Boogie-Doodle

1941 Canadian film

1941 (1941)

Running time

4 minutesCountryCanadaLanguagenone

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.^[1]^[2]

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.^[3] 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.^[4]

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.^[5]

References

^ Bill Kirchner, ed. (May 2005). The Oxford Companion to Jazz. Oxford University Press. p. 771. ISBN 978-0-19-518359-7.
^ Ian Conrich; Estella Ticknell (July 1, 2007). Film's Musical Moments. Edinburgh University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-7486-2345-7.
^ Ortega, Marcos (July 16, 2006). "Norman McLaren: The Master's Edition". Experimental Cinema. Retrieved April 1, 2011.
^ Beckerman, Howard (February 2004). Animation: The Whole Story. Allworth Press. pp. 51–52. ISBN 978-1-58115-301-9.
^ The Undercut Reader: Critical Writing on Artists' Film and Video. Wallflower Press. 2003. ISBN 978-1-903364-47-5.