FILM | Feature
Norman McLaren’s Neighbours (1952)
AN ANIMATED LIFE
This April marks the start of a series of events celebrating the centenary of experimental Scottish fi lmmaker Norman McLaren. Hannah McGill looks at what’s lined up
W hen it comes to Scottish icons, we hear a lot about bards and Bonds, hip musicians and blockbusting painters – but some trailblazers still slip under the radar, even when their work has transformed an industry or an art form. The Stirling-born i lmmaker Norman McLaren arguably did both, achieving innovations in the i eld of animation that helped to push the medium forward both artistically and commercially.
McLaren 2014, a major collaboration between Edinburgh’s Centre for the Moving Image, the National Film Board of Canada and the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme marking the centenary of his birth, seeks to draw new audiences to his work, as well as showcasing work inspired by his art, and extending his legacy of training and education. Events will follow the trajectory of McLaren’s own career. His birthplace, Stirling, will see a plaque dedication as well as a photography exhibition, a i lm tour of the city and the dance production A Chairy Tale, based on his short i lm of the same name. Glasgow, where McLaren trained at the School of Art, will pay particular tribute to McLaren’s interest in musical experimentation, with a screening of his short i lms scored by the Glasgow Improvisers’ Orchestra, and the live animation and sound event Digital Scratch: Riding Over Blinkity Blank.
58 THE LIST 20 Mar–17 Apr 2014
Edinburgh will see the comprehensive exhibition Hand Made Cinema at the Talbot Rice Gallery, as well as a yet-to-be-announced exclusive presentation at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where McLaren’s i lms were regular features of the programme during his lifetime, and where the annual animation award bears his name.
So what is it that makes McLaren such a signii cant i gure? ‘His work is relentlessly inventive,’ says Iain Gardner, BAFTA-winning and Oscar-longlisted animator, EIFF animation programmer and Artistic Director of McLaren 2014. ‘For me, it’s the vitality in the work that most touches me – and it’s that unique quality of animation, that shapes and colour can have a life of their own, that drives me to animate myself.’ Gardner notes a couple of particular innovations for which McLaren is celebrated – the direct painting on to i lm stock whereby he created his frame-by-frame ‘pixilation’ of living human i gures – but points out that ‘he pioneered so many techniques that it’s counterproductive to concentrate on one or two. I feel coni dent that were he still alive today he’d be at the forefront of experiments with digital technology.’ ‘cameraless i lms’; his
McLaren won an Oscar, a Palme D’Or, a BAFTA and two Silver Bears in the course of his career.
But he also displayed a lifelong commitment to the use of animation in educational and community- building contexts, working with UNESCO in the 1950s and 60s to bring workshops to China and India. McLaren was also a mentor and inspiration to countless animators, among them George Dunning, who directed Yellow Submarine (and whose company TV Cartoons would eventually produce Iain Gardner’s own breakthrough short, Akbar’s Cheetah, for Channel 4). But times are harder than ever for those who choose a creative path, and the type of publicly funded programmes that McLaren both benei ted from and backed are under ever more threat. Such questions are to the fore for Gardner even as his long graft on McLaren 2014 comes to fruition. ‘It’s not only our current time of recession that makes discussion of public support for the arts essential, but also the question of independence,’ he says. ‘Tax breaks for animation production in the UK are beginning to have a positive impact on indigenous creativity and production; would an independent Scotland retain this government support? For me, McLaren 2014 and the issues raised by McLaren’s life come at a very interesting time for Scotland.’
Full details of events can be found at mclaren2014.com