Catapult Canada
1985 · 1m · Canada
Directed by Bill Maylone
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
A stop-motion gag proposes catapult travel as the fastest way across Canada.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A one-minute gag about catapult infrastructure is exactly the kind of premise that sounds stupid until you realize it's genuinely funny—subversive in its refusal to justify the absurdity, just *commits* to it.
The NFB's tradition of comic brevity is well-served here; Maylone understands that stop-motion gags operate in a lineage stretching back to early animation's anarchic logic, executing the form with appropriate economy.
The decision to use stop-motion for a transportation infrastructure gag does the heavy lifting—that tactile, frame-by-frame constraint transforms a one-liner into something visually generous, squeezing maximum texture and movement out of a 60-second premise.