Monsieur Pointu | |
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Directed by |
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Produced by | René Jodoin |
Starring | Paul Cormier |
Cinematography | Co Hoedeman |
Edited by | Claude Jobin |
Music by | Paul Cormier |
Distributed by | National Film Board of Canada |
Release date |
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Running time | 12 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Monsieur Pointu is a 1975 animated film about Quebec fiddler Monsieur Pointu, the stage name for Paul Cormier. [1] [2]
In this 12-and-a-half-minute film, Pointu and his violin break into pieces that take on a life of their own, dancing to the artist's music.
The film was directed by Bernard Longpré and André Leduc and produced by René Jodoin for the National Film Board of Canada. [3] Monsieur Pointu makes use of the pixillation technique pioneered by NFB animation studio founder Norman McLaren in Neighbours and A Chairy Tale , combined with optical effects. [4] [5]
Monsieur Pointu was screened at the 1978 Festival of Animated Films in Ottawa. [6] It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 48th Academy Awards. [7] [8] [9]
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.
Pixilation is a stop motion technique in which live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop-motion puppet. This technique is often used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones in a movie, such as in The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb by the Bolex Brothers.
Cinema in Canada dates back to the earliest known display of film in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, in 1896. The film industry in Canada has been dominated by the United States, which has utilized Canada as a shooting location and to bypass British film quota laws, throughout its history. Canadian filmmakers, English and French, have been active in the development of cinema in the United States.
The history of cinema in Quebec started on June 27, 1896 when the Frenchman Louis Minier inaugurated the first movie projection in North America in a Montreal theatre room. However, it would have to wait until the 1960s before a genuine Quebec cinema industry would emerge. Approximately 620 feature-length films have been produced, or partially produced by the Quebec film industry since 1943.
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.
The Canadian Film Awards were the leading Canadian cinema awards from 1949 until 1978. These honours were conducted annually, except in 1974 when a number of Quebec directors withdrew their participation and prompted a cancellation. In the 1970s they were also sometimes known as the Etrog Awards for sculptor Sorel Etrog, who designed the statuette.
Frank Radford "Budge" Crawley, was a Canadian film producer, cinematographer and director. Along with his wife Judith Crawley, he co-founded the production company Crawley Films in 1939.
Ishu Patel is an Indian-Canadian 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.
René Jodoin was an animation director and producer who founded the French-language animation studio of the National Film Board of Canada. Born in Hull, Quebec on December 30, 1920, Jodoin died in Montreal on January 22, 2015 at the age of 94.
Every Child is an animated short film produced in 1979 by the National Film Board of Canada in association with UNICEF.
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.
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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.
The Owl Who Married a Goose: An Eskimo Legend is a 1974 Canadian animated short from Caroline Leaf, produced by the National Film Board of Canada and the Canadian Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.
Paul Cormier was a violinist from Quebec, Canada, known by his stage name Monsieur Pointu.