A love-laden tribute to the late Scottish-born, Canadian animator and filmmaker Norman McLaren, 4d Art's production dazzles in its intensity and vision. Prior to seeing this, I knew nothing of McLaren's work. Within minutes I was a rapt student.
Masterfully meshing film and performance, dancer and choreographer Peter Trosztmer leads the audience through the filmmaker's life in a style which is part documentary and part performance. It depicts what one presumes was Trosztmer's real-life research at the National Film Board of Canada, where McLaren worked for most of his life, as he tried to build up a picture of what drove this shy and ferociously creative man.
Trosztmer literally steps into McLaren's world, pulsating against his abstract coloured lines, dancing woozily with his spooked wooden chair, opening up a Pandora's Box of animated hallucinations. Ghostly 3D interviewees shimmer in and out of focus on the stage, offering snippets of information and opinion about MacLaren.
Trosztmer expresses his growing understanding of his hero through his dance - McLaren had often said he would have been a choreographer in another life and his interest in music, rhythm and movement is evident in each of his works.
Trosztmer's body jerks in the tide of jazz that drives McLaren's dancing curls and bends through the strobing vibrations of constantly splintering squares, at once a part of the film and also a live, rich addition to it.
Norman is a constant visual wonderment that illustrates perfectly and joyously the beauty and scope of McLaren's work.
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