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''Neighbours'' (French title: '''''Voisins''''') is an award-winning 1952 short film by Scottish-Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren . Produced at the National Film Board Of Canada in Montreal , the film uses the technique known as Pixilation , an animation technique using live actors as stop-motion objects. McLaren created the soundtrack of the film by scratching the edge of the film, creating various blobs, lines, and triangles which the projector read as sound. PLOT Two men ( Jean Paul Ladouceur and Grant Munro ) live peacefully side by side in houses made of cardboard, but when a flower blooms between both their houses, they fight each other to the death over the ownership of the single small flower. CONTROVERSY ''Neighbours'' has garnered the label "one of the most controversial films the NFB ever made".1 Further, the eight-minute film was politically motivated:
However, the version of ''Neighbours'' that ultimately won an Oscar was not the version McLaren had originally created. In order to make the film palatable for American and European audiences, McLaren was required to remove a scene in which the two men, fighting over the flower, murdered the other's wife and children.3 During the Vietnam War, public opinion changed, and McLaren was asked to put the sequence back in. The original negative of that scene had been destroyed, so it was salvaged from a positive print of lower quality.Curtis, David. Norman McLaren. Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council Catalogue, 1977. PIXILATION The term 'Pixilation' was created by Grant Munro, who had worked with McLaren on '' Two Bagatelles '', a pair of short pixilation films made prior to ''Neighbours.'' While ''Neighbours'' is often credited as an animated film by many film historians,http://www.oscars.org/press/pressreleases/2005/05.10.31.html very little of the film is actually animated. The majority of the film is shot with variable-speed photography, usually in fast motion, with some stop-frame techniques. Under the current definition of an animated short,http://www.oscars.org/79academyawards/rules/rule19.html it is unlikely that ''Neighbours'' would qualify as either a documentary short or an animated short. McLaren followed ''Neighbors'' with two other films using a similar combination of pixilation, live action, variable speed photography and string-puppets. The first, '' A Chairy Tale '' (1957) was a collaboration with Claude Jutra and Ravi Shankar . The second, '' Opening Speech By Norman McLaren '' (1960) was made for the International Film Festival of Montreal, and starred McLaren himself. AWARDS AND HONOURS ''Neighbours'' is the winner of a Canadian Film Award as well as an Academy Award , where it was nominated twice, for Short Subject (One-reel) as well as Best Documentary (Short Subject). Strangely, it was in the Documentary category that this short, stylized drama won its Oscar. A press release isued by AMPAS states that ''Neighbours'' is "among a group of films that not only competed, but won Academy Awards in what were clearly inappropriate categories." http://www.oscars.org/press/pressreleases/2005/05.10.31.html This film has been designated and preserved as a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust Of Canada , a charitable non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the preservation of Canada’s audio-visual heritage. http://avtrust.ca/masterworks/2000/en_film.htm DERIVATIVES Extreme 's video for their first single, ''Rest in Peace'', from their third album III Sides To Every Story, was closely modelled after ''Neighbours''. The NFB took legal action and the matter was settled out of court, with withdrawal of the video from circulation. REFERENCES SEE ALSO
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