course of the year 592 copies of various 16 mm films were sent to 11 countries either within the British Empire or elsewhere (except the U.S.)10.― Through the cinematographic art Canada could issue a clear statement regarding their response to the state-of-the art foreign affairs during the WW II years and later on spread the cultural wealth of Canada in the world. Since the NFB started to cooperate with television and sell NFB produced films abroad, Canadian culture was exported to millions of viewers all over the world. Nowadays, there is an on-line web screening room, where virtually everybody, who is interested, has access to NFB production and thus also to Canadian culture.

3.3 System of work at the NFB

The NFB is organised in a system of units, which are labelled in alphabetical order.

At first, the units were centred on specific fields, which were to be covered by the individual units. This system is with slight modifications more or less sustained till

10nfb.ca/history/1940-1949/

30 present times. Unit A was a cultural unit responsible for dance and the arts etc, unit B was devoted to ―diverse‖ topics and the most important figure of Canadian animation

Norman McLaren was part of this unit, Unit C, was devoted to theatrical shorts and newsreels, unit D dealt with sponsored films and Ministry of Defence films, unit E produced English and French films for television and unit F was exclusively French aimed at documentaries about Canadian society11. The most famous of the units became later on reorganised Unit D, which was created in 1974 in order to tackle issues connected to women and feminism. It was the first government funded studio devoted to women filmmakers. Besides being distinguished by the fields of interest, later on the units became divided along the language line i.e. French and English. Although animation had its own department, animators often cooperated with filmmakers from various units. Animated films have been critically acclaimed on their own and very often whole animated films or animated sequences were included in documentary films.

3.4 Working system in the animation department

Undoubtedly, the creative power of the department was its boss. ―McLaren was the single talent to whom Grierson gave free rein and, in return, Canada inherited a unique legacy and predominant place in the world of animation art.‖ (Evans 23)― Contrary to the fixed rules that were used by the big animation studios in the US which have been established long before the NFB animation department, McLaren chose to let his staff creative freedom as regards the techniques and visual side of their works. Contrary to

Disney studios, which had a strict set of rules defining the visual part of the films into the tiniest details, McLaren wanted to put through more individual approach. ―The view of animation as an art of personal expression, even within the context of an institution,

11 Units and their work are described in detail in Evans 34.

31 was to have an enormous influence on animation universally.‖12 Such a point of view automatically assigned animated films the status of an artwork rather than a manufactured technical product. ―I have tried to preserve in my relationship to the film, the same closeness and intimacy that exists between a painter and his canvas.‖13

The same he required from his staff. He let them use their own visual expression but made them try out various animation techniques from drawing, cut outs or puppet animation. During the first years, when the young artists were still gaining their experience in animation, McLaren assigned series of topics, which were to be tackled in various techniques subject to animator's choice. In such a way a series of Canadian folk songs in both French and English was created, a series called Canada's Vignettes dealing with different parts of Canadian life, e.g. various occupations such as the log driver. Later on when, the NFB started to cooperate with the Canadian TV and radio broadcast channel CBC, the animators were assigned to create animated inserts for kids programmes. Gradually, the animation department staff gained experience and also more creative freedom. At first they worked on the topics that were interesting for them after finishing the assigned work. Later, the NFB urged the animators to come up with their own auteur projects. As regards the contracts, some animators were hired as NFB employees, some as freelancers with 3 month contracts that could be renewed after each term. At present the artists are encouraged to bring their own ideas and the NFB basically supports them financially and also by supplying material and professional studios.

Another difference from the big, well established animation studios around the world is the approach to women animators. Although Paul Wells in Understanding

Animation claims that: ―Essentially, animation, more than any other form of film-

12 nfb.ca/animation/objanim/en/filmmakers/Norman-McLaren/biography.php

13 McLaren qtd. in nfb.ca/animation/objanim/en/filmmakers/Norman-McLaren/biography.php

32 making, offers the opportunity to operate in a safe space and create auterist cinema outside the constraints of patriarchal norms‖ (UA 199), animation is known to be overtly male dominated field. If one goes through the books on animation, most of the famous names mentioned be in it creation, production or distribution are male with the exception of a few usually Canadian women animators. At the very beginning of the

NFB existence, the animation department was predominantly also male.

Women were hired only as technical staff for a kind of manufactory tasks. Canadian animator Colin Low said that ―People best suited for [organization of a cel cartoon film] are skilful at lettering. Girls are usually steadier, happier, and quicker at the work – they are neater and more methodical‖ (Mazurkewich, 1999, p.185 qtd. in Perras 18) Steadier, happier and quicker are qualities that seem to fit a manufactory worker rather than an artist. The situation changed, when Norman McLaren, the head of the department chose a woman animator Evelyn Lambart as his closest collaborator. With McLaren she co- created 6 famous animated films including Begone Dull-Care (1949) or Chairy Tale

(1957). She worked on her own projects for both for the NFB and independently and managed to improve the technique of paper cut-outs transferred to lithograph plate.

Some of her award-winning animated films were Fine Feathers (1968), The Hoarder

(1969) and Paradise Lost (1970). ASIFA-Canada's magazine devoted a whole issue to her (Vol. 15, No. 3) in 1988. For long Lambart was the most prominent woman animator at the English unit of the animation department.

Other renowned woman animators joined the unit in 1990s but in the French unit led by René Jodoin, the situation was completely different. Hiring women animators was an actively promoted practice14 there ―At one time … there were more women than men.

After he left the department, there were ten years where not one woman was employed

14 Perry 20

33 as a freelancer or as a permanent … [Jodoin] was way out in front of everybody‖

(Robinson, 2000, p.2 qtd. in Perry: 20). The most innovative women animator at the

NFB has been Caroline Leaf, who invented the techniques of ink painting on glass and re-invented sand animation, which was already used before she started her experiments but perhaps without Leaf knowing about it.

There have been far more women auteur animators at the NFB then are mentioned in this section and the tradition has roots in times long before the critically acclaimed documentary films unit D was established. To be a woman director and artist does not mean that to choose solely women related issues. Most of the women artists concentrated on universal topics but perhaps brought their own novel perspectives. The only auteur artist, who deliberately concentrates of feminist issues is Michéle

Cournoyer, whose latest film Robes of War (2009), deals with the problems of Muslim women in war tormented countries.

3.5 NFB now

At present the NFB still keeps the tradition of documentary and animation films as their flagship products. It has never been able to step out of the shadow of the big US based production and distribution companies. It is highly critically acclaimed as regards animation between 2003-2007 they received four Academy Award nominations in four years. The tradition of widespread international cooperation is still vivid; the NFB offers scholarship for talented animators from all over the world. As regards reaching the audience continues to search for alternative methods and keeps pace with the state of the art technology. In January 2009 it launched a web screening room, which is accessible from all over the world for free and in October of the same year it started an iPhone application for viewing their films. In July 2010 it added a similar iPad application.

34 To sum up this chapter, the film board is inseparable significant part of Canadian film industry. It had developed from the very early institutions and is firmly anchored in

Canadian legal system. During the WWII years it was a loudspeaker for government opinions on issues concerning foreign affairs but it gradually changed into unique space for creating good-quality films. There are three main tendencies in the NFB's production that date back to the first days of the institution: realistic focus, propaganda and film- makers from outside of Canada. Economic pressure of big US based studios and political needs to the fact that the NFB's flagships became documentary filmmaking and animation, although it produced feature films as well. However, NFB feature films have never been as critically acclaimed as NFB documents and animations.

The NFB animation department was established quite late in comparison with the production of animation in e.g. the US. However, it was the NFB, which enabled the production of the first animated film ever in Canada. Importantly, these were also the first instances of Canadian produced colour films. The films were produced during the wartime years and thanks to the travelling projectionists reached numerous audiences.

The first films thus contributed to creating national unity and prepared ground for the auteur films to come as the audiences got acquainted with the new non-realistic cinematic form. As regards the audience, the most important fact, however, is that that a great majority of NFB animation is created without words or dubbed in various languages and thus can reach audiences in different language groups. Contrary to other countries, Canadian animated films openly deal with the topics of being different and also touch upon the minority issues, which is partly given by the official NFB policies concerning minorities. NFB animation department has also a long tradition of women filmmakers, which is absolutely unique in animation environment all over the world.

35 4. Case studies

This section will contain the in-depth analyses of five carefully chosen animated films. The chosen films differ stylistically, thematically and also technically because the aim is to display various genres and artistic form animated film can take. The purpose is to show the specific levels on which animated film operates and analyze the less obvious aspects in the creation of the films. Four of the chosen films are 2 D animations i.e. created by shooting a flat image by a camera on a horizontal stand. The last film is shot by a camera on vertical stand because the method used is close to 3 D animation techniques such as puppet or clay animation. There is no puppet animation included in the case studies as the proportion of puppet animation is low in comparison to hand- drawn, painted or etched film of Canadian provenience.

As animated films are often perceived as a poorer feature film cousins, this chapter should also point out the differences and richness of expression in animation compared to feature films. The chapter is not meant to be comparative, rather than that it uses some of the feature film category to analyse the specifics of animation, which are highlighted so that a reader acquainted with feature film specifics notices the main differences. For this very reason the category of mise-en-scene is included in two modes the live-action mise-en-scene and the animated mise-en scene as defined by Furniss.

The first one actually titled mise-en-scene stems from the Gianetti‘s principles. The principles are not applied in their entirety and the analysis of mise-en scene is not the most profound possible as the aim of this chapter is not to provide a large-scale analysis of the chosen films but to prepare ground for the subsequent examination of results found in the analysis. The space is thus limited. In order to distinguish between the two modes, the second mode of the mise-en scene is labelled as style but encompasses all the components of animated mise-en scene as designed by Furniss: images, colour and

36 line and movement and kinetics. (Furniss 61) This category is enriched by analysis of personal visual style of the authors as is done in art historical research when dealing with paintings or drawings.

Although, no chronological development can be traced in the choice of topics or techniques used, in this chapter the selected films are to be presented according to the year in which they were made just for the sheer reason of better orientation in the chapter.

4.1 Two Sisters (1991)

Written, designed and animated by Caroline Leaf Music: Judith Gruber-Stitzer Produced by the NFB, 1991

4.1.1 Synopsis

The heroines of the film are obviously as the title hints two sisters Viola and Marie.

Viola is a talented writer, who suffers a serious disfiguration of face (fig.1). Marie is

Viola's only companion and to a certain extent also a guardian that decides what is to be done. The two sisters live their peaceful unchanging life together on an island far from the rest of the world. Their daily routine is interrupted when an unexpected stranger appears at their door.

Fig.1

37 4.1.2 Mise-en-scene

The dominant motif of the whole film is darkness. The characters are rarely seen in full view, always partly lingering in the shade. The scene in almost each frame of the films consists mostly of details or outlines of the characters and things that only partly scrape through the darkness. Objects typical of domestic life such as hairbrush, coffee cups or a sleepy cat on a window dominate the film as if to suggest that the only safe place is indoors. The sisters are rarely seen facing each other in one frame. Most of the time they are even depicted while being in separate rooms, each preoccupied with their own interests. Rather than sharing a life together, they seem to live one along another trying to cause as little space for conflict as possible. Their dialogues are short and abrupt, scarcely ever do they talk in a calm, informative way – the way the stranger does in an attempt to explain his sudden arrival.

Most scenes are rendered in close-ups rather than wide takes. The key image is definitely a detailed close-up of a key, which reappears several times during the film.

The key symbolizes the relationship dynamics by depicting Marie as the key holder; it shows the deliberate seclusion in which the two sisters lock themselves. The only wide take is in the very beginning when the stranger swims in the seemingly never-ending mass of water. Even in this case the panoramic view is interrupted with close-ups of his hands diving in the light blue water. Contrary to vast body of the bright blue water, everything inside of the house seems to dive out from the darkness. At the beginning, darkness is empowering for the sisters, enabling them to stay in their own little world.

Sharp sunlight that comes with the stranger causes unwanted disturbance and blinds the two and is seen as a threat until Viola is able to overcome her fear of being perceived as a freak. Suddenly the role changes, turning her distorted face to sunlight brings a new

38 dimension of life for Viola, the sunlight becomes the empowering force and darkness only limits her newly discovered dimension of life.

4.1.3 Characters

Leaf's characters are anything but common people. Marie, who is obsessed with keeping unchanging daily routine, is clearly the dominant of the two. One could argue that it was her decision to live on an island either to protect her sister from ―the sharks outside,‖ who may mock Viola because of her appearance or because of Marie‘s own inner belief that physically challenged people should not appear outside of home. This is inferred from the fact that the whole film takes place to a great in darkness; all the shutters are closed most of the time as if Marie could not bear the sight of her sister‘s disfigured face. Knowing her own uneasiness about the seeing Viola's face, she thinks that Viola should be hidden from the outside world. Marie‘s only life fulfilment is taking care of Viola. Therefore, she might have chosen to live on an island locked out in a dark house just because she needed to create a world in which Viola would need her all the time. This would mean two things for Marie, she would not have to change her life-style by becoming economically active and the very sense of her existence - taking care of her poor sister - would remain untouched. Surprisingly, it is not Viola who is dependent on Marie but Marie is strongly psychologically dependent on Viola. Marie‘s obsession with being the key keeper, her fear from the outside world, her over- protective behaviour seem to hint that while Viola is a prisoner of her body, Marie may suffer from some kind of mental disease making her prisoner of her own soul.

Viola, although she is the breadwinner of the household is treated as a child or as if she were unable to take care of herself. One of the very first scenes shows Marie brushing Viola‘s hair, without showing either of the character in full view, only Marie‘s hands and Viola‘s hair is seen as if to bring attention to the relationship rather than the

39 character‘s themselves. As for the nature of the relationship, the official NFB synopsis of the film15 states that: ―Viola counts on her sister to take care of her and shelter her from the outside world. ― I would argue quite contrary to that statement. It is Marie who hands a mirror over to Viola to remind her of her appearance and, again, it is Marie, who says to Viola: ―You don't want to go out, do you? You‘re a freak!‖ making her sister feel deficient and thus creating dependency on Marie. At times Marie treats Viola as if she were mentally, not physically, challenged. It may even seem so also to the viewers as in one scene Viola frantically paces around the room muttering disconnected ideas, which however is not a sign of madness but a display of the creative process while writing a novel. Her work and also a hobby is omnipresent in the film, one can hear the sound of keyboard and computer noises almost all the time. It is true that Viola seems to be shy to ask her sister for even a slight change in their routine but there is no hint that she ―counts on‖, demands or needs the service she gets. It seems a kind of moral obligation for Viola to receive the service; she wants to please her sister.

The third character is as extraordinary as the sisters are. He is not named otherwise than simply a stranger. His appearance is in sharp contrast with his behaviour. He is bald, wearing a round earring in his left ear. He makes the impression of a rough man but when he overcomes the first shock from the sight of Viola‘s face, he behaves in a very tender way. He tries to comfort Viola, who is uneasy in front of him because of her handicap. He also tries to help Marie with clearing out the coffee cups, unknowingly threatening Marie's position of the caretaker of the household.

The stranger is a tangible proof of the outside world. He is the embodiment of

Viola's success, which reveals Marie's jealousy of her sister's creativity. He is also the catalyst of Marie‘s tendency to gather all action under her control. It is him who makes

15nfb.ca/film/two_sisters/

40 the viewer aware that it is not Viola who needs Marie, but Marie who is dependent on

Viola. Not only his behaviour and appearance are peculiar but also the way he reaches the remote island. It is clear that the film takes place at present, in the time of modern technology as Viola uses a computer and ―sends her stories out‖ possibly via the internet as there seems to be no civilisation i.e. no post office on the island. The stranger, however, does not use a boat or a motorized boat to reach his favourite writer.

He decides to swim all the way to the island, risking the damage of his favourite book if the water soaked through the wrapping around it. Moreover, it is clear that the distance is vast, because no earth is seen on the horizon when looking back from the island. His effort to reach his favourite writer by swimming can be interpreted in two ways. After reading closely her novels, he may assume that the author might be scared by a stranger suddenly appearing on the shore with a roaring motor. Nevertheless, showing up soaking wet on the doorstep has the same panic-creating effect on the sisters as the loud sound of motor would have. The more probable explanation is that to meet his favourite author is for a kind of emotional passage. It seems that he needs to get involved physically in the process of reaching his idol.

4.1.4 Style

Leaf is one of the artists, who do not use the same form of expression in order to develop it to the fullest personalised expression possible. Rather than that she adjusts her style according to the technique used and more importantly topic technique depicted. However, a certain degree of her personal style always remains. Almost all her films, sand animated, paint on-glass animated as well as etched, are peopled by round plumper characters that came into life thanks to thick dark lines with uneven edges created by uneven distribution of shading. Two Sisters does not differ in that, only the style is more adapted to the story told, which helps to achieve the rather surreal

41 impression that the film has. By blurred lines and clearly visible etching patterns the characters get a rather unsettling look. Not only the distorted Viola but also her sister and the visitor endowed sharply cut features and a rather sad look.

Both aesthetically and thematically Leaf goes to the very limits of expressionism.

Expressionism has never existed as a unified movement as e.g. impressionism but rather as a policy of displaying the same set of features via aesthetically distinct means. The main expressionist topics were depicting people on the margin of society, people with disabilities, extreme feelings and probe into emotional depths have become the leitmotif of expressionism and are absolutely internalized in Two Sisters. The heroines are marginalised both by the way they live and the place they live and the physical and psychological difference from someone living in the majority society is bluntly apparent.

The dominant aesthetic feature and also one of the main bearers of meaning is the contrast between darkness and light, coloured and monochrome environment. The use of dark brown and grey colours contributes to the a kind of heavy dark atmosphere that adds to the surreal dream-like mood of the film. Although there are flowers and other supposedly colourful objects in Viola‘s and Marie's house, everything inside is wrapped in a patinous mist. The brownish to sepia colours resemble to those of old time photographs as if the film was a reminder of an idyllic distant past of the sister's relationship, in which light or white colour is an intruder, breaking the dreamy past into uncertain future. The safe environment was marked by dark and also monochrome environment. As was said before darkness constitutes a shelter for the sisters under which they can hide. Throughout the story, the Viola both literally and metaphorically steps out of the darkness in the sunny and light world. Not only that the world outside is overwhelming for Viola, it is also the colours that make it exceptional. The bright blue

42 of the water, the yellow sunlight all of these seem to be a new experience for Viola after years spent in isolation from the large colourful world.

4.1.5 Genre

The film is basically a short story taken on a silver screen. It is a narration of one event, the stranger‘s arrival, taking place during a sunny peaceful day. The narration is chronological, and sets out from the stranger‘s point of view. At first the viewers get to see only what the stranger gets to see while swimming taking the narrator in the story.

While the stranger is getting to the shore the viewer is getting acquainted with the close relationship the sisters have, which the stranger is not able to see. Soon after introducing the seemingly ideal loving relationship between the sisters the narration establishes the stranger back as a guide though the film and also the catalyst of action. Viola‘s disfiguration is revealed to the viewer only when the stranger enters the house and demands to see Viola. After his unexpected arrival is explained and Viola seems is overcome by the fact that her novels reached the outside world and are successful with their readers. The pace of the story slows down as the stranger explains that he is Viola's biggest fan and poses no threat to the isolated household.

This time Marie becomes the source of conflict, proclaiming that ―time is up and the visit is over.‖ The visitor tries to help her with tidying up the cups (fig.2). Marie treats him with her usual patronizing approach, warning him that he‘d cut himself. Instead of being worried that the stranger got injured she is evidently pleased that her assumption was right. She even starts vacuum cleaning in the middle of the dialogue between Viola and the stranger, which prompts Viola to leave the house and step into the sunshine.

Eventually, it is not the stranger, who changes the dynamics of the relationship by giving Viola the confidence to go outside. By her jerky attempt to get the stranger out of the house at all costs, Marie prompts Viola to leave the house. Leaving the house means

43 leaving the world in which it is Marie who sets the rules. The story resumes by Viola parting from the stranger and returning back to weeping Marie. Instead of shyly obeying

Marie‘s rules, she demands that the door is left open. Marie grudgingly agrees but places her rocking armchair in the door falling asleep with the latch key in her hands.

Even though there is not much action in the story, it is very lively but in a kind heavy way. Rather than actual action a lot is going on within the characters, which can be seen as an inferred action. Marie, who in the beginning is presented as the more

"normal" of the two, loving and caring turns out to be rather despotic and apparently psychologically disbalanced. Viola, who is introduced as a pitiable being undergoes an inner rebirth. She becomes confident enough to leave the house and comes to the conclusion that her work is worthwhile. The story is resumed by a kind of open ending.

The painful moments of the relationship were exposed but the sister‘s mutter to one another ―I‘m lucky I have you.‖ The phrase turns out to be a bitter one considering

Marie‘s position in the door blocking the way outside. Nevertheless, the sunrays brighten the room bringing also a positive undertone to the ending.

fig.2

4.1.6 Technique

The images were directly etched onto exposed and tinted 70 mm Imax film stock.

Leaf worked on two pieces of the film

44 ―so that frame 1, 3, 5, 7 would be on one strip, then frame 2,4, 6, 8 on the other one. I had a little metal plate with two pegs the same size as sprocket holes in the film that I laid on a light table. I laid my first strip down ad did the first drawing, put a second strip on top of that so that I could see through and sis the next frame‖ (Leaf qtd. in Furniss 41)

The primary tint is blue, which is later substituted by brown and green. The technique is basically the same as that of a linocut, only 70 mm film stock is used instead of the lino material. Another difference is that a linotype has to be printed on a new sheet of paper which results in laterally reversed image, whereas in the case of direct animation the etched stock is used as a primary material. Compared to the usually linotype size the images are in fact carefully planned miniature. To suit the format Leaf uses works with crudely rendered shading. Actually, it is not shading in the true sense of the word. The shading is created by scratching extremely thin lines into the film stock producing lighter and darker surfaces. Throughout the film a limited spectre of colours is used. The colours were produced by removing layers of emulsion on the film stock.

In Leaf's words: ―if I scratch a strip of colour film and scratch just a little bit, the red emulsion comes off and you get the green, and if I scratch more I get to the yellow and when I scratch all the way down, it is white. As for the blue, I used blue film‖ (Leaf qtd. in Furniss 41).

Using this technique meant going back to the very roots of animation in Canada.

Norman McLaren, the founder of the NFB animation department, was a pioneer in this technique and created some of the most famous pieces of abstract animation. Some of the very famous McLaren‘s adaptation of jazz music such as Dots (1940) and Begone

Dull Care(1949) were created by this technique. Leaf took the technique a step further.

For the first time, the technique was used to create a narrative film rather than a series of aesthetically challenging abstract images that appear and re-appear to the pace of music. The technique requires extremely precise etching and even more precise

45 planning because the final outcome is to a great extent dependent on the timing. In

McLaren‘s case, the difficult part was to synchronise the images with music. In Leaf's case, the difficult task was to find balance between slow pace depiction of the unchanging life of the two sisters and the moments of abrupt action caused by the stranger. The faster the pace the more frames needed to be used per second. Although

Leaf etches the whole surface of the film stock frame, she also works with blank space in an interesting way. At the moment when the stranger opens the front door, leaf etched the whole surface of the frame so that it appears blank in the film. The impact created is that the viewer is forced to feel with the sisters, because s/he as well as them, is blinded by the avalanche of white colour disrupting the previously dark space.

4.2 Mighty River (1993)

Written, directed and animated by Frédéric Back (with Shui Bo Wang as the inbetweener) English version read by Donald Sutherland, French by Paul Hébert Original music and soundtrack: Normand Roger, Denis Chartrand Produced by Société Radio-Canada, 1993

4.2.1 Synopsis

Mighty River tells the history of the Saint Lawrence river, which flows out of the

Great Lakes and into the Atlantic after its long journey through Ontario and Quebec.

The film begins in the ice age with the beginning of the river later called Magtogoek, the Mighty River, by the First Nations. It follows the river both chronologically from the ice age till present times and also geographically from the Great lakes to the estuary in the Atlantic.

As the abundant images of nature beauty unfold, the film subsequently adopts three approaches biological, historical and sociological. At first it illustrates natural cycles and the importance of water for life, depicts the beauty of water life – displaying schools of fish and mammals cavorting. Flocks of birds in constant movement watch the

46 river from the sky. The history of the river and its animal inhabitants soon becomes the history of the whole region. The film goes on to depict the culture of the first nations, followed by the arrival of the first colonialists. It puts into a sharp contrast the first nations beliefs and approach to what we now call ecology with the beliefs and values of the new coming colonialists. It tells the brutal history of conflict and wars, reveals the economical background of the evolving society and informs about technological millstones of the respective eras. It shows how the river has been tamed by the Saint

Lawrence Seaway and polluted by the canals from the factories built on the river banks.

The transformation is obvious the natural habitat for many animal species both in the water and in the woodlands along its banks is replaced by factories and big cities. Back tells not only the history of one river but ponders on the role of humans in eco- systems and human effect on them and ends his film by a call for change of the exploitative trend.

4.2.2 Mise- en- scene

As the nature of the film changes several times during the 24 minutes footage, I chose one scene order to illustrate the mise-en scene of one particular moment in the film. The scene is preceded by a wide underwater take of belugas over which 3 shadows of ships appear. Contrary to the expectation the dark shadows, which seem to threaten the belugas, are not colonials ships but birch bark canoes of the indigenous peoples. The viewer gets to see the indigenous people cheering in the canoes with colonials ships in the second plan. The indigenous people are going to trade furs for fancy clothes, trinkets and weapons in the port of Tadoussac.

The sharp cut replaces the carefree mood is replaced by business frenzy. Native people are shown in the first plan as if "standing" closer to the camera. Contrary to the preceding image of carefree savages they are rendered profit-craving business people.

47 Multiple close-ups show how they readily exchange clothes or weapons for the furs they brought. The scene is ideologically linked with the preceding one. Not only the big ships of the newcomers in the background but the small birch bark canoes threaten the river life and here the white colonialists are not the only threat to the local eco-system but also the local people are lured by the idea of fast gained wealth. Another link could be seen in the end of the film, where a scene depicting a stock exchange is rendered.

The frenzy and the greed are present in both, only in the stock exchange one there are no natives. The apparent use of black colour in the stock exchange scene is also an anaphoric reference of the colour scheme used in this Tadoussac scene. As if to say that the situation is not yet in its worst, the whole scene is rendered in brown and red tones, not much black is present but compared to the light blue of the preceding scene with the belugas the sharp transformation of the colour scheme16 is obvious.

The kinetics of the scene is also specific compared to other parts of the film. The frantic mood is created by an extremely fast movement of the native characters. They literally run all over the scene. Interestingly, the characters of the colonialists hardly move, they make the impression of being a mere stuff of the scenery depicted, even though in reality it is them, who prompts the trade. Compared to the calm pace of the film, quicker pace of this scene seems to be a conscious decision that should highlight the business frenzy in contrast with the calm natural cycles.

In this scene the narrative plays a mood creating rather than informative role. ―A veritable commercial empire exhausts the animal resources in the whole realm. The ancestral hunting grounds are destroyed‖ (The Mighty River).

16 Back's specific use of the colour scheme is analysed in detail 5 pages later in the section on the genre of the film.

48 Fig.3

fig.4

4.2.3 Characters

Undoubtedly, the main character is the river itself (fig4). In the opening sequence of the film it even has a female face and its waves are anthropomorphised as if they were a woman‘s hair. It is her who gives life to the enumerable species of water animals as she opens her hands to let school of fish off her hands. The human like image vanishes and the river is rendered as a living organism of supernatural powers. It is described as

―God-like, life –giving, without beginning and without end – a benevolent God, who invites the flying creatures to feed and multiply in the sanctity of its cliffs.‖ At first it is not defined by anything but itself, its water being the source of life. In the film it is not only the source of life but the very essence of life as it is in constant movement, ―clean, majestic.‖ It is beyond the reach of humans, bigger than them not only in size and life- span but also in the creative potential.

49 As long as there is no human presence in the, film the main character does not even have a name, it is simply: the river, which the First Nation people later call Magtogoek.

The official English name is not pronounced until the tenth minute, which is almost half of the film.

The Mighty River is the first Canadian animated film that depicts the daily life of the first Nations. Of course, their legends have been adapted for animation several times. Back‘s two earlier films Inon or the conquest of Fire (1972) and The Creation of

Birds (1972) are variations on Algonquin and Amerindian legends. In the 1970s not only Back but also e.g. Caroline Leaf and others created animated films dealing with

First Nations Peoples culture. In these films their own stories may have been told in their own languages accompanied with universally understandable imagery but in the

Mighty River it is the first time when not the protagonists of their legends but the indigenous peoples are actually seen themselves in an animation and are depicted as active elements. One gets to see indigenous people hunting, cooking, socializing and, basically, interacting with the river by using, not exploiting though, its natural resources

(fig.517).

A great advantage is that the film does not make the stereotypical distinction between the ―always good noble savage‖ and the ―bad colonialists.‖ It simply shows their approaches to the eco system. Nevertheless, the viewer gets to see indigenous people killing animals for money and trading fur for fashionable clothes, which is definitely not in line with the stereotype of noble savage. On the other hand among the newcomers there are not only the greedy colonialists but also small-scale farmers with respect to what the river and the nearby land offers them.

17 See page 52

50 Unfortunately, in the end Back does not escape stereotypisation anyway. As the film continues through the rapid industrial growth to the present times, the indigenous presence diminishes. After the development of oil and fur trade with Europe, they are nowhere to be seen. There is not a single indigenous character seen in the cities nor in the stock exchange hall as if there was no place for the indigenous people in the modern world. This approach significantly undermines the value of the historical and sociological probe presented in the beginning, where the indigenous were not stereotypical images of the past but people as any other with their ―jobs‖, life-style and culture. The film also has only two language versions, French and English, and has not been dubbed in any indigenous language so far.

What is good about the film is that it avoids labelling. The new coming colonizers are not very considerate when dealing with natural resources but at the same time are amazed at the nature‘s beauty and admire the vast lands along the riverbanks. It is not the colonizers, who are automatically bad, at one point they are even described as ―new friends‖, it is the greed; the insatiable demand for goods that turns some of them into evil. The film also brings to the light the fact that not only the people, who actually arrived to the shores of today‘s Canada, massacred the First Nations and brought some of the animal species on the verge of extinction. Those who stayed in the old continent factually did not raise arms against the first inhabitants nor took the land‘s natural wealth. However, the old continent prompted the devastation of the new: ―it was this valuable oil that lit the streets of Europe‖ and enjoyed the comfort of the imported goods.

51

fig.5

4.2.4 Style

Back is not only an animator but also a remarkable painter, visual artist and exquisite draftsman. Throughout his carrier Back arrived at a highly personalised form of expression and as Mighty River is his last film so far, the style defines not only the visual part of the film but also the film as a mature stage in the development of personal style. Contrary to most animators, Back doesn‘t use simplification in animation. He renders both figures and the background in detail with careful shading. The attributes of his style are broad, soft and round shapes usually without sharply delineated edges and gentle light nicely shaded spectrum of colours. The film‘s basic essence is constant play of colour and light. The presiding tendency in Back‘s style is that of impressionism. In order to distinguish between happier and sadder moments in the history of the river,

Back also adds a touch of expressionism at certain consciously chosen moments of the film, which are surprisingly interlaid with short abstract art sequences.

Although the film is drawn in Back's personal style many of the images are comparable to the work of the big painters of impressionism. When seeing the sunset depicted at the very end of the films (23rd minute), one cannot help recalling the sunsets

52 of Claude Monet or the predecessor of impressionism William Turner. The little colourful dots that cover the whole space creating, trees, grass and air shimmering in sunlight could well compete with the background of the famous Renoir paintings. The sequence taking place in a spa is as if cut out from Renoir's Moulin de la Gallette

(1876), only the black colour is not as prominent as in Renoirs work. Frédéric Back himself acknowledges the inspiration by the great painters: ―People often talk about the artistic influences in my drawings—Chagall, Monet, Renoir. I don't deny these influences: on the contrary, I consciously use these familiar references to convey my message quickly to the audience18―.

Back's style is influenced not only by European impressionists but also by a specific form of impressionism in connection with landscape painting which emerged in

Canada. The images of forests and rocks surrounding the river are as if taken from some of the exhibition of the famous Canadian group of landscape painters called the Group of Seven in their early period. Member of the group as well as Back himself were open to environmental activism and had close relationship to nature, which resulted in the focus of landscape painting. With the ―Group‖ Back shares not only the curly and interwoven colour zones, which create the illusion of constant vibrant movement that is present in the frame even before the image is animated but also the ―horror vacui‖ tendency in art. Such tendency or in some cases even artistic approach lies in filling the whole space with the indented image without leaving any uncovered i.e. blank space.

This approach enables to capture the mood and vibration of nature in drawing or painting but at the same time it is demanding and complicated in animation because it requires an enormous amount of work to complete just a few second sequence of e.g. an animal swimming in the water. The author not only has to render the specifics of the

18fredericback.com/cineaste/techniques-danimation/peintures.en.

53 movement of a given animal but also draw the changes in the background.

Impressionistic tendencies are also seen in sequences under the water, where whales, halibut or cod bathe in feeble sunlight let through the water. The colours softly merge in one another, out of which the round shapes of animals emerge only to dive back in the torrent of colours and reappear metamorphosed into another animal species. The water currents and the sunrays outside the water contribute to the illusion of constant movement and change.

The sadder historical periods marked by wars and reckless exploitation of the natural resources are rendered in a rather expressionistic way. Contrary to the impressionistic parts, where the inspiration by the already classical works of impressionism can be traced, it is not possible to find any direct inspiration by a concrete author or preferred subgroup in these ―expressionistic‖ parts. The style is not changed as a whole into overtly expressionistic. A kind of heavy dark veil is imposed in the images by abundant use of black, brown and grey colour. The thick colours together with cries of pain and desperation as an audio background and awry facial expressions of some of the character highlight the drama of the scene. As well as in expressionistic painting, the expressionistic element is not only formal but more importantly thematic as it lies in the choice of topics such as mass hunting, of animals, colonial wars or the stressful environment of the stock exchange in the respective sequences. Softly round shapes, the vibrant movement stay the same but are encaged in floods of grey or locked in the thick black lines of the port and seaway buildings, factories or masses of people.

The way the interchanging scheme of impressionism and expressionism is used suggests that there is still time to make up for the mistakes made and harm done in the part if the grey veil of smoke from factories and venomous pollution in the river is lifted.

54 The interplay of impressionistic and expressionistic tendencies is surprisingly supplemented by instances of abstract art. Technically, abstraction is used as a substitution for sharp cuts between the scenes. When displaying the individual species, the schools of cod soon become wavy blue lines covering the whole screen only to change into a mass of green vibrant lines. These later on turn out to be leaves of grass metamorphosing into spikes which in a split of a second turn into brown, green, blue and red interwoven linear structures, which bring the viewer once again under the water.

The next shot explains that the colourful stripes moving one over another was kelp on the river bed. The detailed image of clouds, snow geese or waves often becomes a blurry abstract composition which reminds the viewers of the early films of Norman

McLaren, the father of Canadian animation. Abstraction is used interesting visual and also semantic means. Abstract form of expression represents a kind of life-giving, creative chaos, which is adored in the final part of the film: ―Boundaries between water and earth vanish, as if the river seeks to recreate the chaos from which all life springs.‖

4.2.5 Genre

As clear as the film may seem regarding the genre category, it stands on the border of two categories. It shows all the typical features of documentary. Drawing on the tradition of images accompanied by a ―voice of God narrator‖ founded by Grierson it quotes hard data and puts them in the context of the historical and sociological development. Quite in line with the ―father of Canadian documentary‖ John Grierson,

―whose primary interest in film was its potential as agent of social change‖ (Evans 3),

Back created not only a documentary but also a strong ecology propaganda film, which is most evident in the end, where the call for action appears.

As for the documentary side of the film, it offers a lot of valuable information, it tells the history of colonialism (in one sequence it follows the cruise of Jacques Cartier ,

55 who claimed what is now Canada for France, 1759 England decides to seize New

France by taking the city of Quebec), explains social and economical motifs (―furs create fortunes‖, timber and oil trade, stock exchange) but also brings geographical data

(great lakes being the largest freshwater reserve on the planet, the height of seaway above sealevel) and detailed information on animals and their natural environments.

The propaganda of an environmentally friendly approach to nature goes through the film like a thin red line. It is objectified in three ways oral, visual and semantic.

As for the oral part, the commentary is full of repeated strong statements, such as

―venom‖ and ―poison,‖ when talking about the influence of human activity, in whose face ―the giant is helpless‖. The crucial adjective of the film is ―insatiable,‖ which is often complemented by ―hungry‖ in connection with industry, mills, people. The river on the other hand, is always ―magnificent,‖ ―untameable,‖ ―astounding,‖ and most importantly ―life-giving‖ Repetition of positive adjectives concerning the river and emphasising the greed of people and the viperous result of the industrial revolution establishes a contrast, which infallibly leads to making the viewer aware of the ecological concerns of the author. The fact that the river does not belong to human race is emphasised by the fact that it is not often called by its official English name but mostly referred to as the River. The indigenous name Magtogoek is used throughout the film and also at the very end to suggest the need to go back to the idea of brotherhood of people and nature.

Visually is the environmental activism shown by the way Back works with colour.

The film starts in fresh tones of blue and green and the colours create a kind of positive mood, which is to celebrate water as source of life. As the wildlife in and around the river multiplies, the film gets even more colourful but the background keeps its fresh blue (sky) or green (meadows, woods) colours. In the 8th minute the colour scheme

56 undergoes a sharp change. Blue and green is replaced by brownish, reddish and all sorts of grey to black shades in depiction of the colonialists‘ greed for natural resources resulting in massacres of wildlife and mass destruction of forests in greed for timber.

The propaganda motifs are carefully distributed in the whole course of the film. The negative mood created by the use of darker colours when talking about the darker eras of the river‘s history, when wars were fought along the riverbanks of the Saint

Lawrence, is interchanged with light coloured images of peaceful years. After the colonial wars stop and ―people learn to live in harmony with the river whose rhythm beats in the very heart of their existence‖, images of small scale farmers in light blue and green again appear; depicting them as new friends of nature. These light colours are soon to be changed for thick dark and heavy colours in which the years of industrial revolution and rapid growth of industry are portrayed. The spectrum is almost limited to black only when depicting the stock exchange where the value of natural resources is traded. The vivid fresh colours are only re-introduced at the very end of the film, almost as if being a promise of beauty that could be regained if an action against pollution and exhaustion of natural resources is taken immediately.

The semantic element is party connected to the colour scheme and consists in interchanging images positive meaning for the viewer with images of desperation and destruction as if confronting the ideal desired world with the real one stemming not only from nature but also human interference into natural processes. Almost a naïve image of rural village, where people ―live in harmony with the nature‖ is followed by an image of violent exploitation of natural resources; an idealised spa resort is followed by almost frightening silhouettes of factories and port buildings. Back does not only pose ideas in contrast but also creates semantic links. The dramatic depiction of how seemingly endless ―colonies of pigeons fall as helpless prey to nets and poles and clubs― is

57 immediately followed by showing how England decided to seize New France by taking the city of Quebec in 1759 . Image of dead pigeons, stricken by poles and caught by nets is substituted by image of war suggesting that those who do not refrain from killing the beauty of nature will not refrain from killing each other. Death in nature is immediately linked to death in society.

4.2.6 Technique

It took Back four years to draw and edit the 17 000 drawings which form the 24 minute film. His previous films Back mostly made on his own, in the case of Mighty

River, back had an assistant, Shui Bo Wang, who worked on the position called the in- betweener. This means that he drew some of the images between the defining frames.

As regards the amount of work done by Back himself, he described it this way: ―I did

90% of the drawings, along with the complex calculations. They're definitely the most complicated drawings I've done in my entire filmmaking career19‖. The film was hand- drawn by coloured pencils on frosted cells that are usually used in engineering.

Compared to paper, on which each image has to be redrawn in order to create another part of the film, the relative transparency of the frosted cells allows for using multiple layers over an unchanging background. Thanks to their transparency the overlaying cells not create a multi-plane effect and also produce a certain image density. On his website20, Back commented on the technique:

―I often had to use three or four cells at a time for my shots. I needed to create huge panoramas, with a variety of objects moving at the same time. To achieve effects of depth and movement, the different layers of cells had to move at different speeds― . The rough surface of the cells gives the images the rough texture that is evident in

―close ups‖.

.fredericback.com/cineaste/filmographie/le-fleuve-aux-grandes-eaux/ 20 fredericback.com/cineaste/filmographie/le-fleuve-aux-grandes-eaux/

58 In some parts of Mighty River double framing was employed, which means that instead of 24 images per second, each image is shot twice creating a

12 image per second material. Only in scenes with quick action were shot with 24 images per second. Sometimes Back decides to stop the motion completely by shooting the same image several times as in the case of the bobcat coming out of bushes. It is shown as a 2D motionless picture, which suddenly becomes alive and moves swiftly out of the scene. When rendering the movement of the water and also a large proportion of the scenes outside the water Back and his cameraman Jean Robillard employed what they call a ―staggered mix‖ technique.

This technique uses multiple exposure; it is basically a series of cross fades. Each frame contains three images, the central image plus two 'ghost' images, the ghost images being the image from the previous frame, and the image from the next frame. The lens aperture is reduced to 25%. The two ghost images are shot at

25% exposure, while the main image is shot twice amounting to a 50% exposure, which results in 100% exposure. This technique enables the very natural -like movement of water or the fact that motionless brown cliffs smoothly metamorphose into indigenous peoples in front of the viewers eyes.

Besides the amazing in quality and quantity amazing drawings, the mood is defined of the film is defined by the soundtrack which is composed of records for the most of real animal sounds supplemented by folk songs and undertones of soft orchestral music.

4.3 When the Day Breaks (1999)

Written, directed and animated by: Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis Music: Judith Gruber-Stitzer Produced by: The NFB,1999

59 4.3.1 Synopsis

The almost 10 minutes animated short tells a story of one morning on a bright shiny day. The main characters are a middle aged ―rooster‖ man and a young ―pig‖ lady, who live a few blocks from each other. Each of them prepares their breakfast in their own apartment and sets out from their blocks of flats to shop for food. The fates of these two strangers cross at a shop. When entering the shop the lady bumps into the man, whose lemons fall on the ground. The distraught man pays no attention to the red light and gets run over by a car. On seeing the accident the lady quickly pays her shopping and nervously rushes home. She locks herself from the outside world and closes the shutter.

The lady sits on a chair and keeps thinking about the accident until she is able to resume her daily routine again. The film ends by her opening the shutter to bright sunshine of the day.

4.3.2 Mise-en-scene

The film is set in a big city, probably Montréal, in the 1930s21. The city is more felt than seen, shown only in a few extremely short sequences. The same is valid for the streets of the city, the inside of character‘s apartments and the grocery shop. Rather than being depicted in detail, the spaces are identified by details such as a toaster, a kettle, a

TV antenna. Domestic appliances and technology as such is put to the fore as it connects the otherwise invisible city together. The connection is shown through depiction of the inside of electric wires and sewerage pipelines. Together with blood vessels and parts of human body are the leitmotif of the story pointing to the fact that human body is not much different from the inanimate body of the city were it not for human feelings and emotions. ―Our bodies are made up of bones and vessels and

21 At least the image stylisation is that of the 1930, in some scenes, however, an ice-hockey match broadcast in TV is depicted, which would be possible only from 1952 onwards.

60 electrical currents like the buildings and pipes and wires which compose cities. But as with organisms, a city is not defined by its infrastructure but by its inhabitants or its

‗life.‘‖ (Tilby qtd. in AB: 71)

Animation allows the viewer to see the inside of electric and sewerage pipeline networks as well as directly inside of human body and more importantly the mind. It indicates that despite leading totally different lives the two characters are connected by their daily routines and by sameness of the space provided by the city. In contrast with the sameness of the urban spaces, human mind, despite being only a sum of feelings, memories and emotions as well as the city is only a sum of technical networks, is very rich and capable of dealing with ideas and feelings of different sorts from joyful singing mood to unspecified horror on seeing a fatal accident. Constant skipping from one small detail to another shows the way human attention wonders from one thing to another.

The colours are used very consciously and symbolically. With the exception the bright sunshine, which closes the film, and the sharp yellow of lemons dropped on the ground by the rooster man., the colours are soft and pale. The lemons are one of the crucial images for the whole film.

―A key image at this point was a life (physical and intangible) strewn out on the road—groceries, hat, glasses, bones, cells, teeth, family, memories, experiences. Another was of the lemon falling into the sewer grate, hinting at things lost, of infrastructure, of a hidden world beneath the street‖ (Pilling 2001, 59 qtd. in AB 71).

Fig. 6 fig.7

61 4.3.3 Characters

The characters are in fact animals, which behave and act as humans, which is technically called theriantropic form (Baker 2001, 108 qtd. in AB: 71). The animals walk on two legs, eat human food and wear clothes. The clothing is not always explicitly present on the scene, at times it is only symbolically hinted. One good example of that is that the sound of the lady pig‘s hooves in the film resembles to clapping of court shoes.

The first and most obvious reason for employing animal instead of human characters is the humorous potential of their behaviour. The rooster man's hat (fig.7) is three pointed because of the shape of his head. Instead of cornflakes with milk, the pig (fig.6) peels potatoes for herself, eating just the peels with milk and throwing the actual potatoes into the trash. The less obvious reason is the symbolic aspect. ―The therianthropic identity of the characters draws attention to the ways in which physical difference and separateness is negated and overcome by implicit psychological and emotional ties.‖ (AB 71) The rooster and the pig do not know each other and live separated anonymous of a modern city. Yet, there are links and psychological ties that connect them. Such ties do not explicitly exist in the film, however, they are being created in the viewers mind, while decoding the symbolic meanings in the film. The pig and the rooster play a role of a kind of everyman, with which the viewer easily identifies him or herself, the two are interchangeable. This time it was the pig, who observed the accident and next time it can be her, who will get knocked over by a car.

The animal identity is there to provide distinguishing wrapping for essentially non- distinguished content; the content being a living human being confronted by unusually usual situation.

62 The animal form is also required by the very topic which is rather emotional than rational. ―This holistic approach, using an intrinsic interconnectedness in the physical and material aspects of existence, nevertheless required that the naturalized conditions of this everyday experience be in some way made strange without breaching the bonds implicit in the lived environment by making the world too surreal‖ (AB 71). By their very difference from humans they bring attention to every day routines and rituals that would otherwise go unnoticed. It is these small things such as these rituals that make humans human and here the humanity is confronted with technology and the isolation of a large city. Most importantly, it is confronted with the fact that human life is mortal.

The pig and the rooster could be anyone, each of the viewers could face death on a day that is no way different than any other or spend their breakfast shaken by the fact that their absent-mindedness may have contributed to someone else‘s death. Even though the emotions are hard to cope with, the city goes on as if nothing had happened.

Not all of the animal characters, however, represent humans. In total there are three characters – a pigeon and two dogs – that have a different symbolic role than bringing humanity to the fore. Rather than that they work as a kind of narrative devices. By the plain fact that they do not have anthropomorphic qualities, they warn the viewer that the situation not what it seemed to be in the beginning. The viewer is introduced in a world, in which s/he expects animals to behave as humans. Suddenly, a pigeon, which completely lacks the anthropomorphic qualities, attracts the viewer‘s attention as if it were to indicate that something unexpected is to happen. It is a sign of the future accident. After the accident when the rooster man is taken away in an ambulance car, two stray dogs appear. One of the dogs takes away a fish that fell on the ground from rooster's shopping bag and both dogs follow the ambulance. It is impossible to state with certainty that the rooster died but it is exactly these two dogs that indicate that it is

63 the case. Taking the fish hints that the rooster will no longer need it and the image of the barking dog following the ambulance car recalls the image of stray dogs following a funeral car. (fig.8)

Fig.8

4.3.4 Style

Stemming from the complex technique that will be described later22, the nature of the images is extremely mimetic to the reality. In certain sequences, for example with the toaster or approaching car, it almost seems as if the objects were not painted but just photographed. The photorealistic nature is manifested through illusion of 3D space and objects created by precise shading and clearly identifiable texture of the objects depicted. Such extreme resemblance to reality is in sharp contrast with the decision to depict animal characters and the contrast is very desirable. It creates a kind of surreal atmosphere, such that is known from the pictures of Salvator Dalí. The precise painting technique is counter balanced by unreal images. The visual link to surrealism is linked to the thematic one.

The main theme of the film is the mind and the way human mind deals with emotions and ideas. The leitmotif of surrealism is idea presiding over reality, which is precisely what is going on in the film. The perfectly real like background with well established illusion of depth are eclipsed by the strength of the emotional impact that

22 See page 66

64 the death of the Rooster has on the Pig. The film deals with thought rather than tangible reality and to accentuate the unseen, the reality has to be perfectly veritable. The perfectly rendered electric wires are present on the screen but what is meant, not seen though; in the film are psychological connections, an imagined reality of a lively neighbourhood inhabited by surreal animal-looking characters, which despite their look are very human in their thoughts and daily activities.

The idea of surrealism is present also in the kinetics of the characters. Kinetics is far from being cartoony. They move in a very-real like way and react on outside stimuli in according to the given situation i.e. dance when signing or run frantically when scared.

Again the credibility of the movement is disquieted by the fact that the characters walking along the streets are not humans but animals, which under usual circumstances walk on four legs.

What was not influenced by the surrealist ideas is the general stylisation in the 1930.

The grave colours with just touch of bright yellow, which is the only bright colour in the whole film, create the atmosphere of the 1930 gangster comedies. Despite the fact that modern domestic appliances are depicted all the characters are dressed in 1930s stylish clothes. The two mice on the street actually look like some mafia members overlooking the street. Court shoes and a scarf are a must for the lady, the older man is dressed in a stylish hat and suit. Again all the garment outlines in a thin back line are rendered very close to reality and the predominant colour is grey.

4.3.5 Genre

Even though the film features anthropomorphised animals, it is not a fable or allegory. The film does not present any moral or if some, there is a very feeble undertone of promoting the ―carpe diem‖ approach to life because any minute any this can happen to any of us. By no means is this the main meaning of the film. Rather than

65 a fable, the film is a portrayal of human moods and feelings. Partly, the film also works as a reflection on the strange importance of butterfly effect. It is a fresco on how such trifles as spoiled milk and lack of cookies can fatally influence one‘s life and how a human mind copes with that. Are we more than a sum of bones, organs and memories?

If so how do emotions work, why do we feel what we feel? Why do we remember specific moments in life and forget others? The reflective character is skilfully enriched with features of comedy and surprisingly also musical. The scene, in which the pig lady dances around the kitchen peeling potatoes and sings the song which gave name the whole film i.e. When the day breaks23 is truly typical musical scene as if cut out from

Singing in the Rain or any other cult musicals.

When the day breaks combines two narrative principles. As a whole it sticks to the chronological narrative structure, which is broken by crosscutting between the stories of the two main characters. The chronological structure is again broken by crosscutting when the ambulance takes away rooster‘s body, which is interrupted by swift images of the food scattered on the ground followed by the images of human veins, bones and cells. In the second half of the film a retrospective ―flashback‖ is inserted, which takes the viewers on fast tour through selected memories of the rooster's past. Again, the flashback puts forward how fragile human beings are. It shows that what has died is not only an older man, who ran out of cookies, but a human being with its dreams and aspirations. Rather than a complex narration the retrospective part is a series of snapshots from rooster‘s childhood. In a very fast pace we can see rooster as an embryo

– an egg to be precise, rooster the ice-hockey player, rooster at this graduation ceremony and many more.

23 Sung by Martha Wainwright

66 Visually as well as ideologically, the retrospective part matches the images of sewerage pipelines and electric wires. Besides representing the connecting motif, the pipelines and wire network are basically components of a city as if it were imaginary dissected. This image is later repeated just after the crash when rooster's body is shown unscrambled, represented only by the individual organs, blood vessels or cells. The idea is topped up in the ―flashback‖ sequence, when the rooster‘s thoughts are broken into momentary images from his past. The narrative structure is skilfully linked by repetition of several key points. One of them is constant re-introducing the idea of component part. The principal idea of a whole dominating over the components such as human psyche governing the sum of bones and organs, and the ―life‖ of the city governing the sum of technical networks is also repeated several times. The film goes back to the idea of an unknown ―hidden world‖ beneath the surface. One can see it when following the water to the inside world starting with a water tap, the lemons to the subterranean world starting with sewer grate or the inner world that takes place inside the rooster's mind.

(fig.9,10)

Fig.9 fig.10

4.3.6 Technique

Despite the fact that the duration of the film is roughly ten minutes, it took about four years to make (Siegel n.pag.). Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are the ones, who supplied the ideas, the script and the aesthetic part of the film but tens of other people contributed to the creation of the film because an innovative multi-media approach was

67 invented while working on the film. The primary technique is very close to pixilation, which is basically frame by frame animation of live-action with the result of manipulated rather strange illusion of movement.

To get the primary live-action stock, they staged themselves and their friends as actors. The action was shot the action by a camera using a Hi8 analog format, which was later transposed to VHS format. By adding, subtracting, repeating or reordering frames, they managed to speed up, slow down, or otherwise depart from the original motion. Movement manipulation is a clear sign of link with the pixilation technique, only Tilby and Forbis took the technique a step further. They photocopied the carefully selected and thoroughly tested video prints on paper, added the animal characteristics, hand-drew and hand-painted details and background over the prints on paper.

Apparently, it was not an easy task to work with the prints as the artwork was small and the individual frames and not painted exactly the same. They vary in line and texture, which results in a kind of flickering or boiling effect in the final version of the film. As a result of this effect, the way the characters move is extremely real-like. Some of the takes, namely in the retrospective part, make the impression as if they were shot directly by an old home video camera rather than hand-drawn and hand painted on a film stock. The flickering effect makes the film lively and vivid but also in sequences lacking multiple images or in those parts without any moving object or character it works as a messy or distracting visual component.

The boiling was most difficult to control when the action held as there was no other movement in the frame to distract the eye. Some of the more detailed holds (most notably the toaster) were pure hell to render! It was for this reason that we stayed away from long (wide) shots (Forbis & Tilby qtd. in Siegel n. pag.)

The final product was shot again on 35 mm stock by a stop motion camera. The black and white sequences with drainage systems and body organs were hand-drawn on

68 paper, shot by 35 mm camera and reversed into negative on the Cineon.24 The 35 mm footages were then brought together and edited.

4.4 The Hat (1999)

Written, directed, animated and designed by Michéle Cournoyer Music by: Jean Derome with Joane Hétu, Jean René, Rainer Wiens, Pierre Janguay Produced by: The NFB,1999

4.4.1 Synopsis

A young woman works as a dancer in a bar. The beats of the music she is dancing to remind her of heavy steps of an unwelcome visitor. She recalls torturing memories of her childhood, when she was physically abused by a man, who used to wear a hat.

Whilst dancing, the young lady undertakes a painful inner journey full of disconnected memories and associations joined together by the obsessive reappearing of the image of the hat. She is dragged back and forth into the memories of the past and the present of the bar. The dancer does not only wear a hat as a part of her dancing costume but also as an integral part of herself being the symbol of her unhappy childhood. It is the hat that launched the parade of torturing memories, the one that cover hers head and her mind.

The film is without words but the images underlined by a great soundtrack speak loudly for themselves.

4.4.2 Mise-en-scene

The concept of mise-en scene in Gianetti‘s sense is not really applicable here. It can be partially applied several introductory scenes, which are rendered as if staged in minimalist theatre. On the white background appear only as many items as necessary.

The dancing stage, staircase to her bedroom, the girl‘s bed – everything is recognizable but not designed in detail or entirety.

24 A computer system designed by Kodak enabling digital intermediate film production used worldwide but only briefly between 1993 and 1997, when the technology was abandoned.

69 All of this signals that the actual setting is the dancer‘s head. The viewers are confronted with her point of view of the present - she dances naked in a bar that looks rather like a cafe than a strip bar, so the assumption is that she may be wearing at least some clothing but feels naked in front of the audience. The present is flashbacked by painful memories and obviously what one remembers is not a detailed description of the surroundings but the actual wrongdoings that one had to go through. Minimalist theatre is interlaced by "ballet dancing still-lifes‖ as if the dancer became nothing more than an artificial ballet dancer – such as those we know from the jewellery boxes. Such figures are inanimate i.e. incapable of suffering. The numbness and emotionless stage is overtaken by a series of outcries of naked wounded body. This time there is nothing that would at least slightly remind of a film shot in a live-action film. There is no time, no space, no scene – only a series of explicit images is flooding the scene. The minimalist approach highlights the suffering and explicit black imagery on the bright whine white background leaves no doubt of the horrible crime that tortures the dancer. Towards the end of the film the only images that repeat are the image of the hat, which remains the same and the image of the little girl, which gets cruder and blotted the more the dancer dives in her thoughts. The film is circularly closed with the same image as is the opening one – a close up of the dancer‘s face and chest.

4.4.3 Characters

The character of the dancer is peculiar (fig. 11). In fact it is structured like a Russian wooden toy doll – such that is designed as a hollow doll that contains another hollow doll containing another one. The surface doll is the adult dancer of the present on the timeline of the film. Thoroughly absorbed in the pace of music, her mind wonders to the image of the smallest doll inside her, who is the actual main hero of the story. It is the same girl only much younger, about 4-6 years of age. A girl petrified by the sound of

70 steps on the staircase; a girl, who does not have any idea about sex and does not understand what is going on. Fear is present her is eyes but her facial expression does not change. At first she does not no how to respond, later she is so overcome by the emotions and finally she is just numb.

Numbness is the essence of another doll, which is created around the little girl, it is a ballerina doll. The image of a ballerina( fig 12), whose dancing dress is actually the man's hat represents the phase of the dancer's life, when she dreams about becoming a dancer or even actually starts getting acquainted with dancing. Instead of encountering a relief in movement, she welcomes the strict ballet rules, which require the illusion of expressionless unified effortless movement. In her ballet dancing as well as in her life she becomes extremely disciplined as if being a machine disconnected from the horrible trauma. She applies the ballet dancing into her emotional life, she acts as if nothing is happening, as if she is the same as any other kids, as if being the same was effortless for her. She constructs a kind of shell around the little wounded child; she prohibits herself to show any emotions.

The third ―wooden doll‖ shell is an already adult woman. She fully understands what happened to her when she was a child. The numb phase is superseded by a wave of strong emotions, fumble and attempts to find her own sexuality. She feels different because of the horrible memories and feels as if thousands of eyes were seeking the origins of the difference her. Instead of closing herself up as she did before, she responds by counter strike. She doesn‘t hide from the imagined eyes; she decides to work as an exotic dancer, naked or almost naked for all the eyes of the on-looking hats to be seen. It almost seems that she finds a peculiar sense of redemption in offering her body on display.

71 The audience in the bar cannot see her psyche, is not aware of the parade of memories that is going on in the dancer‘s mind, they see her just as an object as a female body or more precisely as female reproductive organs. She, however, is haunted by the image of penis that posed a threat to her when she was little to such an extent that she thinks of herself as of giant penis. At this point the image of the hat and phallus are synonymic. She tries to cry out her childhood trauma but no words come out of her body, they are locked in her mind. Instead of protecting the little suffering girl inside her, she tries to get rid of it. Metaphorically, she rolls the girl – herself as a child – as if she were a cigarette and lights her up. The girl vanishes with the smoke but is not lost forever. She comes back whenever the hat is recalled.

The second main character is ―the hat‖ or the molester. It can be anyone a family member, even her own father, a family friend - just anyone. What is clear is that it is somebody she knows well because she is not afraid when seeing him and is accustomed to his presence. Also it is someone, who is trusted in the family because presumably is alone with the child, even her loud crying does not stop him from the abuse. The age or appearance are unimportant, at least to the memories of the girl that are presented in the film. The only thing that is engraved in the girls mind is him wearing a hat.

Fig. 11 fig. 12

4.4.4 Style

Cournoyer‘s style is seemingly simple: black ink drawing on white paper. She draws only the essentials and the sharp contrast between black and white makes the shocking

72 story even more mind-boggling. She works with optical illusions, employs innumerable metaphors to illustrate her point. Traceable art heritage in her work is not simple at all,

Cournoyer works with elements of opt art, expressionism and even surrealism. Opt-arts essential components are the black and white contrast and a playful nature of the image, in which it is the viewer who is to find what image is actually hidden in the entangled black and white field. In some sequences Cournoyer‘s style, follows the same principle, the playful principle is reversed becoming a kind of perverse play. It is not fun for the viewers decipher the optical illusions and find out what is actually happening; it is not a game the "hat" and the girl are engaged in.

Cournoyer employs line as the main visual means. The line ceaselessly mutates into a number of objects. It is the very essence of the style. The line changes from a clear, carefully designed one to blotted thick linear stains. It is as prominent mood creating component as in e.g. Edward Much paintings. His most famous painting The Scream

(1983) consists of uneven lines. The outline of the dancer is many times as uneven as the figure depicted in The Scream, it is crying out without anyone being aware of it. The stylistic discrepancies and one could even say intended flaws are more and more apparent, the more the main character thinks about her trauma. The line becomes jerky, nervous with a high degree of imperfection.

The ballet dancing sequences make the impression of being untimely, out-of pace, rather surreal. The unchanging expression on the girls face even when a loud screaming is heard in the soundtrack also adds to the surreal nature. Conceptually not stylistically,

Counroyer also reaches Belgian painter René Magritte. In an extremely realistic style,

Magritte depicts reality that is not entirely real. In Counroyer‘s reality several periods of time exist at the same time, the dancer is a child, an adolescent and an adult at the same time. Her memories do not correspond with the reality in the bar, yet they form part of

73 that reality because they represent the real state of mind of the dancer. The black lines the dancer is created with are one with her personality. As well as in Magritte's paintings his models partly become the inanimate wooden or marble statues, half of their body being human, half sculptured, the dancer seems to be half "alive" and half reduced to lines and blots symbolizing the stains of her mind.

4.4.5 Genre

The film is not only a short story about stolen childhood. It is a reflection on violence, a sociological study of what happens with human psyche after such a strong experience as a rape is. It basically has two layers. The first is personal rather psychological and is marked by the changes in visual style. The more unclear the lines, more distorted facial expression, blotted images, the deeper we see the actual depth of the psychological damage caused to the little child. The second layer is public and shows the relationship that the already adult dancer developed to the outside reality.

This second layer a kind of unwritten sociological probe putting the psychological damage as a defining element for her job choice, the way she perceives her audience and her inability establish the usual social bonds.

The film is no tale with a happy ending the child within the dancer does not manage come to terms with what happen, does not want to release herself from the torture of her memories. With slight exaggeration one may even say shows some mild traces of a horror story. The abusers face is never shown, the sound of his steps and loud screaming of the little girl work as tension creating elements.

Actually, the sound component of the film is particularly interesting. The sleezy heavy beat of the bar metamorphoses in heavy steps of the abuser accompanied by a high violin tone, such a tone that one hears when having terrible a headache - the head is absolutely empty only the ceaseless tone pesters the mind. Careful listener would not

74 miss the for the scene absolutely defining sound of turning of the key in a jewellery box in the ballet dancing sequences, which is accompanied by a circus-like rhythm. The repeating heavy beat of the bar music brings back not only the dancer‘s but also the viewers presumably wondering attention. The most important and most difficult to cope with part of the soundtrack is undeniably the girl‘s terrible screaming. Although in the beginning the abuser signal the girl to be silent, during the course of the film the abuse is getting worse and worse; in the end the molester cannot be prevented from doing what he does even by the child‘s almost inhuman screaming.

The Hat is not Counoyer‘s first reflexive film on unhealthy sexual relationship. A

Feather Tale (1992) dealt with sexual abuse, a story of an end of a non-romantic relationship based on unhealthy addiction. Her relatively recent film the Accordion

(2004) deals with virtual sexual encounter, in which the protagonists get so absorbed that they eventually become the component part of the computers.

4.4.6 Technique

The technique used is that of black ink drawings on white paper. This technique is relatively easy compared to the complicated technical schemes used in the previously analysed films and very powerful with regard to the topic chosen. The black and white contrast together with the ever more distorted lines makes the viewer realize the dancer‘s trauma to the full.

Originally, Cournoyer planned to create the film by using photo montage, which is a technique of motion-picture editing in which contrasting shots or sequences are used to effect emotional or intellectual response, and a computer. ―I took some photos of an actor in the stairs, in a bar, and I tried to do some reproductions of the photos. But it was too precise and doing the inbetweens was a nightmare. There were some beautiful parts,

75 but something was not working and I was feeling extremely sick.‖ 25 Apparently, the precise photographic images were too concrete, they did not have the power of hinting hidden meanings. Strangely enough it was not her but her boss Pierre Hebert, who discovered the power of her seemingly simple drawings. ―in my judgement her original approach was a dead end. She showed me the first crude drawings that she had been doing when she was researching the film, and I thought they were very powerful. I thought she should restart from that point.‖ 26

On seeing that the method really works, Cournoyer sketched the film in black ink on white paper and shot by a stop motion camera. Eventually, she edited the material on a computer, managing without a single cut creating an almost never-ending series of metamorphoses.

4.5 The Imprints (2004)

Written, directed, animated and designed by Jacques Drouin Music by: Francois Couperin Produced by: The NFB, 2004

4.5.1 Synopsis

The film starts with a pixilated depiction of the creator of the film, Jacques Drouin while working on the film itself. The pixilated i.e. real-like creative process in the beginning is then transposed within the frame of the pinscreen, on which an outline of a

25 thefreelibrary.com/ 26 thefreelibrary.com/

76 head is shown. Most probably it is an artist‘s head, very likely symbolizing Drouin‘s own head, so the viewers can see what is going on in his mind during creative process.

Similarly, minds of other both children and adult people can be seen later on in the film.

The ideas take various forms from lively organic ones to obsessively penetrative objects of technical nature. The film is rounded up by the image of the artist again, possibly indicating Drouin himself, as the final scene is crowned by the image of the pinscreen frame, which was actually used in the process of animation of The Imprints.

The film is basically a series of abstract images, some of which are highly symbolically coded, some are included for their great visual impact. It is also a variation on visual music as it was inspired by a Francois Couperin song for harpsichord Les

Barricades mystérieuses. Drouin created a non-narrative, non-verbal colourful film in which various ideas become literal imprints on human mind. In this particular case study the categories of characters and mise-en-scene in Giantetti‘s sense are absolutely irrelevant because Drouin's film is a mixture of abstract masterpieces and reflections on the way human mind works. Most importantly it is an ode on Drouin‘s favourite animation instrument: the pinscreen.

4.5.2 Style

Drouin mastered the technique of pinscreen animation in an absolutely unique way.

Moreover he had enough time to develop his own artistic expression within the technique. The Imprints is his 11th pinscreen animated film. If not deliberately accentuated, nobody could tell that the images were created on a pinboard. The pins are moved with such a precision that the shades make such perfect shape that the images seem as if produced in a 2D method such as painting or drawing. Compared to the unwieldy lines and too thick and dark shading of the inventors of the pinscreen

77 Alexeieff and Parker, most of Drouin‘s images are much softer, lighter and more precise.

This is evident namely in rendering the fire, symbolizing the outburst of the artist's creativity. The rendering as well as well as timing of the various phases of the burning flame is excellent. In many other scenes, namely with different tools and various rotary mechanisms, spirals appearing on the scene the style gets more crude. In comparison with Drouin‘s Mindscape (1978), the style becomes more radicalised. The shading is still soft and extremely precise but the soft round lines changed into sharp contrasting lines forming dark meanders and pointed zig-zaging twists.

The head of the artists as well as the other heads appearing in the film have no longer the dream-like qualities of old photographs from a distant past. The oval head shapes, expressive cheek bones and the overall schematic nature of the facial expressions became new markers of his style. It seems that Douin was inspired by some of the native arts or the "primitivist movement" within the western culture. The faces look rather like African tribal masks (fig. 13) than a mimetic rendering of the face. In his case it is not a historicizing style but rather a search for a form that would correspond to the content. Art it its various forms was with people since the first days of humankind, it was not decorative but meaningful. In various native cultures it was made for ritual or votive reasons. For Drouin animation seems to a be a kind of ritual; a process in which he himself becomes a schematic depiction of his mind and his ideas the images depicted on the screen.

As was mentioned above, the colours also seem to be endowed with a certain symbolic. The red flame seems to stand for the artists creativity the outburst of energy.

Lighter and cooler colours are either used as a natural background or to depict the steady strength of a well-thought-out plans as opposed to a sudden outburst of energy.

78 The creative ideas are represented by swiftly moving spiral or sea-shell shapes, slowly rolling heavy shapes with metallic texture seem to be a kind of obsessive thoughts that are in the way of the creative process. The spiral and organic shapes, however, seem to

"win" over the technical ones. Leaves of grass shaped lines cover a rotating metal plate, turning sea-shell launches a creative mental process in the artist‘s head. The creative wins over the destructive.

Fig 13

4.5.3 Genre

In spite of the fact that it contains figurative elements, The Imprints are undoubtedly a piece of abstract animation. The heads depicted are not abstract but they are not involved in as characters. Rather than that they are employed as containers for the ideas, the disparate objects that enter, grow and disappear in the human vessels. It could be argued that there actually is a story that describes the origin of a work of art. Yet the story also belongs to the realm of the "abstract" as the artwork is born from ideas. Ideas have not shape, weight, texture, mostly these are abstract concepts. Abstraction is thus present in the ideological as well as visual level of the film. Visually as well as conceptually, it is not story of the complex world of human ideas but a clear artist‘s statement. It is an open disclosure of the artistic process and a kind of love-song to the pin-board. It is a visual concert. More than anything it is a celebratory ode on the two artist‘s chief instruments: the creative mind and the pinboard.

79 Ideologically, it follows Drouin‘s masterpiece The Mindscape (1976), which depicts the creative process of a landscape painter. Here the idea is taken a bit further. One cannot help thinking of Marshall McLuhan‘s medium theory. In Mindscape the medium of painting was substituted by the medium of animation. In imprints it is a medium within a medium. In Mindscape the art of painting was the subject of animated film, in

The Imprints the subject of animation is the art of animation itself. The painter from

Mindscape is replaced by animator, the canvas is replaced by the pinboard. Not only that the opening scene shows that author while working but the tool itself, the pinboard is openly acknowledged at the end of the film. In this very last scene, the dreamlike mildly colourful images suddenly shrink on nothing more that thousands of pins pierced though a flat board. This approach consciously disrupts the psychological space created between the viewers and the film as it does not offer an alternative reality of the film but deliberately confesses the illusory nature of the film. Despite being aware that what one sees is just a visual trick of shadows, the viewer is soon taken in by the imagery and forgets that what s/he sees is just a play of light and not real objects appearing in front of the camera.

The crucial factor for the editing and timing was of course the music. Interestingly, the music was not chosen to accompany the film but the film was inspired by the song

Les Barricades mystérieuses by Francois Couperin. Again, it revives the tradition of

Norman McLaren's abstract jazz improvisations. The originality of the expression, innovation in the technique and most importantly the open disclosure of the animation process, tool and technique used and persona of the artist are the core of the concept. As well as in McLaren‘s abstractions the contribution lies in visual and most importantly conceptual originality of the work.

80 4.5.4 Technique

The technique used called pinscreen animation is absolutely unique. It is an extremely time consuming and challenging form of animation. The technique is based on working with a white board containing as many as 240 000 metal pins that are being pushed closer to the vinyl board by various tools. Interestingly, it is a combination of

2D and 3D techniques. The board itself is flat like a canvas but the pins protrude from the board in space creating the third dimension in what basically is a bas-relief. When lit from a side, the pins cast shadows, which create the desired images. The closer the pin, the shorter the shadow and the shorter the shadow the lighter the shade it produces. The pins are pushed with various tools; usually it is a stick. Creating an image on the pinboard looks almost as if paint were dashed on canvas with a brush. Thanks to the vast number of pins the board offers numerous possibilities of artistic expression because of the advantage of extremely precise and gentle shading. The spectre reaches from hyperrealist forms to dreamlike images.

Drouin is positively one of the two living animators using this technique27. Many have tried but since the technique was invented by Russian Alexander Alexeieff and his

American wife Claire Parker in 1933 for their film Night on Bald Mountain based on

Modest Mussorgsky‘s symphonic poem Night on a Bald mountain but Drouin was the only one who not only mastered the technique but also managed to make considerable improvements in it. In his masterpiece Mindscape (1976), he uses close-up, shot reverse shot and camera movements, which were not used before in connection with pinscreen animation. Gentle shading, and 3D-like imagery created by the shadows multiply the dreamlike qualities of the story of a landscape painter, who gets thoroughly absorbed in his own painting, in fact, in the landscape of his mind.

27 Animator Michèle Lemieux is using it to make her animated short Le grand ailleurs et le petit ici, produced by Julie Roy and slated for release in 2011.

81 Originally, it has been used only for creating black and white films, and in 1986 also colour was added. Drouin invented the colourful effects by experimentation with filtered light while working together with well known Czech puppet animator Břetislav

Pojar. In their narrative film Nightangel (in Czech Romance z temnot, 1986) telling a story of a man who suddenly goes blind they combined puppet and pinscreen animation.

The innovation did not stop with The Imprints, on the contrary. Besides using colourful lightning and camera movements, Drouin decided to make the board rotary.

This enables to use both sides of the board at the same time. Because of that one can see not only the ―positive‖ side of the image but also the reverse as if ―negative‖ depiction of the same object if the pinboard is turned 180 degrees. Being faithful to the title of the film Drouin not only ―draws‖ his images by pushing the pins with a stick, but places various objects to the pinboard pushing the pins covered by the objects. The size, shape and texture of the object are thus ―imprinted‖ on the pinboard (fig14).

Fig. 14

5. Filmic specifics

This chapter is to answer the main question posed in the thesis i.e. what is the nature of Canadian animation. It will present typical filmic features that distinguish it from animated films made in other countries and also explain exceptions to these typical features in an attempt to avoid generalisation. The main data for the following analysis of features typical of Canadian animation will be the above presented case studies, with

82 which the reader is already acquainted in detail. In order to have as broad information basis as possible also other animated films will be used as a supplementary data. As it is possible to trace a certain chronological development in the techniques and methods employed not only the 1990s films will be included but also their predecessors, namely

Ishu Patel‘s meditative Afterlife (1979), Richard Condie‘s sociological cartoon The Big

Snit (1985) and John Weldon‘s witty detective cartoon Special Delivery (1978), Wendy

Tilby‘ urban tale The Strings (1999) . Some of the recent animation jewels such as Shira

Avni‘s tender John and Michael (2004) will also be added.

5.1 New techniques

The case studies have shown that the greatest contribution of Canadian animation to the world animation lies in the development of new techniques. Canadian film environment became a unique ―laboratory‖, where advancement of animation techniques was not only possible but also desirable. Thanks to the financial support of the state through the NFB and also other institutions (Téléfilm Canada, Radio Canada), the artists had enough time and money to carry out the experiments. The most important factor, however, was the multi-cultural nature of NFB and Canadian cinematography as a whole as the NFB invited artists from all over the world to co-operate on their projects. As is characteristic from the very beginning of animated films in Canada, at least for those produced by NFB, many times the progress itself, or at least incentive for further development, were ―imported‖ to Canada from various other countries by inviting artists from abroad to work under the NFB label. The process started with inviting over the founder of animation Norman McLaren and continues till the present days.

Apart from using the usual cell animation, which is after the computer assisted animation the second most widely used technique internationally, the above mentioned

83 artists brought many innovative techniques ranging from those that stem from the traditional artistic methods such as etching (McLaren, Leaf), animation of sand or wet paint on glass (Caroline Leaf) to those reaching close to feature filmmaking such as re- working live action material into animation (Tilby and Forbis), pixilation of live action

(Norman McLaren) to absolutely exceptional pin-screen animation (Jacques Drouin).

Jacques Drouin devoted the whole of his professional life to perfecting of the technique of pinscreen animation. Until recently he was the only animator capable of working with this extremely difficult and time consuming technique. He found a whole range of new expressions for animation from a dreamlike gentle ―sfumato‖ style to crude real- like technical constructions of the Imprints.

Apart from finding new ways of expression, the new techniques also shook the foundations of animation theory. In 1952 when Norman McLaren was awarded an

Academy Award for his anti-war parable Neighbours (1952), he got the Oscar not in the category of animated films but as the best documentary. At that time pixilation was unknown and did not correspond with the idea of ―traditional‖ ways of animation. By creating Neighbours ASIFA‘s definition containing the phrase ―The art of animation is to create moving pictures using all methods, except live action‖ became obsolete.

McLaren used live action and yet what he created undoubtedly is animation as the movement is highly stylised. As shown in the case study the technique was later developed further by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby in When the Day Breaks.

Some techniques were so successful that they inspired people also outside animation. The technique of underlit sand was brought to the spotlight by Caroline Leaf in her film The Owl who Married a Goose (1974). Ukrainian Ksenya Simonova got acquainted with the technique and used it in a popular TV contest called Ukraine’s Got

Talent in 2009. In a contest where most people competed with singing, dancing or

84 theatre performances, she relied solely on the technique and a strong topic (life during the time of USSR‘s great patriotic war) and won. Apparently, the audience was not constituted of art connoisseurs or art historians. Apart from being deeply emotionally affected by the topic, they were also taken aback by the nature of the technique – the possibility to create an intricate image, which, in a split of a second, changes into another. By taking part in the contest Simonova managed to prove that art is able to communicate even in the time of information technologies The fact that she won just with a piece of glass, heap of sand and her own hands, proves that art, including the technique of sand animation, has its place and can resonate with average viewers.

The innovative potential in the field of animation is apparent in the case studies, which form just a small proportion of all the Canadian animated films. Many of the films test the boundaries of possible as regards the possibilities of the medium and the theory as well. Some of the techniques popularised by Canadian animation show became good examples of interdisciplinary overlap and succeeded in bringing attention to animated film as such not only the Canadian one. Considering that animation forms such a small proportion of culture, making it famous through unorthodox techniques is highly beneficial to the field as such.

5.2 Metamorphosis

An on-screen metamorphosis or transformation of one object into another is actually an invention of animation as Wells notes, ―some would argue that it is the constituent core of animation itself‖ (UA 69). It can be achieved by various means ranging from manual artwork to camera tricks. Most frequently it is employed in hand-drawn or hand-painted but also in cut out or plasticine stop-motion animation films. In animation, not only in the Canadian one, anything can become anything else. ―In enabling the collapse of the illusion of the physical space, metamorphosis destabilizes the image,

85 conflating horror and humour, dream and reality, certainty and speculation.‖ (UA 69)

Simply, it imparts even more enigmatic nature to animation. In Canadian animation, however, metapmorphosis has a special standing.

It became a prominent feature as it became the major means of expression of two artists – the founder of Canadian animation Norman McLaren, who employed it in his abstract films and the French Canadian animator Michéle Cournoyer, who chose the metamorphic style of narration for her hand drawn films. Secondly, in Canadian animation metamorphosis is used not only as a technical device to create instability or moment of surprise, which is the way it is employed in other national animated cinematographies but also as a means for communicating intricate messages that are difficult to express verbally or in messages that are not very easily captured in the usual chronological narration schemes.

Norman McLaren‘s abstract films are all based on metamorphosis. It is even possible to say that these films actually are a constant metamorphosis. In his etched and hand-painted films dots and lines change their shapes, divide into several objects or unite. They diminish, explode or even disappear in order to appear as something completely different. The dots and lines not only change their shape but also move all over the celluloid frame as if they were notes in a partitude. Therefore it comes as no surprise that McLaren made his films as visualization of jazz music. In his early abstractions McLaren uses only several colours – black, red and blue – to create series of abstract images which are gradually modified one into another. Not only the shapes transform but also the colours change. Although McLaren was the first one to create films solely based on modifying shapes, lines and dots, his way of employing the metamorphosis is not yet entirely specific. It is quite logical that one needs to constantly modify images in order to create an abstract art animation. Apart from the natural logic,

86 metamorphosis is used as a purely aesthetic means. It can be playful and amusing but still the main quality in McLaren‘s films is that they are aesthetically specific.

Abstraction lead Jacques Drouin to similar approach in employing metamorphosis in

The Imprints. Although there are some cuts in the Imprints, metamorphosis is the dominant form of moving the film forward. Metamorphosis is employed as a magnifying glass that highlights the visual otherness of images created with the help of the pinboard. The shapes merge one into another, follow one another, destroy one another but the flow of shapes textures and objects continues. Besides the aesthetic use of animation Drouin, elevates metamorphosis also to the position of an auxiliary semantic device – metamorphosis is basically a metaphor for the creative process that is the main topic of the film. Constant changing of the images is directly related to constant changing of ideas in artist‘s head. Metamorphosis actually is the embodiment of the creative process. It is a metaphor for a creative process but also a direct sign of one.

Contrary to McLaren or Drouin, for Cournoyer the aesthetic part seems to be secondary. She starts with a simple hand-drawn line that in the course of time takes on different shapes and transforms itself in the heroes or more precisely heroines of stories, she wants to tell. The majority of her films is without words and metamorphosis works as a narrative means. Its role in Cournoyer's films is two-fold. Joining ideas in an associative manner establishes metamorphosis as a means of communication with the viewer. Instead of the images themselves, it is the rapid transformation of images that is the conveyor of meaning. Cournoyer also uses it in a dynamic way. Mutation into objects as different as in the case of The Hat, creates inherent conflicts and thus works as narrative device, a way of moving the story forward. The contrasting images join together in a story full of tension, suffering and obsessive thoughts.

87 At the same time her metamorphosis wants to shock, wake up the audience, create a strong response. Metamorphosis is also a clear signal that nothing is what it seems to be at the first sight. As well as in reality nothing is certain and nothing is to be taken for granted. It is a synonym of hidden meanings and unforeseen contexts. Nobody knows what is hidden in the utmost depths of human mind and memory. As was illustrated in the case study of The Hat, the actual hat is a powerful symbol and conveys multiple meanings. The first meaning is mimetic to reality. It is simply a headwear of the dancer and men around her. Metaphorically, it stands for a molester, who sexually abused the heroine, when she was a child. Thanks to metamorphosis the hat transforms into many things, covers her body as if the heroine has fallen into an inescapable trap and ultimately becomes inherent to her body because the traumatic memory is still vivid for the heroine. She is so full of her memories that she physically becomes the memories, or rather just one, the one of the hat. Metamorphosis allows for many such physical objectifications of metaphors. Later, as an adult, the heroine literally feels thousands of eyes on her body and numerous hands touching her.

Through metamorphosis Cournoyer juxtaposes extremely dissimilar images. The headgear soon in becomes the little girl‘s dress and eventually the little girl mutates in a giant penis, which is rather shocking. For Cournoyer, however, metamorphosis is not only a means of shocking but also means of highlighting painful issues that should be talked about but instead are kept secret. Instead of using words, which are often incapable of expressing such daunting issues, she lets metamorphosis to speak for her.

Her films are full of symbolism, which is, however, frequently followed by absolute straightforward imagery that leaves no doubt what ideas each symbol should convey. In

The Hat, as well as in Accordion (2004) and Robes of War (2009) she directly

88 approaches taboo issues without wrapping them in socially acceptable euphemisms and metamorphoses help her to achieve that.

It is clear that in Canadian animated films, metamorphosis is not only purely visual means or just instrument of destabilisation, which according to Wells is the chief functions of metamorphosis. Besides allowing transformation and juxtaposition of dissimilar images it was appointed a new function in Canadian animation. It works surprisingly well as narrative means. Quintessentially the swift parade of symbolic images is capable of expressing what cannot be transmitted in words.

5.3 Documentariness

Documentary filmmaking is, of course a broad and rich category seemingly miles away from the realm of animated films. As is obvious from the history of the NFB, in

Canada the two categories exist side by side. It is not an exception that an animated short was made a part of a documentary as e.g. is the case of Ishu Patel's Afterlife

(1978), which was inserted in a documentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead made by the NFB. The two can exist not only side by side but can also be combined in order to create absolutely innovative genre: the animated documentary. As early as in 1993

Frederic Back was the first animator ever to create an almost feature length animated documentary. The above presented case study of the Mighty River is a clear proof that the two can be well combined together without losing charm or typical features of any of two. The drawings are nicely stylised in contrast with the technically precise narrative of the river‘s history told in the "voice of God narrator‖ manner - so typical of

Canadian documentaries – are just two of the many proves that the two genres were combined successfully. Mighty River started a new era and the animation documentary model was successfully used also outside Canada. Two extremely well made examples

89 are the French documentary animated feature-length film Persepolis (2007) or Waltz with Bashir (2009) of Israeli- German- French co-production.

It is not only the documentary nature of a film, however, that displays the features of documentariness as animated documentary is rather an exception than a rule in

Canadian animated cinematography. For the imaginative and poetic that most of the

Canadian animated films are, there is still space for documenting qualities that can be enshrined under the title notion of documentariness. The name encompasses the notion of preserving real-life data, of the films being a witness to the era they were made in and record the views and life standpoints of their creators. There is a long tradition of documentary filmmaking in Canada and the tendency to map and examine what is going around us, what processes exist in human society and in the nature as such is also reflected in Canadian animation.

It is the very Canadian association of film predominantly with documentaries and the focus on adult viewers that ―import‖ such qualities into animation. In other national animated filmographies the documentary nature of the films is less tangible because in many countries animation is mostly aimed at children viewers and so the genres created are usually extremely imaginative like fairy-tale or cartoon. Even though animation is closer to abstraction rather than reality on Furniss‘s scale, more often that not animated shorts unveil information that concerns the reality outside the film. Nevertheless, this does not mean that, with the exception of animated documentaries, animators have the ambition to copy documentary filmmaking or feature film layouts.

A great share of Canadian animation does not loose any of its stylization or symbolism and precisely therefore it is able to bring to the light details, ideas or problems that may not be so striking in realistic filmmaking. Very often, it is the

―unrealistic‖ nature of animation, which is only representation, a reflection of reality

90 that helps to bring up issues that otherwise would be overlooked. That is why sometimes animal characters are employed, even though the film might not be a fable.

A good illustration of that is the film presented in the case study of When the Day

Breaks, which is ―cast‖ by animal characters that behave in human way. In fact they even seem more human than if human characters had been used because by performing their daily routines, they attract attention to things that usually pass unnoticed. They deconstruct the reality of life into physical and mental. The physical being represented by such small tangible details and electric wires, water pipes, lemons. The mental reality, in fact, is constituted by memories, feelings, and emotions. Both groups are further broken into abstract concepts that in the end join the both mental and physical reality in such notions as levels of belonging into a certain spatial and temporal reality, which is illustrated by the sequences on the surface and in the subterranean world of the sewerage pipes, which can be seen as a parallel to the Pig‘s ―surface ideas‖ concerning finishing the breakfast and "underworld" thoughts about the accident in her mind. By drawing such parallels the film in fact documents concepts that are omnipresent in human existence but difficult to depict such shared human experience by total strangers or the role of coincidence. It also plays with the importance of a certain detail on both mental and physical level i.e. Why do we notice certain things (falling lemons) and not other (red light on traffic lights)? Why do we recall seemingly unimportant moments of our lives?

Despite some witty moments, the animated short deals with lethal accident. The artists Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis chose to arrange this crucial scene in a similar way as would be portrayed in a feature film or a documentary. The animals appearing on the scene, i.e. the two dogs following the ambulance car as depicted in fig. 5 are not personified humans but realistically rendered animals. They accentuate the point that

91 car accidents are an unfortunate part of our daily life and want to make the audience aware that it is not a mere part of a story-line, it is a fact that concerns each person living in contemporary society. Even though there are animal characters, moreover stylized in the 1930s era, When the Day Breaks displays events, feelings and situations from the contemporary urban life. Not only in this single example but in many others, the documentary qualities operate at various levels ranging from small details to complex abstract concepts.

Considering the abstract concepts, which form the largest instance of the documentary part of animation, mostly these are sociological observations or statements that comment on what is happening in the real-life society. These could be the feeling of being lost in a big city or unexplainable sadness after witnessing a terrible event, which hidden behind the story of the above mentioned Tilby‘s and Forbis‘s film. Apart from the complex concepts that lie behind the stories, the setting and also tiny details tell about the relationship to the world outside the cinematic one. Such a detail as the shape of a socket or panorama of a city skyscrapers links the story to reality. Thanks to these details, the audience is able to say that a film takes place e.g. in Montréal – as is again the case of When the day Breaks. Such settings as snow covered houses with large fireplaces, occupations such as log driver or an image of a hockey player with a maple leaf depicted on his sporting costume leaves little doubt that the environment depicted is the Canadian one. This is not to say that all Canadian animated films openly declare the culture of origin. Very often, they present cross-cultural issues and therefore such identification would not be desirable.

The documentary nature of the film is manifested in many ways as we could see in this section. Of course, there are many animated films that are pure concerts of imagination without any trace of a documentation attempt or search for ways to

92 reinterpret the reality. Nevertheless, such films still document the time, place and culture of their creation. If not by what they say, then by merely being what they are. By their mere existence. Without a single exception, all Canadian animations are documents of the contemporary animated film production as e.g. all Canadian novels document the nature of Canadian literature. By examining them one can find out what the issues of the day were like, what was the type of film amusement the audience preferred or how advanced the film techniques and also technology were at the time these films were made.

5.4 Darkness and light

It is not very typical for animation to work with the concepts of light or darkness.

With the exception of puppet animation, which basically can be interpreted as live- action with inanimate actors, animated scene is usually rendered as depth-lacking 2 D picture largely built around steady colourful fields and lines defining such fields. Due to the demanding nature of the animation making process, illusion of light is relatively scarce in hand-drawn or hand-painted animation. Of course, there are examples of auteur animators from around the world make occasionally make use of the light and darkness dichotomy in their work but Canadian auteurs work with in a rather specific manner.

Darkness and light are in Canadian animated films employed on two levels symbolic and style-defining. In the former darkness and light are employed as semantically meaningful representatives of abstract concepts, the latter assigns darkness and light the role of tools for defining visual side of the film.

On the first level its function is that of a symbol. It symbolically defines safe and potentially dangerous environments as in Two Sisters and When the Day Breaks. The

Pig from the last mentioned film tries to hide from the outside world as well as from her

93 turbulent feelings by closing the shade restricting herself from the bright sunshine outside of her apartment. Darkness is a shelter to her. Only after she reconciles her feelings and calms down again, the shade is rolled up giving way to the blinding sunlight. By calming down her uneasy emotions, she managed to make her world safe for her again, which is represented by the return of light into the film.

In Two Sisters darkness and light operate in a similar way only compared to the above mentioned film both darkness and light change their meaning by 180 degrees depending on the perspective. At first it is darkness which is omnipresent in the "safe" environment of the sister's home and light is the ―intruder‖ coming in with the stranger.

When Viola finds out that the world outside of the house is not at all dangerous, it is the daylight that means safety and darkness that symbolizes the threat of isolation. Seen from Marie‘s perspective however, it is still the darkness that makes her feel comfortable. Darkness and light can also be understood as markers the binary opposites of ―positive and negative‖, ―good and bad.‖

Creation of darker and lighter spaces by using dark and light spectrum of colours abundantly incorporated in the Mighty River. Back clearly distinguishes between the harmonious and exploitative historical periods. To depict the times of peace and harmony of humankind with the river, he deliberately uses lighter colour tones as if to put label them as good, positive and desirable for the future. When depicting eras of ruthless resource exploitation, wars or inconsiderate technical intervention in the river channel he tends to draw in thick brown or black outlines with darker shades of the colour as if to warn against the bad and negative impact of human activity. However, such labelling is not new or specific for Canadian animation. Villains can be recognized by darker clothing and negative things happen during storms when the darkness covers the sky.

94 What is quite relatively more unusual is the way darkness and light are used as style-defining features in some of the films presented in the case studies. Stylistic level of working with light can also be illustrated on the example of Mighty River. Back creates an illusion of light permeating the vast body of water in a realistic manner as if the film was not drawn but shot directly with a camera. The play of sunrays in and outside the water defines his impressionistic style. Besides placing Back among such giants as Renoir or Monet, the gentle play of light is also a proof of a unique approach to animation in which light creates depth in a similar way as in painting.

Light or rather darkness in also a style defining means for Caroline Leaf. Besides being meaningful in Two Sisters, darkness is for Leaf a tool of creating the fragmentary nature of the film. It takes almost a quarter of the film to put the jigsaw puzzle of close- ups of body parts, furniture, dishes appearing from the darkness together and get an idea what the setting and characters are like. It provides moment of surprise because the viewers are not able to see Viola‘s face and therefore cannot guess the source of conflict in the film. Darkness defines the mystique of the film.

5.5 “Ugly” characters

This section is devoted to a peculiar curiosity that distinguishes the animated artwork of Canadian provenience from other animated films. Of course, there are exceptions such as Frederick Back‘s dreamy soft characters in Mighty River but in vast majority of the films the characters are special in the way they look. Regardless of whether these are puppets, cut outs, hand drawn or computer generated ones, the characters in Canadian animated films are not outspokenly nice. In fact at times they even tend to be quite ugly and there are reasons for that.

The appearance of a character usually depends of the authorial style of a filmmaker.

This can also be found in Canada as in many cases it is possible to tell the author

95 according to his or her style and even find a certain development of the authorial style.

However, the general tendency to create likeable or interesting rather than explicitly

―pleasant-to-look‖ at characters is quite common for almost all Canadian animators.

The strongest underlying reason for that seems to be the continuous, conscious or unconscious, struggle with the quantitatively bigger and economically more successful production of their southern neighbour. Many animation studios such as Disney28 and the like are primarily focused on films for children and therefore the norm was to create nice characters, mostly animals, in order to satisfy their little viewers.

The general tendency towards distinct visual style for characters in Canadian production is a constant self- proclamation of Canadian animated film as an art form as opposed to ―just a‖ cartoon for children. Even the cartoony characters such as the Big

Snit do not look very likable, they have enormous teeth and strangely shaped eyes.

In non-cartoon animation the prevailing tendency for the figures in an unclear outline. This could be best seen in the case study of Caroline Leaf‘s Two Sisters. The distortion of outline is also obvious in the case of the main heroine of The Hat, who becomes the more distorted the more she dives back into the memories of her childhood. Contrary to the slender cartoony figures of the majority international production, Canadian animated characters, this time including Back‘s characters, tend to be round and chubby. Many times the heroes are elderly people, some even suffer a physical disfiguration and majority of them has an ―aura‖ of sadness as is e.g. the case of the dancer in The Hat or Viola and Marie in Two Sisters character and therefore has a clear outline and nice figure but there is no trace of happiness on her face. The way the characters are depicted is a strong statement defining animation as an art for grown ups

28 Disney is even well- known for establishing rules for animators as to in what way to draw a character in order to appear nice and amiable on the screen.

96 not only because of their shabby looks or depressed faces but also the issues they deal with - including severe diseases and death in many cases.

6. Canadian specifics

This last analytical chapter of the thesis is of rather intertextual nature. It is to find out whether and how the animation as a cultural product differs from other components of Canadian culture such as literature, painting of feature film. The aim is to explore whether animation affirms or is in contrast with the general tendencies of Canadian culture. I am fully aware that such a study is rather problematic. The concept of national culture itself is a social construct rather than a practical fact but undeniably specific details of one ―national‖ culture are truly different from cultural specifics of another state. Bill Marshall qtd. in Já, my oni enumerates the risks of examining national cinematography.:

―To identify a national cinema is first of all to specify a coherence and a unity, it is to proclaim a unique identity and a stable set of meanings. The process of identification is thus invariably a hegemonizing, mythologizing process, involving both the production and assignation of a particular set of meanings, and the attempt to contain or prevent the political proliferation of other meanings.‖ (qtd. in Kyloušek et. al.: 252)

Obviously, Canadian culture is not monolithic but takes the form of mosaic of various tendencies and influences. Although examining a national filmography necessarily involves a certain degree of generalisation, nevertheless I would like avoid the risks of mythologizing or hegemonizing Canadian animation as presented by

Marshall by paying attention to major tendencies as well as exceptional instances of

Canadian animation. Obviously compared to literature or painting, animated film is a minor component but still it predicates of the Canadian society and its people. Therefore the secondary question is to what extent it is specifically Canadian. As well as the previous chapter, this chapter is based of the above presented four cases studies plus the

97 already mentioned supplementary resources enriched with Belinda Oldford‘s Come

Again in Spring (2007), Caroline Leaf‘s The Street (1976), Ishu Patel‘s Paradise (1984) and Maculay/Weldon‘s witty Special Delivery (1978) and Log Driver’s Waltz (1979).

6.1 Landscape

Landscape is omnipresent in Canadian art. The fascination by the character of

Canadian landscape starts with the vivid descriptions of nature of the first settler writers

Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie, through Hermann Voaden‘s modern plays, in which nature rather than landscape was included rather almost as another character rather than just a setting. It was more felt than depicted but still played an important role. Obviously it was the fine arts that were the most devoted to the theme of landscape. In fact, landscape painting is the dominant genre in Canadian fine arts since the very early paintings and it is the landscape painters that are known also outside

Canada such as Emily Carr or the Group of Seven.

Frederic Back‘s Mighty River not only uses that aesthetics of the Group of seven but also shares their admiration of nature. The almost half an hour documentary is a tribute to the life-giving Saint Lawrence River and also one large landscape painting.

Moreover, it is a truly moving depiction of landscape in all senses of the word.

A landscape painter is a hero of Jacques Drouin magnificent short film the

Mindscape (1976). The film opens with an artist thinking about landscape he is just about to paint. While painting, he gets so absorbed in the activity that he literally enters the picture. He experiences the natural world that surrounds him and at the same time explores the world of his own mind which became identical with the outside world. In the sequence where he returns to the house of his parents and finds a box with memorabilia from his childhood, it is clear that the painter was deeply affected by the landscape even as a child. Among the mixture of his memories and the actual objects,

98 one can clearly find images of mountains, lakes or butterflies. The painter‘s ideas blur into abstract object only to become mountain scenery with swiftly flowing river or to join in an image of a leaf. Nature and the landscape he is portraying unified with his inner world. The film ends when the painter exits the picture, in the final scene one can see the finished picture hung on a wall of the painter‘s atelier.

Contrary to the works of before mentioned famous landscape painters that are praised for their vivid colours, Mindscape is a black and white film. In 1976 Drouin did not find out how to employ colour in the pinscreen technique yet and, importantly, it refers to past, to a memory, which might have lost its colours but nothing from its impressiveness. In the final image from the painter‘s atelier, the finished painting is depicted in the presence of several clocks. The image of clock as a representation of time was used earlier in transforming a tragic childhood memory into a labyrinth of thoughts, which leads no nothing else but the image of a valley that was used in the opening part of the film. For the painter, the image of landscape substitutes his childhood memorabilia, which were destroyed in fire. It is the only the landscape that is left for him, that remained unchanged even though he himself has changed. It seems everything changes in the course of time but only the landscape is still the same. In order to get hold of this memory, of the natural witness to his life, the painter creates a tangible copy of what he has seen. The search for the timeless, for something beyond human lifetime seems to fuel the Canadian interest in landscape as a theme in artwork.

Language they speak or culture they come from does not matter in this search as the mountains, streams or prairies have always been there and are imprinted in the minds of

Canadian artists.

It is necessary to mention the turn from landscape to ―Urbanscape,‖ which is the basically the ―nature of a city‖ in visual arts including animated film. Richard Condie‘s

99 The Big Snit (1985), Amanda Forbis‘ and Wendy Tilby‘s films all open with an image of a city and its ―nature‖. In these films the urbanscape is employed as a sort of framework which creates a background for the stories told in the films. Such a shift from the given (mountains) to the constructed (skyscrapers) environments reflects contemporary life and conditions for living in a town or city. Instead of romanticizing tendencies in landscape painting it depicts the most common living environment, manmade streets, buildings and their specific beauty. It is conscious of the fact that when looking out of a window most people can see block of flats instead of snowy mountains or hear the traffic instead of birds singing, which can make equally strong impression on the viewer as the views and sounds of landscape. As opposed to photography and painting, which try to find beauty in common items or seek for unexpected visual forms when depicting urbanscapes, in animated film the ―urban landscape‖ is rather a defining factor than a visual means. It is the environment which to a great extent defines human lives, which is to be discussed in the second part of the following section devoted to the theme of isolation in animated films.

Very specific phenomenon concerning landscape in connection with Canadian identity is the ―idea of the North‖. The idea stems from the geographical position of the country and also other defining factors of the North as presented in 1960s by Louise

Edmond-Hamelin. However, it is much more than that. The idea encompasses the way

Canadians define themselves through art, popular culture and their lifestyle as the people of the North. Among the films reflecting this concept may be the adaptations of

Inuit legends such as The Owl who Married a Goose (1974) by Caroline Leaf.

The subject may be also be treated in a very humorous way, but still informative enough of the lifestyle in Canada. Eunice Maculay‘s and John Weldon‘s short black comedy is based on usual winter activity that is to be performed on a daily basis. The

100 main character Ralph was to clear the snow from the front walk like anyone else in his quarter does but he didn‘t do so. Thus he unintentionally caused the death of a local mailman and launched an avalanche of extraordinary events. Apart from dealing with universal issues such as authoritative cheating wife, it proudly declares the reality

(although an animated one) of life in the north among snow covered streets and large fireplaces dominating the living rooms.

Maculay and Weldon play with some of the attributes of nordicity also in their, again quite witty, Log Driver’s Waltz (1979) from the Canada’s Vignettes series. In the rhythm of the song, which gave name to the short film, paces a story of a girl, who had multiple suitors but she chose to marry a log driver for his dancing talent. The story is basically an ode on log drivers, adoring their skills and highlighting their relationship to nature as the log driver, obviously, spends most of his time on the river amid forests. It is precisely the log driver‘s occupation, vast green forests are and animals such as moose that work well as the attributes of nordicity in this film.

As the last example of a film reflecting the not modern but the traditional understanding of the idea of North there is the Belinda Oldford‘s recent work Come

Back Again in Spring (2007). Although based on a story written by a US author Richard

Kennedy, Come Back Again in Spring perfectly fits in the traditional way of understanding the idea of north in relation to the northern landscape. The story of Come

Back Again in Spring takes place in snow covered wilderness, so praised by Canadian painters. It is a tale of an old man living in the meadows, who spends his days remembering the past, wood-chopping and mainly taking care of birds, which are dependent on him during wintertime. One day Death appears with the Book of Time wants to take the old man with him. By answering tricky questions the old man outwits the Death and can take care of the birds till spring. In this short film the landscape is not

101 important as the viewer does not really get to see the shapes of landscape covered under the snow, rather it is the wilderness, the nature itself that is actually a participant in the old man‘s struggle with the Death. The Death asks questions concerning the old man‘s

2nd and1st birthday and even the day he was born. The old man would not be able to answer the tricky questions himself, it is the smell of dried plants or the birds‘ singing that reminds him of the right answers. Again, as well as in the Mindscape the nature is a witness and to a certain extent also a tangible record of the past.

For Canadian animated films landscape is not only a setting. It is one of the strongest themes. It represents the eternal and reviving as opposed to finite and fragile that we humans are. Very often landscape in its various forms is another character in the film being a silent witness of human activity but also condition defining the quality and nature of human life.

6.2 Isolation

Isolation of one kind or another is closely connected with the fascination by landscape and nature. Canada is a vast country covering half of the North American continent with relatively low density of population, so it is no wonder that one of the major themes in Canadian art be it literature, theatre, visual art or film is isolation. One of the causes of isolation is the actual distance or natural conditions, which is not highlighted in animated films to such an extent as in painting (e.g. The Group of Seven) or theatre (e.g. Herman Voaden).

In animation the physical isolation is usually secondary and combines with another type of isolation of either mental or social character. A good example of such combination is Caroline Leaf‘s short Two Sisters (1991). The two heroines live in an unspecified remote island, which can only be reached by overcoming a large body of water. At the same time one of the sisters, Viola, suffers a severe disfiguration of face.

102 The two choose to live in a dark space separated from the outside world by thick walls of a house which is already isolated by the sea. The idea of isolation is even more supported by a frequent depiction of a thick lock on the door of their house, which does not serve its purpose because there is nobody to protect the house from; only, it locks the sisters outside the rest of the world. The disfigured one, Viola, also experiences isolation from the reality as she works as a writer and spends most of her time in her imagination weaving her stories together.

Similar combination of a remote place and social exclusion can be found in Shira

Avni‘s John and Michael (2004). John and Michael are two friends suffering from the

Down syndrome living in an institute amid hills and woods. Again it is the geographical location of the institute that isolates them but more importantly, it is their condition that leads to their living in such a remote place. Eventually these two are also separated from each by John‘s death, which is the ultimate form of isolation. However, all of the forms of isolation, surprisingly including the ultimate one, seem to be overcome in the film.

Friendship, love and imagination seem to be the key. After John‘s death, Michael imagines that John, or John‘s soul, is still with him in the form of a giant owl which takes care of him.

In comparison with Viola from Leaf‘s film there are two main differences. Firstly

Viola is aware of her physical difference and it is her own will to live in isolation, whereas John and Michael are not aware of being different as they live with other people with the Down syndrome in the institute. They are often isolated from their fellows not because they would be ashamed of their condition but because they enjoy spending time together. The second difference is that in the end Viola recedes to darkness again being locked out of the sunshine and the outside world by her

103 authoritative sister, whereas John and Michael seem to overcome the abyss between life and death.

Apart from geographical isolation or the actual exclusion from society caused by mental of physical impairment there is the kind of personal or individual isolation. As was suggested in the previous section, it is an isolation of bigger cities, where have their families or their friends but still spend most of their time on their own among the four walls of their homes. The main characters may live in a city full of people but still feel isolated or more often enter a voluntary isolation in order to escape the stress of the big city.

Wendy Tilby‘s films The Strings (1991) deals with people who live in the same building but for some reason remain total strangers. They meet on the corridors, in the elevators but live in a kind of bubbles separating one from another. The films depict the blocks of flats as a kind of constructions with the individual cubicles inhabited by the protagonists of the stories. People divided by walls are connected only through plumbing or electricity wires. Thus the connecting motif is not revealed by the means of storyline or behaviour of the characters. Contrary to the possible expectations of a viewer the connection is illustrated on inanimate, solely technical details. However, such details as the toaster being plugged in the same electric network as a kettle in a different flat offer the only possible answer to the problem. The answer is humanity.

Only in being aware that the others are the same human beings as we are provides the link between the millions of anonymous neighbours, which is well illustrated in another

Tilby's film When the day breaks presented here among the case studies. Interestingly, the idea of humanity as a basic principle of all people is displayed via animal characters, so a young lady, who actually witnesses death of a stranger is a pig and the stranger is a rooster.

104 6.3 Non dramatic stories, psychological focus

Many of the features discussed in this thesis are only partially relevant to the case studies. The overarching element that at least to some extent concerns all Canadian narrative animations is relatively low amount of dramatic action. The stories somehow calmly float in space and time as if the film witnessed an on-going process that has started before the beginning of a film and is not resolved within the space of a film.

There is not much introducing action, the characters are shown in usual situations eating breakfast, combing their hair or dancing concerning the films presented in case studies.

The first takes which give minimum information as to what is going to happen or what are the characters like are followed by a conflicting event (car accident, arrival of a stranger). The films usually end with no clear resolution leaving it up to the viewers to decide the actual meanings of the stories‘ conclusion.

It may seem biased to make such an assumption based on just 3 purely narrative films presented in the case studies. However, the trend of non-dramatic fluid stories is present in many other Canadian animated films. Wendy Tilby‘s The Strings, two neighbours with peculiar hobbies meet. Jacques Drouin‘s Mindscape is an associative tale of landscape painter‘s memories and dreams. The most recent Academy award winning Madame Tutli Putli spends most of the film seated in a train compartment packed with her belongings deeply buried in her thoughts and fears.

Indeed rather than twists and turns in the stories the films concentrate with the inner worlds of the heroes. What is seen is not as important as what is felt from the animated shorts. This quality is shared with a several Canadian feature films which concentrate on human psychology rather than on amount of action actually going on on the screen.

In loose translation Tomáš Pospíšil wrote when commenting on Strangers in good company (1990), Canadian feature film by Cynthia Scott, something like this: Another

105 characteristic feature is a deeper insight in the character's psychology. The less dramatic action appears in the film, the more space is left for viewers‘ contemplation and empathy29.‖ (Kyloušek et. al 257). These words characterize well not only feature films, in which the psychological state and disposition of the characters are more important that the action taking place, but also a great majority of Canadian animated films.

Of course there are also animated shorts in which there is a relatively high amount of dramatic action as e.g. Richard Condie‘s The Big Snit, where an explosion of atomic bomb and apocalyptic vision of people fleeing their home are depicted but the main topic is again psychological. Foremost the film deals with an elderly couple, who are more or less bored with each other, are unable to tolerate each other's bad habits and follow their little rituals in cyclical arguments and reconciliation.

Contrary to famous cartoons the heroes of the majority of Canadian animated short are no super-heroes with super powers; no self- made men. Rather than that they are ordinary people depicted in ordinary situation. They do not dream about enormous success, they have their little worlds and little activities. Mostly they are questioning their deeds, relativizing the success if there was any like e.g. Viola in Two Sisters. Even though she apparently is a successful writer, she has hard time believing that she is famous outside of her little island. Very often the heroes are even deficient in some way

- that is again the example of Viola or the two heroes of John and Michael.

6.4 Strong emotions , taboo topics

Usually, not much action is going on and the films ultimately appeal to feelings rather than reasoning. In fact, contrary to other animated filmographies they reach beyond the statement of Jiří Kubíček based on Alexei Orlov‘s animation film theory

29 Dalším charakteristickým prvkem je hlubší ponor do psychologie postav, oč méně je ve filmu dramatické akce, o to více je zde materiálu k diváckému zamyšlení a empatii. (Já, my, oni, 257, comment on Cynthia Scott‘s feature Strangers in good company 1990)

106 (Alexei M. Orlov qtd. in Kubíček 60), which says that animated film cannot generate strong emotions among the audience. When constructing the theory, Orlov and subsequently Kubíček had in mind the respective bodies of Russian and Czech animated films, which mostly consist of puppet fairy-tale like stories or hand-drawn gag cartoons.

These of course work with gentle emotions among which are listed amusement, sadness and ―lyrical‖ feelings, shame, interest and, of course, the moment of surprise.

Both theoreticians also highlight the short film format as one of the main reasons for creating a lower emotional response among the audience as, according to them, there is not enough time to relate to character in an animated film. It is true that due to the film format limitations, the number of characters is not very high and the stories are not terribly complicated but I dare to say that in many a Canadian animated film the self- identification of a viewer with the character is not only possible but is necessarily established; otherwise the films would not be successful at all.

In order to enjoy most of the films, one has to understand the feelings of e.g. the lady Pig in When the Day Breaks (1997) Without imagining oneself in the position of the heroes, the viewer is unable to enjoy what the animation actually wants to tell. In such a case the audience is left only with the storyline itself i.e. in both cases there is nothing much going on until a death occurs and that, clearly, cannot be undone, which means the films are going to end. When concentrating on the emotional content of the animations there is much more to explore than that. As far as to such example of film with subtle or partly hidden emotional content, the cinematography is compatible with the statement rejecting the creation of strong emotions because compassion and self- identification with the hero are not yet regarded strong emotions. In the category of strong emotions there are happiness, anger, fear or disgust.

107 It is necessary to acknowledge that the emotional response is highly individual but still there are animated shorts that generate a huge response in very strong emotions.

Examples of such films can be the hand-drawn short by Michéle Cournoyer. One of them, presented in the case studies, The Hat, deals with the difficult theme of rape, and certainly evokes fear if not anger and disgust among the audience. Another short, Robes of War (2009) deals with a woman‘s life invaded by war and generates emotions ranging from grief to anger. To achieve the impact it puts clearly Christian imagery such as the pieta into Islamic context i.e. Cournoyer depicts a Muslim woman holding her dead son, who was a soldier, on her knees weeping over his body the same way as

Virgin Mary wept over the body of Christ. In this film as well as in The Hat, not a single word is uttered but the imagery is irresistibly thought- provoking and certainly extremely emotional.

Majority of the films does not refrain from depicting taboo topic such as death or even wishing somebody‘s death such as in Caroline Leaf‘s The Street (1976) in which a little boy wishes his granny's death in order to get her room. As could be seen in the case studies death is not at all avoided; on the contrary it is a very frequent theme in

Canadian animation. Very often it is depicted as natural part of life, as nothing that should be made or thought of as a taboo. The same approach is taken to sex in the films.

Explicit imagery is not uncommon and sexual topics are quite frequent in the films as shows not only e.g. Shira Avni‘s John and Michael in which homosexual relationship is hinted but also Cournoyer's Accordion or the already in detail analysed The Hat, which deals with a paedophile deviation. Taking into consideration the idea of the north present in many Canadian auteur animations with a slight exaggeration it really is again as Catherine Monk points out all about weird sex and snowshoes.

108 6.5 Diversity

Diversity seems to be the only common denominator of Canadian culture. In animation this diversity is manifested in the visual rather than thematic side. As was illustrated in the NFB chapter, many of the animators come from abroad or have a

―hyphenated identity‖. As was seen in the case studies there is a variety of approaches to visual expression and techniques used. In many cases the visual component of the film is imbued with a specific cultural heritage. This is the case of the vivid colours and

Indian style imagery in e.g. Ishu Patel‘s Paradise (1984). Patel and other artists took the visuality of their original country or the country of their parents as a heritage to their

Canada. This does not mean that they kept the style throughout their whole carriers; they used it as an uncommon wrapping for universally understandable ideas.

Indeed it seems that various cultures, ethnic or religious backgrounds of sexual orientation is just a motif in a complex depiction of universal already well-known topics. In her film The Street (1976) Caroline Leaf created an adaptation of Mordecai

Richler‘s story of the same name. The film tells a story of a young boy, who is waiting for his grandmother to die to get her room for himself but when she eventually dies he is overcome by his feelings and does not want to have the room anymore. The fact that the depicted family is Jewish seems to be secondary. Characters‘ clothes and the music accompanying the film are clear attributes of the fact that the depicted family belongs to the Jewish population but the grief caused by the loss of a loved one is much stronger than those attributes.

The case study When the Day Breaks basically plays on the same note. It depicts various animals pig, hare, rooster, dogs, cats or goats representing different people from different ethnic and social groups but the overarching important element seem to be

109 feelings, thoughts and memories. The film concentrates on the intangible that is immanent to each and every human being.

The Mighty River is the first film where First Nation‘ people are depicted as active characters not only as source of their legends. For the first time a serious portrayal of the culture is given without too much simplification. The incentive, however, that lead to the inclusion is not to examine the First Nations culture and thus embrace the cultural diversity of Canada but to show their approach to nature. The film is a clear activist‘s statement that all the people regardless of their ethnic background should take better care of the Mother Nature. The diversity disappears, the common cause remains.

Double motif of what could be labelled as diversity or in this case even otherness appear in Shira Avni‘s John and Michael (2004).30 Not only that the two are different from the majority society because of their mental condition. There is also a hint of a homosexual relationship of the two people, it seems that the affection that is between them is more than just that of two close friends. As the film takes place in a home for people suffering from the Down syndrome and is narrated by people with Down syndrome, their illness seems to be commonplace. Their possibly homosexual relationship is mentioned in a matter of fact way, it not rendered as a coming out or conscious social statement. What is not commonplace and is highlighted in the story is the love and the attempt to overcome a loss of a loved person, which once again is a topic common for the whole mankind.

7. Conclusion

The chapters 5 and 6 have shown what was sought for in this thesis – features specific to Canadian animation. i.e. the search for new techniques, metamorphosis, documentary elements present in some of the films, set of recurrent specific themes

30 Described in detail in the section on Isolation page 101

110 common for many of the films. All of these are to a certain extent present also in animated films of a different provenience. The issues presented in the two preceding chapters are not very unique by themselves but the way they are employed in the films is absolutely innovative. Innovative approaches to both technical and thematic issues are actual the key to ―something‖ intriguing mentioned in the introductory chapter. The

―something‖ equals innovation in all its forms.

The greatest share of innovation is represented by the development of unexpected techniques and improvement of the already known ones. Each and every alternation of a given technique contributes to moving the field of animation forward; it broadens the possibilities of animated artwork and may inspire artist also outside the field. It is the way it surpasses the boundaries of working with certain well-known animation phenomena such as metamorphosis, fashioning it into new contexts, giving it new functions within the framework of animation.

. Importantly, the invention of new techniques questions the foundations of animation theory. The old definitions suddenly become obsolete and new understanding of what animation is has to be found in the light of such techniques as pixilation or the use of photocopied video material. The number variety of unorthodox animation techniques contribute to finding novel forms of visuality, artistic expression.

The high quality of visual side of the films serves as a good theoretical argument in advocating the standing of animated film among the other forms of art. Although these is no strict canon of animated film such as in literature or feature film introducing animation theory as a ―true‖ science, the variety of genres and the high quality of the visual expression analysed in detail in case studies leave no doubt that the film could be and should be considered art rather than amusement. From the case studies it is evident that the visual style is often comparable to the works of the greatest masters of art, from

111 which it follows attention should be paid to the studies both practical and theoretical.

The quest for the new seen in Canadian animations is thus opening space for animation theory among the already established theories such literary theory, film theory or history of art.

Canadian animation, more specifically its focus on taboo topics also refutes one common cliché about animated film. It denies the Orlov/Kubíček idea that animation cannot create strong emotions among the audience. Michéle Cournoyer's films show clearly that fear and disgust can be conveyed even in black and white animated short.

Careful choice of music, precise timing and symbolic work well enough to transmit the feelings in their entirety. Despite the short duration of most of the presented animations, the non-dramatic but rather psychological character of the great majority of the films makes them extremely apt for speaking directly to people‘s hearts.

As much as animation was found innovative within the field of animation, when it comes to the standing of animated film within the scope of Canadian culture no surprising novelties were found. Actually, within the context of Canadian culture, the films are not innovative at all. Rather than that they follow more or less the same concepts and some of the most recurrent topics resonating throughout Canadian culture.

Rather than being an innovative force, animation confirmed the general tendencies present in Canadian culture. The only deviation is that minority and first nation issues are rather underrepresented in animation. In a country where terms such as national identity or national culture are so complex and complicated that they are on the verge of being indescribable, many animators seem to avoid such topics as minority identity and try to find answer in humanity that is common to all people around the world without worrying about them being or not being Canadian.

112 The two main goals that I posed as a cultural studies researcher are answered. As regards animation, Canadian auteur films are unique in the way the play with concepts inherent to animation and more importantly manage to add new dimension and viewpoints both technologically and theoretically. Concerning Canadian culture, they form only a small proportion of it but were together with documentary historically important for Canadian culture as was explained in the NFB chapter. Within the culture the topics and issues presented in the films come as no surprise but rather confirm the overriding tendencies found across the various forms of cultural manifestations in

Canada. This thesis also conceals a third hidden goal, which I chose not as a researcher but as a fan. The goal was to bring Canadian auteur animation to the spotlight. I hope the thesis succeeded in completing this third goal and serves as a good invitation to watch the films.

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119 Resumé

Hlavním cílem této diplomové práce je určit a analyzovat rysy specifické pro kanadský animovaný film. Jako materiál pro zkoumání těchto rysů bylo po zralé úvaze a prostudování mnohých kanadských filmů vybráno následujících pět autorských filmů

Two Sisters (1990), Mighty River (1993), When the Day Breaks (1997), The Hat (1999) a Imprints (2004). Hlavním kritériem pro výběr filmů byl fakt, že výše zmíněné navazují na tendence, které se v kanadském filmu objevují od prvopočátků, vedlejším kritériem pak byl požadavek na rovnoměrné zastoupení anglofonních a frankofonních tvůrců, mužů i žen mezi autory zkoumaných snímků.

V úvodu práce jsou stanoveny základní definice a popis situace, ve které se kanadská animace nachází. Ve třetí kapitole je stručně nastíněna historie Národní filmové rady, která byla určujícím prvkem pro vznik některých rysů specifických pro kanadskou animaci. Čtvrtá kapitola je věnována podrobným formálním a tématickým analýzám daných filmů s využitím jak filmové teorie, tak teorie animace.

Pátá kapitola je na rozdíl od předešlé analytické spíše syntetického charakteru a uvádí prvky specifické pro kanadskou animaci, které vycházejí z jednotlivých výše uvedených analýz. V této kapitole se dozvíme, že hlavním rysem kanadské animace je inovativní přístup. Nejenže některé z těchto prvků (nové techniky, např. pixilace) byly přímo vynalezeny v kanadské animaci, další rysy, které se v animovaném filmu více či méně běžně objevují, jsou v kanadském filmu zařazeny poněkud nezvykle

(metamorfóza) či přímo daný rys dále rozvíjejí zcela novým směrem (technika

špendlíkového plátna). Díky své neotřelosti kanadské animované filmy mnohdy překračují hranice dosavadní teorie animace a nutí k zamyšlení nad současnými definicemi či percepcí animovaného filmu. Rozmanitostí žánrů a výrazových vizuálních

120 prostředků jasně upozorňují, že ne každý animovaný film je groteska. Ba naopak jde o neustále se vyvíjející umění.

Šestá kapitola je věnována druhému z cílů této práce; tedy zjištění, zda animovaný kanadský autorský film nějakým způsobem vybočuje ze stávajícího rámce kanadské kultury. Na rozdíl od části týkající se pouze filmových prvků. které jsou v kanadské animaci značně pokrokové, zjišťujeme, že po kulturní stránce tyto snímky nejsou žádným překvapením. Tematicky odpovídají velkým tématům kanadské literatury, malby či filmu, kterými jsou krajina, izolace, tabuizovaná témata. Nad dějově vypjatou strukturou převládá psychologický ráz díla.

Závěrem lze konstatovat, že ačkoli po filmové stránce je kanadský film unikátní a to zejména svým přístupem k novým technikám, vizuálním zpracováním postav a jistým sklonem k dokumentárním prvkům, po stránce kulturní zcela odpovídá stávajícím tendencím v kanadské kultuře, s tím, že zastoupení minoritního pohledu a kultury prvních národů je spíše menší než v literatuře malbě či filmu. Zdá se, že tento nedostatek je záměrem, protože velká většina kanadských animovaných snímků píše než, aby vyzdvihovala rozdíly zaměřovala se na ryze kanadské či inuitské, hledá odpovědi v tom, co je společné celému lidstvu- tedy v humanitě.

121 Résumé

The main goal of this diploma thesis is to examine and analyse specific features present in Canadian animated auteur films. For the purpose of this thesis five films were chosen for in-depth analyses: Two Sisters (1990), The Mighty River (1993), When the

Day Breaks (1997), The Hat (1999) and Imprints (2004). ). With regard to such criteria as national and international critical acclaim, more or less even representation of

Francophone and Anglophone authors, men and women filmmakers and the opportunity to present the various forms Canadian animation can take, the main criterion for the choice was that the films represent a sum of recurrent traces that have resonated through

Canadian animation since its very beginnings in the 1940s.

The first two introductory chapters offer basic definition, current state of

Canadian animation and methodology used in examining the given animated films. The third chapter is devoted to the historical development of the National Filmboard of

Canada, which to a great extent defined the condition in which animation was to develop in Canada and laid grounds for some of the main features specific to Canadian animation. In the fourth chapter the individual case studies of the above stated animated films are presented.

The fifth chapter deals with elements that are specific for Canadian animated film as found in the analyses of the five given films and also support data. This chapter discloses that the main motor for the specific features is innovation. Not only that

Canadian auteur animators are successful in inventing new animation techniques such as pixilation, they also work in a novel way with concepts already known in animation such as metamorphosis. Thanks to their innovative potential Canadian animated films often question the foundations of animation theory and ask for re-examination of some of the theoretical assumptions concerning animation. Variety of genres and modes of

122 visual expression make it clear, that the art of animation is not restricted to slapstick comedies but should be seen as a constantly developing artform.

The sixth chapter is devoted to the secondary goal of this thesis, which was to find out whether Canadian animated film corresponds to the general tendencies found in

Canadian literature, painting or feature film. Contrary to the filmic elements which are highly innovative, the cultural part offers no surprise. The findings show that Canadian animated film does not step outside the tendencies present in Canadian culture in general. On the contrary it follows the same great themes such as landscape, isolation, psychological rather than dramatic nature of the works and the issue of diversity.

Contrary to other cultural fields the First Nations and minorities in general are rather under-represented in Canadian film (thematically not personally, there are many minority culture members among the animators). This can explained by the chief focus on humanity in Canadian animation, minority First Nation or even majority Canadian identity is not necessary when the common denominator is understandable to any human being.

To conclude with, considering the filmic side of the films, they offer new perspective and novel approaches to animation as an art. As regards cultural issues, the films fit within the boundaries of general culture following more or less the same tendencies that resonate throughout Canadian culture.

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