Ashes of Doom

The importance of a balanced diet, told in story form for children through the medium of two-dimensional cut-out animation. Stanley is a little boy who is lethargic from lack of a balanced diet. Some animals take him for a trip on the back of a "train engine" bull, to discover what are the proper foods for health and where they come from.

A selection of publicity clips mounted together in one film to show the techniques of NFB animators. As in Hors-d'oeuvre, these "quickie" films were produced originally for government agencies, to carry messages to the public.

A cemetery in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada is seen through the eyes of its former superintendent.

Based on the short story by Stephen Leacock, this is a satirical camera-animated story about Christmas expectations and the loss of innocence. Young Hoodoo has bought his parents cigars and a brooch for Christmas. As he opens his presents expectantly on Christmas morning, he keeps his hopes up until the end--will the next gift from Santa Claus be a pair of skates, a puppy dog, Noah's Ark, a sleigh or a drum...? When none of the gifts meets his expectations, he decides to do things differently next year.

Window shopping children watch as toy soldiers come to life and fight a war with all its unvarnished ferocity and horror.

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.

Three separate sequences related to Christmas, animated in different styles: cutout animation of children dancing in the snow to "Jingle Bells," stop-motion animation of toys come to life, and cel animation of a man who seeks the ideal star to top his Christmas tree.

An unconventional version of The Christmas Carol.

This short puppet animation from the fifties tells the story of Magic Bow, a First Nations boy endowed with magic gifts. Magic Bow is in the big city for the first time, thrilling audiences with his tricks at the Wild West Rodeo. Outside the arena, cars, trucks and buses zip by at dizzying speeds. With the help of some savvy city dwellers, Magic Bow learns a few important traffic rules to help him navigate the streets safely.

An opening address, a tribute and highlights of a long and productive career--McLaren on McLaren is Norman McLaren on camera. The occasion is the opening of a prestigious festival in Arnhem, the Netherlands, in November, 1983, marking the tenth anniversary of Holland Animation. The renowned animator pays homage to those who merged their arts with his, and to the National Film Board, which gave him forty-two years of artistic freedom.

Perhaps the only film whose content is totally based on the musical form known as canon. The first sequence is a simple demonstration of the canon "Frere Jacques" where four cubes dance and combine with one another on a checkerboard. The second sequence show four little human-like figures dancing in space. The third and most elaborate sequence shows a human going through several strange gesticulations. Through multiple printing we realize that the man, as in the previous sequences, is part of a visual canon and is making the gestures to himself. As we hear variations on the canonic theme so too do we witness visual variations: a woman and cat enters the canon. To show the musical technique of inversion, the image of the man is printed upside down.

Pinscreen animation makes use of a screen filled with movable pins, which can be moved in or out by pressing an object onto the screen. The screen is lit from the side so that the pins cast shadows.

An animated cartoon to help children explore why and how animals move as they do. A little boy discovers that he cannot compete with a monkey, a snake or a horse by imitating the way they move. He can only outdistance them when he climbs into a vehicle that can travel in any environment, demonstrating that while other animals are trapped by their environment, humans, the inventors, aren't.

Grant Munro dances to New Orleans jazz music.