Caroline Leaf

Caroline Leaf (born August 12, 1946) is a Canadian American filmmaker, animator, director, tutor and artist. She has produced numerous short animated films and her work has been recognized worldwide. She is best known as one of the pioneering filmmakers at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). She worked at the NFB from 1972 to 1991. During that time, she created the sand animation and paint-on-glass animation techniques. She also tried new hands-on techniques with 70 mm IMAX film. Her work is often representational of Canadian culture and is narrative-based. Leaf now lives in London, England, and is a tutor at The National Film and Television School. She maintains a studio in London working in oils and on paper and does landscape drawing with an iPad.

Biography and early work Leaf was born in Seattle, Washington and lived in Boston. She attended Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and majored in architectural sciences and visual arts from 1964 to 1968. During her last year of studies, she enrolled in an animation class. The class was taught by Derek Lamb as a creative practice, not as a professional training. Lamb encouraged his students to focus on movement. Leaf worked with beach sand spread on a lightbox. This is when she created sand animation. Using this technique, she produced her first film Sand, or Peter and the Wolf and was awarded a scholarship from Harvard University. After graduation, she moved to Italy for a year to focus on her drawing. Returning to Harvard, she made her second animated film, Orfeo painting on glass. She then did freelance work from a studio in Boston and made How Beaver Stole Fire. Leaf moved to Montreal to work as an animator / director for the National Film Board of Canada in 1972. She worked at the NFB in the French and English animation departments until 1991. She made nine animated and live puppet films and a documentary film during those years.

Career Leaf made her first film, Sand, or Peter and the Wolf, in 1969 at Harvard University. The short was made by pouring sand on a light box and manipulating the shapes frame-by-frame. Her second film at Harvard, Orfeo, was painted on glass under the camera. In 1972, she was invited to join the National Film Board of Canada's French Animation Studio. Her first film for the NFB was The Owl Who Married a Goose: An Eskimo Legend. It is also featured in the Animation Show of Shows.

Leaf co-directed an animated documentary film called Interview with Veronika Soul. She made a documentary film on the singers Kate & Anna McGarrigle, produced by Derek Lamb. In 1990, she made her first animation in nearly a decade by scratching into the emulsion of exposed black 70 mm colour film and reshooting it on 35 mm film. She worked for two years using this technique on her film Two Sisters original version called Entre Deux Soeurs. The tone and story of this film is dark. Two Sisters won the award for best short film at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 1991.

Leaf worked as an animator/director at the NFB until 1991. In 1991, she left animation to establish herself as a fine arts artist working in oils. In 2004, she contributed animation to a film about the Underground Railroad produced by Acme Filmworks in Los Angeles called Suite for Freedom. Her part was called Slavery.

Animation techniques and influence Leaf discovered a spontaneous and artistic hand crafted way of animating in her animation class at Harvard and developed it in her professional career, pioneering: sand and paint-on-glass animation, along with hand etching on film stock. All of her techniques have been described as having "fluid transitions".

Leaf is also considered an influential Canadian filmmaker for her long standing service with the National Film Board of Canada and her representation of Canadian culture in her films. This can mainly be seen in her films The Street, The Owl who Married a Goose, and Kate and Anna McGarrigle. 2019: Dragon of Dragons Award, Kraków Film Festival

Nominations 1977: Academy Award for The Street