Neighbours

Created by Norman McLaren, this 8-minute short was the Academy Award winner for Best Documentary in 1952. I remember seeing this film at an experimental film festival in the 1960s in Boston. It had been controversial at the time of its release, and had even been censored in the United States (for depictions of graphic violence); the scenes depicting the murder of the neighbours' wives and children were deleted before the Oscar was granted.

One language tidbit: "McLaren called the technique pixillation. The term is now universally misspelt as pixilation, which has an entirely different dictionary definition. McLaren made the term up from the word “pix,” an abbreviation for picture."

This is one of 700 films from the National Film Board of Canada available for viewing at their archives.