Boogie-Doodle (1940)

Directed by

Norman McLaren

Genre

musical film

Country

Canada

Runtime

4 min

Rating

6.1 of 10 from 24 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a short animated film with no camera. Norman McLaren drew and painted directly onto the film strip. The images dance in sync with a boogie-woogie piano piece by Albert Ammons.

playfulenergeticrhythmicabstractcolorfulwhimsicalkinetic

What happens

Boogie-Doodle is a 1940 drawn-on-film visual music short by Norman McLaren, set to the boogie-woogie music of African-American jazz pianist Albert Ammons. Though released by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in 1941, Boogie-Doodle was actually made by McLaren in New York City in 1940, a year before he was invited by John Grierson to Canada to found the NFB's animation unit. McLaren, who had been influenced by the hand-painted films of Len Lye, was in New York exploring the technique on a grant from the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, creating Boogie-Doodle along with three other cameraless films: Dots, Loops and Stars and Stripes. The animation in Boogie-Doodle coincides exactly with Ammon's musical piece, with McLaren's animation beginning at the very first bar and concluding at the final note. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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• Stars and Stripes (1943)
• Now Is the Time (1951)
• Dots (1940)
• Serenal (1959)
• Copenhagen Boogie (1949)
• Short and Suite (1959)
• Begone Dull Care (1949)
• La poulette grise (1947)