A Wedding & A Funeral

This short was directed by Evelyn Lambart, the first female animator in Canada. 

Born in 1914 into a family of artists, she started to work at the National Film Board of Canada 

in 1942 and became the closest collaborator of animation legend Norman McLaren. 

Between 1942 and 1965 the two co-directed six films and worked together on many others.

During this period Lambart animated and directed only one film without McLaren, 

O Canada, but when in the early 1960s he turned his attention to ballet films, 

she decided instead to follow her own creative path in animation.

 Lambart and McLaren at work, © 1948 NFB

She perfected a technique involving paper and linoleum cutouts transferred to a black

 lithograph plate which she would then paint and animate. This approach was possibly inspired

 by the work of Lotte Reiniger, the pioneer German animator who worked at the NFB in the 1970s.  

Lambart went on to produce seven award winning animated shorts between 1968 and 1980;

 I have chosen her interpretation of an old English folk tune, Mr. Frog-Went-A-Courting.

(I know the song very well because when the girls were little we used to listen to it 

in Pete Seeger's delightful American Folk Songs for Children.)

Poultry and Poetry

Another lovely animation of a French folksong by Norman McLaren.

This time he used chalk and pastels on cardboard to create his delicate 

and dreamy interpretation of an old lullaby about little hens laying eggs

in various places, from the church to the moon. Made in 1947.

How will the blackbird sing?

In 1958, the great Norman McLaren utilized paper cut-outs to transform 

a French–Canadian nonsensical folk song into this playfully surrealistic animation.

In 1940, the same song had inspired a book project by Bruno Munari.

Published for the first time in 1987, it was recently reprinted by Corraini

using silk-screen printing on transparent plastic sheets.

Two lovely examples of genius in simplicity!