Drouin will probably be remembered all through the animation neighborhood for his mastery of the pinscreen, the machine invented by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker. Drouin’s use of the uncommon device left us with a novel physique of labor, together with the broadly acclaimed Mindscape (1976), Nightangel (co-directed with Břetislav Pojar, 1986), and his closing movie Imprints (2004).
Drouin was born in Mont-Joli, Quebec in 1943. His journey in the direction of the NFB started when he was an adolescent. “My mother and father moved to Montreal in 1955 and that was in regards to the time the NFB constructing was in building,” he recalled in January 2021. “We lived in an space the place staff of the Movie Board had been coming from Ottawa to search for new homes to purchase. So I heard in regards to the Movie Board fairly early.”
A number of years later, whereas in his closing yr at L’École des Beaux-arts de Montréal, Drouin lastly entered the freshly painted partitions of the brand new NFB headquarters within the metropolis. “[Animator] Kaj Pindal was giving occasional talks, and due to this we went to the NFB sooner or later to get our paper perforated,” he stated. “That was the primary time I entered the Movie Board.”
Drouin’s curiosity in animation grew much more throughout Expo 67, which was held in Montreal. He visited an animation exhibition the place he first glimpsed a small prototype of Alexeieff and Parker’s pinscreen. “I keep in mind going to see many screenings of animation in the course of the World’s Honest. It was implausible.”
In 1968, Drouin headed west to UCLA to review filmmaking. “I solely took one animation class there. It was very primary. I wasn’t that . I discovered to make dope sheets and put together art work however my animation data was very restricted.” Drouin made a couple of movies at UCLA (together with animated quick The Letter) earlier than graduating.
Again in Montreal, Drouin started work as an editor for television sports activities packages. He did this for a few years earlier than getting up the nerve to go to the NFB with some animated movies he had made. “I had executed some pixilation and cutouts and I didn’t see a lot of a future with my job. I used to be not too glad in regards to the work, so I went to see René Jodoin [head of the NFB’s French animation unit].” A few yr later Drouin obtained a name from Jodoin’s secretary encouraging him to use for a three-month internship within the animation division. He went for the interview and was chosen.
Through the internship, Drouin stumbled upon a tool that might change his life. “I used to be advised that the pinscreen of Alexeieff was there. I received a 16 mm Bolex digital camera and [filmmaker Norman McLaren] advised me I may take a couple of days to check the pinscreen.” Drouin had executed some engraving work in class and noticed prospects with the pinscreen. “I believed I used to be the best individual to strive it. I felt there was a connection since this was the invention of an engraver [Alexeieff]. I used to be there an excellent second. It’s modified my life.”
For the remainder of his internship, Drouin experimented with the pinscreen, ultimately finishing Three Workout routines on Alexeieff’s Pinscreen (1974). After the internship, Drouin went again to modifying. It will be a pair extra years earlier than he returned to the NFB to pitch Mindscape, a pinscreen movie a few painter who enters his personal portray.
Drouin knew he wished a movie with out phrases that fused the true and the imagined. As he defined:
I actually appreciated Saul Steinberg drawings. Certainly one of them is of an artist with a fingerprint for a head. It struck me that it was about impressions left behind in a portray. I used to be additionally desirous about Carl Jung on the time. I simply put all of it on paper and made a couple of photographs that grew to become roughly a storyboard. I then figured I had a nine-minute movie and it will take me 9 months to make it. It ended up taking twice as lengthy. I actually had no concept how a lot time can be wanted between every picture. I went with instinct and little precision. There was quite a lot of improvisation that occurred.
Mindscape made its debut on the inaugural Ottawa Worldwide Animation Pageant in 1976, the place it took house a jury prize. Extra importantly, this was additionally the place Drouin met Alexeieff: “McLaren insisted that Alexeieff come to see Mindscape in individual. We spoke a couple of phrases throughout lunch. That night the movie was proven and as a gesture of continuation, a 35 mm print was given to him after the screening. Then I visited him in Paris the next yr and we had some conversations. I most likely noticed him three or 4 occasions earlier than he died.”
Regardless of the reward for Mindscape, Drouin discovered himself going again to modifying work once more. “I struggled throughout these years doing many issues,” he stated. In 1981 he would lastly be employed as a full-time director on the NFB, a place he maintained till it was abolished in 2004.
After Mindscape, Drouin made Nightangel, a narrative a few blind man and his guardian angel that mixes puppet and pinscreen animation (with shade, for the primary time in his filmography). This difficult co-production — Czechoslovakia, the associate nation, was within the midst of many sociopolitical modifications — was co-directed by Czech animator Břetislav Pojar.
Outdoors of contributions to a handful of animation tasks, Drouin wouldn’t make one other movie till Ex-Little one (1994). Made for the well-intended however poorly conceived Rights from the Coronary heart anthology sequence (which was impressed by the UN Conference on the Rights of the Little one), the movie tells a narrative of a father and son who’re enlisted to battle in an unnamed battle. Whereas there are some putting moments, for probably the most half, Ex-Little one feels a bit stiff and naïve.
Drouin acknowledged issues with the movie however stated that it was a studying expertise: “With the limitation of the story, it pushed me to do one thing apart from metamorphosis. I had not likely executed very reasonable actions with the opposite movies, however with this I needed to make some individuals stroll. It was a problem for me to do one thing that was not too pleasant with the pinscreen.”
His subsequent movie, A Searching Lesson (2001), was primarily based on a well-known kids’s ebook by Jacques Godbout a few boy who’s fascinated by his neighbor, a hunter. Drouin recalled: “That movie might be probably the most illustrative I may get with the pinscreen. It was one other sort of problem as a result of I used to be taking pictures in shade and needed to make some atmosphere with it. The pinscreen was additionally too small for the pictures I wished to do, so I needed to make separate units that I’d {photograph} and make consider it was a continuation of the pinscreen itself. It was enjoyable to strive, however I spent an excessive amount of time attempting to resolve puzzles.”
Imprints, the director’s closing quick, marked a shift again in the direction of a much less linear, extra summary method. “It was a really bodily movie. I used to be sweating all day as a result of I used to be working underneath tough gentle situations and making the display screen transfer. I had a tool to make it flip. It was like making a primary movie once more. I used to be over sixty and I assume I lastly misplaced my warning.”
Earlier than heading for the NFB exit doorways, Drouin made certain to share his data of the pinscreen. Marcel Jean, inventive director of Annecy Pageant, remembers: “He gave a masterclass and animator Michèle Lemieux had the chance to the touch the thorny beast.” Lemieux went on to finish her first pinscreen movie, Right here and the Nice Elsewhere (2012).
“Jacques gave me a lot,” she says. “To start out with, the privilege of being his successor to the pinscreen. He gave me room to be myself, together with the arrogance to sort out this considerably terrifying device. These hours we spent aspect by aspect as he taught me tips on how to restore and keep the pinscreen are one thing I’ll cherish without end. He was passing on the function of protector of an imposing however fragile instrument, one haunted by its inventors’ painful previous, and I understood that I had turn into its keeper and curator. These moments are among the many most treasured, probably the most transferring, of my total life.”
“A number of years later,” provides Jean, “Lemieux then gave a masterclass to coach younger French filmmakers on the pinscreen. At the moment, the pinscreen is alive and nicely and that is largely indebted to Jacques Drouin.”
We are able to study a lot about animation and its expressive attain by revisiting Drouin’s profession. However on the finish of the day, what issues most is the standard of the individual behind the works. Drouin was a stellar human being recognized for his compassion, humor, humanity, and modesty. The disbelief and deep grief that many are feeling over his loss speaks volumes about his character.
“All through his profession,” notes Julie Roy, the NFB’s director basic of creation and innovation, “Jacques carried the legacy of this imposing equipment of movie heritage. However he additionally stood out for his exemplary involvement within the day-to-day actions of the NFB and with the broader animation household on the world movie scene. He was endlessly erudite, a affected person and attentive trainer, and a heat and caring colleague. However above all, a person of remarkable humanity.”
“The one best kindness ever supplied to me by a piece colleague,” says Halifax animator Heather Harkins, “was the second when Jacques Drouin pulled me apart within the corridors of the NFB in 2003 to ask, ‘Are you okay? This place shouldn’t be a traditional place.’ Full disclosure: I used to be not okay. He was heat, pleasant, and all the time keen to make room for yet another individual at his cafeteria desk.
“Day after day, Jacques confirmed as much as work at an establishment whose highest executives appeared detached to its artists, and he persevered in sharing his brilliant stunning creativity with the world.”
