Blinkity Blank | |
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Directed by | Norman McLaren |
Produced by | Norman McLaren |
Music by | Maurice Blackburn Musicians: Bert Niosi Lew Lewis Gordon Day Isaac Mamott Perry Bauman |
Production company | |
Distributed by | National Film Board of Canada |
Release date |
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Languages | English, French |
Blinkity Blank is a 1955 animated short film created by Norman McLaren for the National Film Board of Canada. It won, among other awards, both the Short Film Palme d'Or at Cannes [1] and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film. [2]
Engraved directly onto black film leader, Blinkity Blank features a soundtrack combining improvisational jazz from composer Maurice Blackburn along with graphical sounds created by McLaren scratching onto the film's optical soundtrack. [3]
The film features lines, dots and other abstract forms, along with fruits, trees, planets and chickens—the latter featured at length in another McLaren hand-drawn film Hen Hop —which blink in and out of existence, or merge with or modulate other shapes. McLaren also left some frames blank, which he described as "sprinkling on the empty band of time". [4]
William Norman McLaren, LL. D. was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound. McLaren was also an artist and printmaker, and explored his interest in dance in his films.
Drawn-on-film animation, also known as direct animation or animation without camera, is an animation technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on film stock, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects are photographed frame by frame with an animation camera.
Roman Kroitor was a Canadian filmmaker who was known as a pioneer of Cinéma vérité, as the co-founder of IMAX, and as the creator of the Sandde hand-drawn stereoscopic 3D animation system. He was also the original inspiration for The Force. His prodigious output garnered numerous awards, including two BAFTA Awards, three Cannes Film Festival awards, and two Oscar nominations.
Albert Lamorisse was a French filmmaker, film producer, and writer of short films which he began making in the late 1940s. He also invented the strategic board game Risk in 1957.
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The 59th Cannes Film Festival was held from 17 to 28 May 2006. Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar-wai served as jury president for the main competition, the first Chinese to preside over the jury. English filmmaker Ken Loach won the Palme d'Or for the war drama film The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
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The 8th Cannes Film Festival was held from 26 April to 10 May 1955. The Golden Palm went to the US film Marty by Delbert Mann. The festival opened with Du rififi chez les hommes by Jules Dassin and closed with Carmen Jones by Otto Preminger.
The 11th Cannes Film Festival was held from 2 to 18 May 1958. The Palme d'Or went to The Cranes are Flying by Mikhail Kalatozov.
Grant Munro LL. D. was a Canadian animator, filmmaker and actor. In 1952, he co-starred with Jean-Paul Ladouceur in Norman McLaren's Neighbours. His film, Christmas Cracker, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1965.
Hunger/La Faim is a 1974 animated short film produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It was directed by Peter Foldes and is one of the first computer animation films. The story, told without words, is a morality tale about greed and gluttony in contemporary society.
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Evelyn Lambart was a Canadian animator and film director with the National Film Board of Canada, known for her independent work, and for her collaborations with Norman McLaren.
Thomas Cullen Daly was a Canadian film producer, film editor and film director, who was the head of Studio B at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Joseph Albert Maurice Blackburn was a Canadian composer, conductor, sound editor for film, and builder of string instruments. He is known for his soundtracks for animated film.
Robert Verrall is a Canadian animator, director and film producer who worked for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) from 1945 to 1987. Over the course of his career, his films garnered a BAFTA Award, prizes at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival, and six Academy Award nominations.
The 70th Cannes Film Festival took place from 17 to 28 May 2017, in Cannes, France. Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar was the president of the jury for the main competition. Italian actress Monica Bellucci hosted the opening and closing ceremonies. Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund won the Palme d'Or, the festival's top prize, for his comedy-drama film The Square.
Julian Biggs (1920–1972) was a director and producer with the National Film Board of Canada and its first Director of English Production. Over the course of his 20-year career, he created 146 films, two of which were nominated for Academy Awards. His film 23 Skidoo (1964) received two BAFTA nominations, including the BAFTA United Nations award.