Making Movie History: Evelyn Lambart
2014 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Joanne Robertson
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Animator Evelyn Lambart recalls joining the NFB in the 1940s, collaborating with Norman McLaren and developing her solo work.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A straight-ahead NFB archival puff piece—the kind of reverent biographical doc that makes you wonder why we needed this instead of just letting Lambart's actual films speak for themselves. Pass.
Robertson's formal restraint here is the whole game: letting Lambart's voice sit unadorned against her own animation, honoring both the lineage of NFB documentary practice and the specificity of a woman animator who's been written out of animation history. It's a small film that knows exactly what tradition it's inheriting and extending.
The decision to let Lambart's hands move through her own drawings while she speaks—not as illustration but as dialogue—transforms what could've been a talking-head into something tactile and alive, one choice that reframes the entire relationship between artist and archive.