A Matter of Form

This is a didactic film in disguise. A progression of brilliant geometric shapes bombard the screen to the insistent beat of drums. The filmmaker programmed a computer to coordinate a highly complex operation involving an electronic beam of light, colour filters and a camera. This animation film, without words, is designed to expose the power of the cinematic medium, and to illustrate the abstract nature of time.

This funny yet serious short film demonstrates the effectiveness of advertising and the marketing machine. Its comic appeal lies in the characters and the absurd situations they find themselves in, but it also shines a harsh light on our tendency towards needless consumerism prompted by a steady flow of commercials.

A childhood fantasy where dreams carry a boy far to adventure. He arrives in Canada on an ocean liner and is, in turn, a hunter of polar bear, a cowboy, a hockey star, and a swimmer.

This film combines colour, animation and sound to clarify principles of radio wave transmission. It illustrates how antennas propagate radio waves and how they may be adapted to increase the bandwidth of transmissions. (The film was released for general use as a public service by the Royal Canadian Air Force.)

Musician and composer 'Claude Dubois' presents his view of the effects of the growth of urban areas, specifically industrialization and overuse of non-human elements resulting in a need to overly control how we as people live within this environment. Human images are interspersed with more controlled mechanized ones. Those human images are first free flowing, then floundering under that mechanization, then ultimately trapped into chaos or into death.

Humorous, full of unimaginable finds, this animated short invites the viewer to follow the antics of a horse trying to acquire a force equivalent to that of a horsepower.

Squares and other geometric shapes appear to "dance" along to music through their ever-changing movements.

Combining colour, animation and sound to clarify principles of radio-wave transmission, this film illustrates how antennas propagate radio waves.

An elementary school film on multiplication based on the theories of Professor Zoltan Dienes.

A satirical, updated take on the classic Jean de La Fontaine fable.

This experimental short documents the clash, sometimes obsessive, sometimes glorifying, between humans and their mechanized environment. Using photographs, the animator creates varying perspectives through optical manipulation and changing colour, achieving bold and provocative effects.

Combining colour, animation and sound to clarify principles of radio-wave transmission, this film illustrates how antennas propagate radio waves and how they may be adapted to increase the directivity of transmissions. The theoretical concepts are emphasized.

Monsieur Pointu would like to play his fiddle. But the fiddle has other ideas.

Blocks and balls fight simply because they are different, until their battle reduces everyone to the same shape.

In this Oscar-nominated animated short film, director Peter Foldès depicts one man’s descent into greed and gluttony. Rapidly dissolving and ever-evolving images create a contrast between abundance and want. One of the first films to use computer animation, this satire serves as a cautionary tale against self-indulgence in a world still plagued by hunger and poverty.

This animated short co-animated by René Jodoin and Norman McLaren was produced for inclusion in the Let's All Sing Together sing-along series. It illustrates the popular song Alouette, gentille alouette. The technique used is single-frame animation of paper cutouts.