Kaj Pindal, who turns eighty-five years old this year, ranks up there as one of my all-time favorite animators. He works with a very basic library of shapes, but his animation is whimsical, funny and filled with graphic quirks and tics that keep it fresh.
The City: Osaka is not necessarily a Pindal classic, but I was delighted to discover such a pristine copy posted onto the NFB website. It was a commission for Expo ‘70 held in Osaka, Japan. It was intended to give Japanese people a glimpse of Canadian life, which apparently consists mostly of deforestation and hockey. The simple black-and-white design of the film, as well as the two minutes of blank screen at the beginning (albeit with excellent jazz music), are due to the film’s original mode of projection. “It played around the clock for the duration of the World’s Fair on a screen made of sixty thousand individual light bulbs,” Pindal said. Kaj talked about his experiences associated with the film on the Kaj Pindal blog.
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Post tags: Kaj Pindal, National Film Board of Canada, NFB