Seventeen films from the National Film Board of Canada ― including two world premieres ― have been selected to this year’s festival.
Premiering in the Official Competition Animated Feature section is the animation-documentary hybrid Seth’s Dominion, Luc Chamberland’s film about the life of acclaimed Ontario-born cartoonist Seth. Also making its world premiere is Monsieur Pug, a new short by Academy Award nominee Janet Perlman (The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin), screening in the Canadian Showcase.
The festival will also present special screenings of two films created to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary film innovator Norman McLaren, founder of the NFB’s Oscar-winning Animation Studio: Donald McWilliams’ documentary Norman McLaren: Animated Musician, as well as Flocons, an independently produced short by Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre, creator of the Jutra Award-winning McLaren’s Negatives.
Soif by Michèle Cournoyer is in Official Competition in the Experimental/Abstract Animation category, while the NFB has three titles in Official Competition in the Narrative Short Animation slot: Me and My Moulton by Torill Kove, whose film The Danish Poet won an Academy Award in 2006, along with Rainy Days by Vladimir Leschiov and Pilots on the Way Home by Olga and Priit Pärn.
In addition to Perlman’s Monsieur Pug, three one-minute NFB shorts will be featured in the out-of-competition Canadian Showcase: Dominic Etienne Simard’s Éloïse’s Fir Tree, as well as two shorts from the NFB’s Hothouse program for emerging animators, Su-An Ng’s Itch and Brendan Matkin’s I.
Six more NFB animated shorts have been selected for special screening programs: Patrick Doyon’s Sunday, Dominic Etienne Simard’s Paula, Claire Blanchet’s The End of Pinky and Philip Eddolls’ Git Gob will be featured as part of “Hot Freaks: The New Generation of Canadian Animation,” while Koji Yamamura’s Muybridge’s Strings will be shown in the “Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey: Time and Animation” program, with Brandon Blommaert’s Batmilk screening in a program entitled “New Ghosts in the Ol’ Haunt: Regrets, Residues and Crossing Over.”
The NFB will also be offering iPad animation workshops for children using its acclaimed McLaren’s Workshop and NFB StopMo Studio apps, at the National Arts Centre, as part of Animation Celebration.
