Blinkity Blank is a 1955 animated short film created by Norman McLaren for the National Film Board of Canada. It won, among other awards, both the Short Film Palme d'Or at Cannes[1] and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film.[2]

Blinkity Blank
Directed byNorman McLaren
Produced byNorman McLaren
Music byMaurice Blackburn
Musicians:
Bert Niosi
Lew Lewis
Gordon Day
Isaac Mamott
Perry Bauman
Production
company
Distributed byNational Film Board of Canada
Release date
  • 1955 (1955)
LanguagesEnglish, French

Production

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Engraved directly onto black film leader, Blinkity Blank features a soundtrack combining improvisational jazz from composer Maurice Blackburn along with graphical sounds created by McLaren scratching onto the film's optical soundtrack.[3]

The film features lines, dots and other abstract forms, along with fruits, trees, planets and chickens—the latter featured at length in another McLaren hand-drawn film Hen Hop—which blink in and out of existence, or merge with or modulate other shapes. McLaren also left some frames blank, which he described as "sprinkling on the empty band of time".[4]

Awards

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References

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  1. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Blinkity Blank". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2011-03-14.
  2. ^ "Blinkity Blank". Collection. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
  3. ^ Rist, Peter (2001). Guide to the Cinema(s) of Canada. Greenwood Publishing. p. 18. ISBN 0-313-29931-5.
  4. ^ Schaffer, Bill (2005). "The Riddle of the Chicken: The Work of Norman McLaren". Senses of Cinema (35). Retrieved 16 March 2011.
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