Year: 1944
Language: French
Format: 16mm Black & White
Runtime: 3 min
Director: Norman McLaren
Producer: Norman McLaren
Animation: Norman McLaren
Cast: Le Alouette
Production Company: National Film Board of Canada

This early, innovative film by director Norman McLaren is a visual interpretation of a traditional French-Canadian folk song, for which McLaren developed an optical process to create a multi-planar effect. A series of white gouache drawings on black paper was photographed by a camera moving toward the drawings; the film was then cranked back so that the next drawing would be superimposed on the previous one. The effect captures the feeling of a canoe moving rapidly downriver as islands, rocks and faces drift past. The film was released with Alexander Alexeieff’s En passant (1943) as the sixth entry in the Chants populaires series.