Short films by Norman McLaren

This screening takes us back to January 1959, when Cineclube do Porto screened the same selection of short films by Norman McLaren, one of the most inventive figures in animated cinema. Fascinated by movement, McLaren drew, scratched and etched directly onto the film, dispensing with the traditional camera. From Dots to Blinkity Blank, via Begone Dull Care and Boogie Doodle, the multi-award-winning Scottish animator transformed sound — particularly jazz, of which he was a fan — and image into pure rhythmic energy. In Neighbours, formal experimentation is combined with a powerful anti-war allegory, whilst in A Chairy Tale, the absurd becomes physical in a choreographed duel between man and chair.