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Combining the music of Chopin with digital animation, this short film artfully defines pianist Janina Fialkowska’s imprint in the world of classical music and beyond. A swirling choreography of light particles reveals an otherworldly beauty, channelling the pianist’s explosive performance. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada in co-operation with the National Arts Centre and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Foundation on the occasion of the 2012 Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards.

Computer animated short film.

A compilation of interviewees describing their biggest fears.

“Be Vardų, Be Kojų,” meaning ‘without names, without legs,’ is an experimental, animated, dance film that investigates queer movement in Lithuanian folk dance. Using photograms made from scanning dancers performing specific gendered folk dance steps, the film depicts bodies that don’t conform to earthly physics, boundaries, and rules and that act instead as disruptive agents.

During the Palaeolithic, humanity is going through a glacial period that threatened survival. Only a happy coincidence could allow humans to live...

Handmade optical sounds and drawing directly to 35mm film. Two abstract energies fall in love, unite as one then disappear into a vanishing point.

A lady and her Cat. A friendship stronger than the optic nerve

Alex a 9 year old girl fights bullying and gender stereotypes.

Video Painting Series

In this animated short, Evelyn Lambart uses her well-known style of animation – paper figures and brightly colored backgrounds – to revisit Aesop’s tale of 2 mice with vastly different lifestyles. Ultimately, the film suggests it is far better to live simply and in peace than to live in luxury amidst danger.

The work of art in the age of genetic reproduction-- Based on the practice of lip-reading, this short animated film explores the visual "code" of verbal pronunciation by animating pairs of lips cut out from magazines according to the position of the mouth in pronouncing a sound of spoken language.

Long celebrated for its groundbreaking achievements in animation, the National Film Board of Canada has earned international acclaim and dozens of Oscar® nominations for its animated shorts. During a particularly fertile period between 1965 and 1985, the NFB played an instrumental role in the medium’s rapid evolution, breaking new ground with a wildly varied and inventive run of films that are alternately abstract, eerie, entertaining, poetic, poignant, and psychedelic. An eye-opening overview of this seminal period in animated film history, Animation Night in Canada, Vol. 1 features 14 Oscar®-nominated classics with style and personality to spare.

Marie Antoinette enjoys her last meal as the queen of France before her execution.

In the land of the happy, people have everything. They receive everything they need, in abundance, except… cockroaches.

A 20-second animated short film to discourage smoking.

This animation was created as a series of experiments with hand-processed 16mm film, collected and collaged to the sound: photograms of hair, confetti and sand, stop-motion sand animation, bleaching, toning and paint on film.

An animated short film made with 6,490 photographs of spin art micro paintings.

Adult men share their stories of how their fathers explained sex to them as kids in an animated compilation.

In a world where balloons are filled with the light of film, a father must find the time to pop one with his son before it loses its light forever.

A 90-year-old Jewish woman reflects on her life experiences as she prepares to try bacon for the first time.

Fears are visible as constant companions of their owners. These creatures can make people's lives more difficult, but they can also be very useful.

A teenager attempts to complete a musical solo, but supernatural events manifest themselves as he goes along.

Samaa is about the strength and power of stillness. Its premise is simple and conveys a deep wisdom that stands out in the blur of modern life. A bird is trapped in a cage. Only when it stops struggling does it find itself free.

A video based on a report on the Weimar/Ichtershausen Juvenile Prison, written by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. A collaboration with Steven Brown (sound/narritive).

A young girl’s experience growing up on a West Coast float house.

Inhabited by multiple bereavements due to a long journey with HIV/AIDS, characters parade in a perpetual winter. Different moving tableaux evoke possible deliverances.

A daughter's "coming out" to her mother falls on deaf ears. Sometimes people just don't want to listen.

Canadian poet Earle Birney indulges his love of trains in this performance of his sound poem To Swindon from London by Britrail. In fluent "trainish," he interprets the experience of excursions by rail. Imagination sparked by the rhythm of wheels and the clink of couplings, Birney hums, hisses and hoots his way through archival footage of vintage trains and the English countryside. A must for language, animation and train buffs.

Am I him or am I not? Did I know her or did she know me? I'm not certain who they are yet I feel I have always known them and I can’t help but wonder what became of them. A figure appears then dissolves as the film becomes a memory map. An other figure then appears and merges into the topography of the aged film before once again the first figure briefly reappears.

A “water poem,” set in a Japanese ofuro hot bath. It explores water as a medium and repository for collective stories and was created in a hybrid new media form using animation, video and split screens. This film was made as part of the first edition of the NFB's Hothouse apprenticeship.

Animated misadventures of Alick, our trans/2spirit/intersex teen hero when they fall in love for the first time with Kay, our junior high school siren.

Impressions of the lights of Christmas as they transform a winter's night. The myriad lights of a city seen through frost-sparkling air, the wonder on children's faces, the lyrical music of harp, celesta and flute--all combine to create the nostalgic mood of Christmas.

In a black-and-white world, lonely lumberjack Bill chases a stealing crow to a giant tree. When he strikes the tree, color fills the landscape. Bill, overcome by euphoria, hallucinates. When he wakes up, the raven flies away, leaving Bill behind to face his creation.

A dance of time passing through the invisible movement of flowers, clouds and crowds.

After a threesome proposal, Beatrix drinks cranberry juice non-stop hoping it will improve her sexual life.

A spectacular showcase of 20 cutting-edge computer-animated shorts from around the world ranging from wildly humorous to outrageously exotic. Computer Animation Festival spins a high-tech tapestry of art, storytelling, and visual technology. Every short is shown in its' entirety, as originally created by each animator. Plug your imagination into the most extraordinary collection of computer powered imagery ever unleashed on video.

This very short stereoscopic film by Evelyn Lambart uses drawings to suggest movement across Canada’s ever-changing countryside.

A dark comedy in which we follow a patient on his journey through the hospital in the hope of finding a cure for his aching leg.

At nightfall, a lost young hiker spots an isolated house in the heart of a Québécois forest. An unexpected refuge… or so he believes. For within this home lives a hostile being, and it’s almost seven o’clock.

There are many kinds of "looks" out there, and we often forget the impact they have on us. This story tells how a human being can be tamed by the critical gaze of those around him. Under the gaze of various "wide-eyed creatures", a "small-eyed" boy grows up to become a "wide-eyed" adult.

An experimental mathematics film designed to elucidate the study of four-line conics.

What do two kids do after their TV explodes? On this quite extraordinary day, they turn into kids again. They burst into laughter for no reason and become so light they float off to a wonderful desert island. But you can't channel-surf on an island, and once the wonder wears off...

3D animation by Sabrina Ratté

This animated short tells a humourous Hebrew folk tale about a man's venture to introduce onions to a far away kingdom and a disreputable man's attempt to exploit that.

In this joyful portrait, filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming animates the formative days and musical career of Calgary-born identical twins Tegan and Sara Quin. Their remarkable journey over the past 20 years has often intersected with notions of identity—as artists, as individuals, as sisters, as queer women, and as leading activists in the LGBTQ community. Their musical progression parallels and amplifies their commitment to bringing the marginal to the mainstream.

The interaction between two individuals is often forgotten. With the displays of soothing cultural sounds, one can easily be reminded of the original state and meaning within a conversation based on likeness and emotion. This piece is a stop-motion cut-out animation made for the Distorted Storytelling exhibition project for S.P.A.C.E. (Sciences Participating with Arts and Culture in Education), presented at Dawson College in Montréal.

An animated film using a multitude of techniques, in which a flower tries to grow while the planet is dying.

An unsuspecting artist is moved by a visit from a seemingly banal moth. As events unfold into the final fleeting moments, a hidden marvel is revealed which the artist fights to preserve.

London Calling explores how the birth, experience, and reconfiguration of personal moments are turned into our own intimate mythologies. Using my ever changing connection with the titular metropolis, London Calling follows the evolution of my personal myth of that city.

When double subjectivity strikes, tension is created between form and matter, intellect and feeling. The terrible threat of formlessness hovers. Life as seen through an artist’s eyes.

A short story about two very different dancers that get the inspiration from each other and find a courage in themselves to admit the adoration in the cutest way possible. No words needed.

How to grow up and find one’s place in a lesbian body? Get in the ring, riot-grrrrl, and experience everything to avoid being ill-eased in the end. All you have to do is watch and listen. A vivid and refreshing music-clip that mixes found-footage with cut-up animation.

With each recollection, our memories become increasingly hazy until they fade away or distort. This short film explores the process of recalling memories through fragments of personal archives juxtaposed with 3D scans of my childhood home.

An abstract account of the 1946 fire at the La Salle Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, where even the frame itself threatens to collapse. Archival footage broken down digitally and reconstructed via laser printer onto recycled 35mm film, in 2011.

Coco likes hockey, but she REALLY likes hockey girl.

This sand animation reflects on people’s judgements of others and how this affects our own life and helps us to become stronger humans. Gusty winds, sharp raindrops and tree branches in a dark and dense forest are metaphorically representations of harmful obstacles in life.

Separated from his Kitcisakik community, a little Algonquin prince discovers the good and the bad in the White people's world, until one day his own child brings him back down to earth.