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.
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.
Colin Archibald Low was a Canadian animation and documentary filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was known as a pioneer, one of Canada's most important filmmakers, and was regularly referred to as "the gentleman genius". His numerous honors include five BAFTA awards, eight Cannes Film Festival awards, and six Academy Award nominations.
The Danish Poet is a 2006 animated short film written, directed, and animated by Torill Kove and narrated by Liv Ullmann. A co-production of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Mikrofilm AS of Norway, it has won both the Academy Award and Genie Award for best animated short film.
Torill Kove is a Norwegian-born Canadian film director and animator. She won the 2007 Academy Award for Animated Short Film for the film The Danish Poet, co-produced by Norway's Mikrofilm AS and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Cordell Barker is a Canadian animator, director and screenwriter based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He began animating in his late teens after taking on an apprenticeship at Kenn Perkins Animation. A two-time Academy Award nominee, Barker is an animation filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Theodore Asenov Ushev is a Bulgarian animator, film director and screenwriter based in Montreal. He is best known for his work at the National Film Board of Canada, including the 2016 animated short Blind Vaysha, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
Hunger/La Faim is a 1973/1974 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.
My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts is a 1999 animated short by Torill Kove.
The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin is a 1981 Canadian animated short film by Janet Perlman that comically adapts the tale of Cinderella with penguins. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 54th Academy Awards, losing to another animated short from Montreal, Frédéric Back's Crac. The Oscar nomination was the fourth in five years for executive producer Derek Lamb, also Perlman's husband. The film also received a Parents' Choice Award.
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.
Sunday is a Canadian animated short film by Patrick Doyon. The film debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2011 and online on January 5, 2012.
Wild Life is a 2011 Canadian animated short film by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis. The film debuted at the 2011 Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto in June 2011 and online on January 6, 2012. The film was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 84th Academy Awards, and Best Animated Short Subject at the 39th Annie Awards as well as a Genie Award for Best Animated Short at the 32nd Genie Awards.
Patrick Doyon is a Canadian animator and illustrator, based in Montreal, Quebec.
Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are a Canadian animation duo. On January 24, 2012, they received their second Oscar nomination, for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short film, Wild Life (2011). With their latest film, The Flying Sailor, they received several nominations and awards, including for the Best Canadian Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and on January 24, 2023, they received a nomination for the 95th Academy Awards under the category Best Animated Short Film.
Gloria Victoria is a 2013 3-D anti-war animated short by Theodore Ushev, produced in Montreal by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). A film without words set to the music of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, Victoria Gloria is final film in a trilogy of NFB animated shorts by Ushev on art, ideology and power, following Tower Bawher (2005) and Drux Flux (2008).
Marcy Page is an American animator, film producer and educator.
Blind Vaysha is a 2016 animated short by Theodore Ushev, produced by Marc Bertrand for the National Film Board of Canada, with the participation of ARTE France. Based on a story by Georgi Gospodinov, the film tells the story of a girl who sees the past out of her left eye and the future from her right—and so is unable to live in the present. Montreal actress Caroline Dhavernas performed the narration for the film, in both its French and English language versions. The film incorporates music from Bulgarian musician and composer Kottarashky and is his and Ushev's fourth collaboration.
The Painted Door is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Bruce Pittman and released in 1984. Based on a short story by Sinclair Ross, the film was produced by the National Film Board of Canada and Atlantis Films of Toronto. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film.
Threads is a Norwegian-Canadian animated short film, directed by Torill Kove and released in 2017. Based on Kove's own experience as an adoptive parent, the film depicts a woman who catches a thread in the sky which carries her to a baby girl. The woman rears and remains connected to the girl through a red thread of love and emotional connection. This lasts until the girl is a young woman old enough to go seek her own thread of connection to a baby of her own.
