Donald McWilliams

Creative Process: Norman McLaren

Claude Dionne, Donald McWilliams

Norman McLaren

Norman McLaren was a cinematic genius who made films without cameras, and music without instruments. He produced sixty films in a stunning range of styles and techniques, collecting over 200 international awards, and world recognition. In Creative Process, director Donald McWilliams demystifies the process of artistic creation. Drawing on McLaren's private film vaults, a gold mine of experimental footage and uncompleted films, McWilliams explores McLaren's methods, including his celebrated "pixillation" technique, and his daring forays into animated surrealism.

The Passerby

Donald McWilliams

In The Passerby, poems, home movies, interviews, photographs, and footage filmed all over the world combine to form a kind of necromancy: impression, imprint, appearance of many lives that were not lived without a trace. What can be read out of pictures and movement, facial expressions and gestures? Donald McWilliams' compelling contrast montage, visual effects, and use of music provide a meditation on the mysteries of existence.

A Time There Was: Stories from the Last Days of Kenya Colony

Donald McWilliams

Achhroo Ram Kapila, Salome Kinyanjui

A look at the Mau Mau Rebellion of the 1950s as experienced by filmmaker Donald McWilliams.

How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels: Prologue

Donald McWilliams

A short three minute documentary by Donald McWilliams regarding the film How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels (1996) directed by Craig Welch

Eleven Moving Moments with Evelyn Lambart

Donald McWilliams

An instructive compilation about pioneer Ottawa animator Evelyn Lambart, playfully contextualized by filmmaker Donald McWilliams.

Impressions of China

Donald McWilliams

This short documentary follows a group of students from Hamilton, Ontario, on a rare three-week “tour” of China in 1972. These teenagers were the first North American students to visit China since 1949, when Mao Tse Tung’s Communists overthrew the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek.