Animated Motion: Part 4
1977 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Norman McLaren, Grant Munro
Genres: animation, documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative
Composite motion combining simultaneous actions, jointed movement, and emotional gesture is illustrated. Strobing effects in animation receive examination.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
McLaren and Munro turn what could've been dusty technical pedagogy into something genuinely weird—strobing effects that make you question whether animation is even movement at all, or just the ghost of it. Most people would've made a dry how-to; they made a riddle.
A canonical essay film that sits squarely in the NFB's lineage of formal inquiry, where animation becomes a medium for examining motion itself with the rigor of a Structural filmmaker. The deliberation with which each composite action is isolated and examined feels essential to understanding what animation can articulate that live action cannot.
The genius move here is treating strobing not as a glitch to hide but as the subject itself—McLaren and Munro isolate it, hold it, let it breathe, and suddenly you see the skeleton underneath all animation. That choice to foreground the artifact transforms what's essentially a technical manual into something visually singular.