Caroline Leaf

Canadian independent filmmaker and animator Caroline Leaf is most recogized for the animated shorts she created for the National Film Board of Canada. To make her films, she prefers to use alternative methods to the traditional 'cel' animation preferred by commercial and Hollywood animators, which she feels are devoid of emotion in their portrayal of stereotypical characters and recurrent gags. The linear, highly segmented process of creating traditional cartoons also does not appeal to her; instead she prefers to use alternative, more free-flowing techniques. In her first film, Sand, or Peter and the Wolf (1969), made while she was still studying at Harvard, Leaf used sand on backlit glass which she manipulated about with common implements such as a fork. Her 1976 short, The Street, based on a story by Mordecai Richler that tells of a young boy in a Montreal Jewish neighborhood anxiously awaiting his grandmother's death so he can have her room, was done using wet paint on glass, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1979, she collaborated on a documentary that used a combination of documentary and animation with Veronica Soul. Between then and 1985 she made several non-animation films for the National Film Board. She has since returned to animation. One of her more recent works involves the scratching of an image directly upon the black film leader.

~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide