Now Is the Time
Norman McLaren (BFI)
UK, 1951, digital, 3'
Along with Around Is Around, one of two 3-D films commissioned by the British Film Institute for the Festival of Britain. Photographed paper cutouts and images drawn directly on film stock were given single-frame animation. Stereoscopy was achieved by photographing and drawing two visuals (one for the left eye, one for the right eye) with controlled displacement of the elements in relationship to each other. The hand-drawn sound was also composed and recorded on two separate bands for stereoscopic playing.
Around Is Around
Norman McLaren (BFI)
UK, 1951, digital, 7'38"
The second of the two 3-D films – the first is Now Is the Time – commissioned by the British Film Institute to Norman McLaren for the Festival of Britain. It photographs moving oscilloscope patterns given stereoscopic form through the control of different left-eye and right-eye image positions.
Les yeux noirs / Private Eyes
Nicola Lemay (NFB)
Canada, 2011, digital, 14'22"
Matthew is never afraid of the dark because he has been surrounded by it all his life. He's got eyes hiding everywhere: in his hands, in his feet and especially in his ears. This week, his mother and father are preparing a surprise for his birthday and he can hardly wait to find out what it is! Directed by Nicola Lemay, Private Eyes is a 3D stereoscopic animated adaptation of Gilles Tibo's book for children published in 1999 by Éditions Soulières.
Falling in Love Again
Munro Ferguson (NFB)
Canada, 2003, digital, 3'23"
Stereoscopic, musical, animated short based on the popular song "Falling in Love Again" by Friedrich Hollander. Playful approach to cultural myths and clichés about love yet at the same time celebrating the joy of the experience. The project used the SANDDE (stereo animation drawing device) system for creating more hands-on looking stereoscopic animation. Note: Musical lyrics in English.
Drux Flux
Théodore Ushev (NFB)
Canada, 2008, digital, 4'47"
Partly figurative, partly abstract, Drux Flux is an animation film of fast-flowing images showing modern people crushed by industry. Inspired by One-Dimensional Man by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the filmmaker deconstructs industrial scenes and their terrifying geometry to show the inhumanity of progress. A film without words.
Stolp БАШНЯ / Tower Bawher
Théodore Ushev (NFB)
Canada, 2005, digital, 3'46"
This animated short by Theodore Ushev is like a whirlwind tour of Russian constructivist art. The film is filled with visual references to artists of constructivism (Vertov, Stenberg, Rodchenko, Lissitsky and Popova) and enriched with Georgy Sviridov's music that opened the Soviet regime's nightly newscast in the 1970's. The title is an allusion to constructivist architect Vladimir Tatlin's tower, conceived in homage to the glory of the proletariat.
Gloria Victoria
Théodore Ushev (NFB)
Canada, 2012, digital, 6'56"
Gloria Victoria unfolds on the still-smouldering rubble of a furious 20th century, propelled by the exalting “invasion” theme from Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony (No. 7). Resembling a military march with bolero overtones, the music sweeps over imagery of combat fronts and massacres, leading us from Dresden to Guernica, from the Spanish Civil War to Star Wars. It is at once a symphony that serves the war machine, that stirs the masses, and art that mourns the dead, voices its outrage and calls for peace.
Gloria Victoria is the third film in a trilogy on the relationship between art and power. It is the work of an exceptionally gifted filmmaker and multi-faceted artist, a virtuoso of collage and recycling who conjures up everything from surrealism to Dracula, and makes cubist constructions emerge from the horror of dismembered bodies. Through a multitude of quotations, allusions and references, Theodore Ushev orchestrates a thundering nightmare in the name of peace.
Vaysha l'aveugle / Blind Vaysha
Théodore Ushev (NFB)
Canada, 2012, digital, 8'14"
Vaysha is not like other little girls: she was born with a left eye that sees only the past and a right eye that sees only the future, and she cannot live in the present. Should she poke out one of her eyes so that she can live in the other's temporal reality? Or is she doomed to perceive the world from this perplexing perspective?
Blind Vaysha is an expressionistic work that's been created in three distinct versions: 2D, stereoscopic 3D and virtual reality (VR).
Champlain retrace / Facing Champlain
Jean-François Pouliot (NFB)
Canada, 2008, digital, 22'41"
Artist Mélissa Hébert - fictional descendant of the first colonist in New France - is commissioned to paint a portrait of Samuel de Champlain, explorer and founder of Quebec City. In her studio overlooking Quebec's magnificent Old City, the artist tries to grasp the essence of the man. Suddenly, divisions between worlds, senses and dimensions melt away and the artist passes through a tear in the canvas into the third dimension – and into the visionary explorer's expansive world.
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Quebec City and its founder, Samuel de Champlain, the National Film Board of Canada produced Facing Champlain, a ground-breaking 3-D stereoscopic experience.