Neighbours
(Voisins)
Year: 1952
Format: 16mm Black & White
Runtime: 8 min
Director:
Norman McLaren
Producer:
Norman McLaren
Writer:
Norman McLaren
Cinematographer:
Wolf Koenig
Animation:
Norman McLaren
Sound:
Clarke Daprato
Music:
Norman McLaren
Cast:
Jean-Paul Ladouceur,
Grant Munro
Production Company:
National Film Board of Canada
Neighbours is Norman McLaren’s famous and, perhaps, most personal and powerful film. It uses a mixture of live characters, animation and special effects to tell the story of two neighbours who come to blows, and eventually kill each other (and one another's families), over the possession of a flower.
For some years, the NFB (with McLaren's concurrence) distributed a version of the film that omitted two nonconsecutive shots of a violent attack on the wife and child. The original version was reinstated in 1969 and is now the only one in distribution.
Neighbours won an Oscar and a Canadian Film Award, among other prizes.