January 23, 2015 – Montreal, National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is honouring the memory of Svetlana Alexeïeff-Rockwell, who passed away last week at age 91. Alexeïeff-Rockwell was the daughter of artist Alexandra Grinevsky and Alexandre Alexeïeff, the animation filmmaker and co-inventor (with Claire Parker) of the pinscreen. Born in Paris in 1923, Alexeïeff-Rockwell married an American after the Second World War and moved to the United States. An artist, teacher consultant and writer, she dedicated her life to keeping her father’s work alive and ensuring the continued relevance of his invention. The NFB’s pinscreen, acquired in 1972, is the only one in the world currently in use.
Julie Roy, executive producer of the NFB’s French Animation Studio, said, “Keeping alive the artistic heritage of the pinscreen—which has been so important to the world of animation—and making it available to contemporary creators was very close to Mrs. Alexeïeff-Rockwell’s heart. That was clearly evident to anyone who saw how emotional she was in 2012 during a visit to the NFB for a screening of Michèle Lemieux’s film Here and the Great Elsewhere, made with the NFB’s pinscreen. We will continue to promote and celebrate this unique—one might even say legendary—instrument.”
Quick Facts
• In memory of this great woman, the NFB is featuring the following pinscreen films at NFB.ca.
o Mindscape by Jacques Drouin
o Imprints by Jacques Drouin
o A Hunting Lesson by Jacques Drouin
o Ex-Child by Jacques Drouin
o Here and the Great Elsewhere by Michèle Lemieux
• The NFB and the pinscreen
o In 1944, the creators of the pinscreen—Alexandre Alexeïeff, a Russian-born artist living in France, and his wife Claire Parker, an American—made a short film for the NFB entitled En passant. Fast forward to 1961, when Norman McLaren, while visiting the couple on a trip to Paris, carried out a few tests using the pinscreen. The tests led no further, but McLaren’s admiration for Alexeïeff prompted the NFB to acquire its own pinscreen in 1972, with which animator Jacques Drouin would subsequently make all of his films, including Mindscape (1976). With Alexeïeff’s death in 1982, the NFB’s pinscreen became the world’s only working model. After Drouin retired, the NFB asked him to give a master class to share his unique skills with other artists. It was here that Michèle Lemieux first encountered the ingenious device with which she was to create Here and the Great Elsewhere.
• Description of the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen
o The pinscreen is a white vertical screen with hundreds of thousands of perforations, each fitted with a retractable pin. Lit from the side, the pins, whose height can be adjusted, cast shadows of varying lengths. This grid of pins and shadows creates a grey-scale that ranges from black to white and is used to produce animated images that look like engravings or charcoal drawings. The NFB’s pinscreen consists of 240,000 pins in a 52 x 39 cm surface.
Stay Connected
Online screening room: NFB.ca
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Media Relations
Nadine Viau, NFB Publicist
Cell: 514-458-9745
E-mail: n.viau@nfb.ca
Lily Robert, Director, Corporate Communications and Corporate Affairs
Cell: 514-296-8261
E-mail: l.robert@nfb.ca
About the NFB
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) creates groundbreaking interactive works, social-issue documentaries and auteur animation. The NFB has produced over 13,000 productions and won over 5,000 awards, including 9 Canadian Screen Awards, 8 Webbys, 12 Oscars and more than 90 Genies. To access acclaimed NFB content, visit NFB.ca or download its apps for smartphones, tablets and connected TV.
