A Canadian Tradition
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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National Film Board of Canada
14 min read
The article centers on the NFB as Canada's most admired animation studio, discussing its history since the 1940s, its free online archive, and its Oscar-winning films. A deep dive into the NFB's founding, mandate, and influence on world cinema would provide essential context.
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Co Hoedeman
12 min read
The article opens with a still from Tchou-Tchou (1972) by Co Hoedeman. This Dutch-Canadian animator won an Oscar for The Sand Castle and pioneered stop-motion techniques at the NFB, making him a key figure in the studio's legacy.
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Norman McLaren
11 min read
While not explicitly named, the article references Oscar winners and experimental animation at the NFB. McLaren was the NFB's most influential animator, pioneering techniques like drawing directly on film and pixilation, and won an Oscar for Neighbours (1952).
Welcome! It’s a new Thursday issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter — and our topic today is Canada’s most admired animation studio.
Early in the year, a reader linked us to a sweet, low-key, funny film we hadn’t seen before. They wanted to spread a little happiness: “a hugback for all the wonders you’ve shared,” the reader wrote. We appreciated it a lot.
We’re still thinking about that film, At Home with Mrs. Hen (2006). An animator named Tali Prevost created it for the National Film Board of Canada, based on her own experiences as a mother. It’s pretty delightful, and it’s just sitting online for free, right on the studio’s website.1
That site may be familiar to you, at least in passing. The Film Board’s produced a ton of animation since the ‘40s, and it hosts many of those projects on its site — some locked to Canada, but hundreds free to all. The animation writer Alex Dudok de Wit has called it “Netflix for people like me,” which is easy to agree with.
Not unlike the guide to Czechoslovak animation we preserved this month, the Film Board’s site is a rainy-day kind of thing. It’s something to explore slowly, with focus. You find Oscar winners and abstracts there, strange experiments and unassuming cartoons (At Home with Mrs. Hen included). It isn’t hard to lose hours.
So, in this issue, we’re taking a short tour — exploring a few of the highlight films, plus a little of the Board’s background. No studio in Canada, and few in the world, can match what this one’s done for animation.
This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.