Norman McLaren at work.

So McLaren faded into the background, particularly because he was making short films. At one time, up until probably the early '80s, short films were much more widely seen, because there was a big distribution system, both here and in the States, in 16mm through public libraries and schools. It was the era of the film-literate generation. That was a great moment in the '70s in American cinema with Altman and so forth, and I think there was a whole different atmosphere. McLaren was in the center of this. That movement has dissipated, so short films, and the role of schools and libraries in promoting them, have diminished greatly. So I suppose McLaren began to seem old-fashioned to lots of young filmmakers. Cinemas at one time showed short films, and McLaren was a staple of that. You could still see them in the'60s. But by the end of the '60s, they completely disappeared from the cinemas.

TJ: That's interesting, because I got exposed to short films in libraries and school as well, and I completely forgot how seminal that experience was. I'm sure they started infiltrating my brain as early as first grade.

DM: When we had a launch screening in Ottawa three weeks ago, in the question-and-answer afterwards, somebody stuck up their head and said this was a revelation, because he'd only ever seen McLaren's films on scratchy prints in a classroom. I was an elementary school teacher in the '60s, and I showed McLaren films all the time. The first McLaren I ever saw was in the cinema in Toronto in 1959, along with a re-release of Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. That's what I went to see, and then this amazing short came on. (laughs)

TJ: And of course now they're almost completely banished from theaters, unless you're at a festival. It's very hard to stumble on undiscovered treasure.

DM: There's a magazine published in France called Bref, which is devoted entirely to short film. They have lists in the back of the magazine of all the screening events and festivals in France for short film. It's a big thing. And I teach in Norway, and you see quite a lot of shorts there. But generally speaking, what you're saying is true. It's true in England as well, that shorts are gone, except for special events.

Eyes on the birdie: Blinkety Blank (1955).

TJ: When did you first meet McLaren?

DM: It came out of going to see Gaslight, and seeing his film Serenal before the feature. It was totally abstract, and I'd never seen anything like it. I was very interested in cinema, but I only tended to think of cinema in narrative terms. And cartoons had stories. (laughs) And then this thing came on, and was a total revelation to me. Then a couple years later the film society exposed me to my second McLaren. That was also a very big mover for the dissemination of shorts, the film societies -- in Canada, since there were no movies legally allowed on Sundays, the film societies filled in. They showed mostly foreign movies and shorts. I saw Neighbors at one of those in around 1961. And then when I started teaching, the Film Board reps would come around with packages of films, because they were very active in getting films into the classroom. So through that I started to show a lot more films. And we started making handmade films in the classroom, drawing directly onto film.

Then, in 1968, the Film Board had a six-week session in the summer. You went down to the Film Board from nine in the morning to midnight looking at films and meeting filmmakers. So I took the opportunity and I just went round to McLaren's office and knocked on his door. And there was this terribly shy man. (laughs)

He didn't want to talk to me particularly. I told him why I was there, and he said, "Well, give me one of the films." So he put it on his rewinds -- because they were all hand-drawn on 16mm -- and he said, "Oh, this is interesting. We've got to look at these films in the theater." So he booked a projection room, and we looked at five films by my 11- to 12 year-old pupils. And, out of that, we just became friendly. As a consequence I started spending time with him, and I started making films myself. Then, in 1981, I was in Montreal working on a production and we were using the Film Board's shooting stage. I went up to see McLaren in his office, and he was not well, and he was trying to finish his last film, Narcissus, which he'd just shot. So it was decided I would go and work with him on it. I ended up staying in Montreal, and becoming the so-called "McLaren expert."

TJ: What was your function on helping finish Narcissus?

DM: I was his legs, basically. That's what I'd call it. But I worked on every aspect. I did all the optical shooting, and helped with the editing. He taught me an awful lot. It was a great leap forward in my life.

TJ: Were you considered his unofficial archivist?

DM: Well, we'd had this idea at one time that I would write a book about him, which never came to fruition. I did write it, but it lies in a drawer. But as a consequence, he went through everything he'd ever done with me, so I became very knowledgeable about his work. And then when he retired, he had all these tests and unfinished films, all of which were in cans in the basement of the Film Board -- and I looked after it and did an inventory. So when this whole project started, I was the one who happened to know where all this stuff was and what it meant.

DM: Did you bring the project to NFB, or did they approach you?

TJ: It's kind of convoluted -- this took something like 20 years. There's always been talk around the Film Board -- "We have to do something about McLaren!" And eventually the right people all started to think that at the same moment, and the thing clicked. It was under the leadership of a man called Marcel Jean. Everybody involved put their heart and soul into it -- because there are still people at the Film Board, particularly on the technical side, who knew McLaren and worked with him. There's an enormous loyalty to his memory. There's a chap named Sayed Rawji in technical services who was in charge of standards in the lab at the time we were doing Narcissus. The film was very complicated technically, so he was in the center of all this. And now, as head of technical services, he carries that connection with McLaren to his job, and he's able to galvanize the people underneath him.

TJ: How long was the actual production period for the DVD?

DM: I think it ended up being two years and three months. I didn't concern myself with any of that. My job was involved in the restoration and acting as consultant, and I wanted to stay out of all of that aspect of it. (laughs) You know, where do we get all the money, and who do we get to author the DVDs, and da da da.