John Weldon (born May 11, 1945) is a Canadian actor, composer, animator and movie director, known for his National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated shorts. [1]
Born in Belleville, Ontario, Weldon lives in Montreal, Quebec. Following his retirement from the NFB, Weldon has devoted his time to songwriting and comic books, including a planned comic book series, Ashcan Alley. [2]
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.
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.
The history of Canadian animation involves a considerable element of the realities of a country neighbouring the United States and both competitiveness and co-operation across the border.
Caroline Leaf is a Canadian-American filmmaker, animator, director, tutor and artist. She has produced numerous short animated films and her work has been recognized worldwide. She is best known as one of the pioneering filmmakers at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). She worked at the NFB from 1972 to 1991. During that time, she created the sand animation and paint-on-glass animation techniques. She also tried new hands-on techniques with 70mm IMAX film. Her work is often representational of Canadian culture and is narrative based. Leaf now lives in London UK and is a tutor at The National Film and Television School. She maintains a studio in London working in oils and on paper and does landscape drawing with iPad.
The Log Driver's Waltz is a Canadian folk song, written by Wade Hemsworth. The Log Driver's Waltz is also a Canadian animated film from the National Film Board, released in 1979 as part of its Canada Vignettes series.
Ishu Patel is an animation film director/producer and educator. During his twenty-five years at the National Film Board of Canada he developed animation techniques and styles to support his themes and vision. Since then he has produced animated spots for television and has been teaching internationally.
Cynthia Scott is a Canadian award-winning filmmaker who has produced, directed, written, and edited several films with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Her works have won the Oscar and Canadian Film Award. Scott is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Her projects with the NFB are mainly focused on documentary filmmaking. Some of Scott's most notable documentaries for the NFB feature dancing and the dance world including Flamenco at 5:15 (1983), which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary at the 56th Academy Awards in 1984. She is married to filmmaker John N. Smith.
Paul Augustin Driessen is a Dutch film director, animator and writer.
Every Child is an animated short film produced in 1979 by the National Film Board of Canada in association with UNICEF.
Richard Condie, is a Canadian animator, film maker and musician. Condie is best known for his 1985 animated short The Big Snit at the National Film Board of Canada and has won six international awards for Getting Started in 1979. Condie lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Special Delivery is a 1978 animated short film made at the National Film Board of Canada which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film as well as first prize at Animafest Zagreb. It was directed by Eunice Macaulay and John Weldon. An English and a French-language version were released.
Tony Ianzelo is a Canadian documentary director and cinematographer.
The Colours of My Father: A Portrait of Sam Borenstein is a 1992 Canadian short animated documentary film directed by Joyce Borenstein.
Noël Noël is a 22-minute animated short produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 2003 as a Christmas special. It was directed by Nicola Lemay and written by Martin Barry. The English-language version was adapted by John Weldon and narrated by Leslie Nielsen. The original French-language version was narrated by Benoît Brière.
The Hungry Squid is 2002 animated short film by John Weldon, about a young girl whose homework and personal life is being disrupted by creatures, including a giant ravenous squid. The film was animated using Weldon's personal style of do-it-yourself filmmaking, combining low-budget computer animation with puppets, photos and stop-motion animation in a technique he calls "digital recyclomation." The film's producer, Marcy Page, had coined the term "recyclomation" during production of Weldon's 1991 film, The Lump.
Janet Laurie Perlman is a Canadian animator and children's book author and illustrator whose work includes the short film The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 54th Academy Awards and received a Parents' Choice Award. Her 13 short films have received 60 awards to date. She was married to the late animation producer Derek Lamb. After working with Lamb at the National Film Board of Canada in the 1980s, they formed their own production company, Lamb-Perlman Productions. She is currently a partner in Hulascope Studio, based in Montreal. Perlman has produced animation segments for Sesame Street and NOVA. Working with Lamb, she produced title sequences for the PBS series Mystery!, based on the artwork of Edward Gorey, and was one of the animators for R. O. Blechman's adaptation of The Soldier's Tale for PBS's Great Performances. She has also taught animation at Harvard University, the Rhode Island School of Design and Concordia University. She and Lamb were divorced but remained creative and business partners until his death in 2005.
Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are a Canadian animation duo. They met at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver where they studied film and animation. Each went on to create their own works with the NFB before co-directing When the Day Breaks (1999), which received an Oscar nomination and more than 30 international awards, including the Palme d’Or at Cannes, a Genie Award and the Grand Prix at the Annecy, Zagreb and Hiroshima international animation festivals.
Albert Kish was a Canadian documentarian/filmmaker.
Eunice Macaulay was a British-born Academy Award–winning animator whose credits range from animation to writing, directing, and producing.
Spinnolio is a Canadian animated short film, directed by John Weldon and released in 1977. A parody of Pinocchio, the film tells the story of an old man who carves a wooden boy; however, as the fairy never arrives to grant him life, Spinnolio remains wooden and inanimate, but nevertheless successfully establishes a career working at the complaints desk of a department store because of his apparent skill at listening without talking.