Synchromy
1971 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Norman McLaren
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Norman McLaren creates an animated experiment where optical sound becomes visible image, so the piano rhythms drawn onto the soundtrack appear on screen in colour as patterns the audience can both see and hear.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
McLaren's playing sound as pure image feels less like subversion and more like a master demonstrating his formal toolkit—impressive, sure, but there's no friction, no premise that makes you actually uncomfortable or rethink what animation can *say*.
This is the work of a virtuoso fully conscious of his lineage in avant-garde cinema: the audiovisual synthesis recalls Oskar Fischinger and the absolute film tradition, while McLaren's technical mastery—rendering rhythm as visible geometry—becomes an argument about the nature of perception itself, refined across seven perfect minutes.
The singular choice here is deceptively simple: instead of animating to sound, McLaren draws the sound directly onto the optical track, and that single inversion of process creates a synesthetic experience where the mechanics of cinema become the subject, collapsing the distance between hearing and seeing in a way that rewires how you understand the medium.