Prominent Collection From Canada

During the 1970s and ‘80s, the National Film Board of Canada was the dominant creative force in world animation, and these collections make it easy to understand why.

These four subjects--”A Short Film Festival,” “A Christmas Gift,” “Incredible Manitoba Animation” and “Hollywood Salutes Canadian Animation” ($39.95 each, available from Expanded Entertainment, P.O. Box 25547, Los Angeles 90025)--mark the first time the board’s short films have been available on videotape.

Funding by the Canadian government (which has been greatly reduced by the conservative administration) enabled artists from all over the world to expand the medium by experimenting with new styles, techniques and subjects. Films from the board garnered hundreds of awards in international festivals, but American audiences were only able to see them during brief, Oscar-qualifying runs or in collections, like the annual Tournee of Animation.

Each of the four Oscar winners and three additional nominees on the “Hollywood” anthology represents a breakthrough of some sort. Caroline Leaf invented a technique for animating paint on glass to present Mordecai Richler’s moving short story about a young boy and his dying grandmother in “The Street” (nominee, 1977); Co Hoedeman demonstrated how expressive stop-motion animation of little sponge figures could be in “Sand Castle” (Oscar, 1978), an elegiac parable of creation. “Every Child” (Oscar, 1980) uses conventional cel techniques to portray the plight of children in an often uncaring world, while “Walking” (Oscar nominee, 1970) is a multimedia celebration of pure movement.

The original mandate of the board was “to explain Canada to Canadians and people of other nations,” and many of the films evoke national traditions. “The Log Driver’s Waltz” (on the “Short Film Festival” collection), illustrates a folk song about a Canadian dilemma: After waltzing with a man who can run across spinning logs in a river, how can a woman be content with a more prosaic dancing partner? A holiday carnival in Quebec forms the backdrop for Paul Driessen’s gentle retelling of the Christmas story in “An Old Box,” while Sheldon Cohen recalls his Canadian boyhood--and the trauma of having to wear a rival hockey team’s colors--in “The Sweater” (both on “A Christmas Gift”).

For sheer, unbridled hilarity, few films can match Richard Conde’s “The Big Snit,” in which a family argument over a game of Scrabble escalates into a nuclear war, and Cordell Barker’s “The Cat Came Back,” featuring an adorable but horribly destructive kitten, two highlights of the “Manitoba” tape.

All four collections merit a prominent place in the library of anyone interested in the art of animation.