As the CBC reports, “The UNESCO Memory of the World Register has selected McLaren’s films to be held in its heritage collection of the most significant world cultural artifacts.

“McLaren’s Oscar-winning anti-war film Neighbours is among 82 films and 52 film tests to be preserved.”

The Memory of the World program is aimed at the “preservation and dissemination of valuable archive holdings and library collections worldwide.”

In addition to McLaren’s films, other additions include the Diaries of Anne Frank, Song of the Nibelungs, and the Magna Carta. Other film-related material added this year includes the John Marshall Ju/’hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection, 1950-2000 and NRWA Photo and Film Archives of Palestinian Refugees.  A list of this year’s additions can be found here.

Other film-related added in the past includes: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the Tait Brothers’ The Story of the Kelly Gang (Australia, 1906) (the first feature film made), Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz, the Ingmar Bergman Archives,Luis Buñuel’s Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned), Lumière Films, Roald Amundsen’s South Pole Expedition (1910-1912) and The Battle of the Somme (1916). A full  list of Registered Heritage can be found here.

The CBC further notes:

The Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, which protects Canada’s film and video heritage, nominated the collection for preservation by UNESCO.

The bid was supported by groups such as the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, the British Film Institute, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Film Studies Association of Canada and the Museum of Modern Art, which holds an archive of McLaren works.

Neighbours and other McLaren classics can be viewed at the NFB’s online screening room.

(Thanks to Karl Cohen.)

Correction: The CBC report which I initially relied on was in error in saying, “The UNESCO Memory of the World Register has selected McLaren’s films to be held in its heritage collection of the most significant world cultural artifacts.” Instead the honor was reserved for just Neighbours. As its website noted:

Norman McLaren is the most influential animator in the history of the art of animation. Over many years of constant groundbreaking research and experimentation he has created a coherent and extraordinary body of work with a unique inventiveness. This is best exemplified by his most important film, the anti-war parable Neighbours.

Canadian filmmaker Pedram Goshtasbpour, for some reason, describes his short film  Eleven Roses (aka E1even Roses) (2008) as a “romantic comedy,” though it is more aptly seen as a 98 lb. weakling tale gone horribly wrong. Pedram, who is someone with whom I’ve had a productive, long-standing correspondence with, shows himself to be a expert filmmaker, with considerable comedic and dramatic flair; the (mostly) black-and-white film effectively mixes CGI and traditional 2D animation and is something I can easily recommend. (The film can be viewed here.)

Is this the future of drawn animation? The National Film Board of Canada has recently posted this fascinating film in which “Munro Ferguson explains the principles of the 3D Stereoscopic animation technique a.k.a. Sandde. He also shows us the lab where these short animations are shaped up.”

PC World magazine reports that

Over on beta.NFB.ca they’ve created a free, public online repository of [National Film Board of Canada] shorts and features, starting with over 300 films from their archives. The films can be shared and embedded YouTube-style, as well.

This isn’t the first time the NFB has dipped into their vaults for their online audience. Two years ago, to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the creation of the animation department, the NFB put 70 of their animation shorts on their Focus on Animation site. However, that played as something of a “greatest hits” collection; not that that’s bad thing, but it didn’t have the scope of beta.NFB.ca, which even in this preliminary stage offers a more textured view of the history of Canada, Canadians, and cinema as a whole.

I checked it out and found some of the usual suspects, such as Norman McLaren’s wartime Hen Hop and his masterly dance film Pas de deux, which is certainly one of the most eloquent visual effects films ever made. However, there are a number of other films which I have always been curious about, including Don Owen’s feature-length Nobody Waved Goodbye (1964). The site is very much a work in progress — for instance there is only one film so far by Paul Driessen (Cat’s Cradle), you cannot yet search by name and the links to buy a DVD do not always provide the right title; but overall, the site looks a real winner.

In the meantime, below find two films I did catch up with: Stuart Legg’s memorable wartime documentary, Churchill’s Island (1941), with a vintage poetic narration spoken by Lorne Greene; it was the first of many NFB films to win an Oscar. I also enjoyed Pierre Hébert’s Songs and Dances of the Inanimate World: The Subway (1985), an experimental animation in the tradition of Norman McLaren.