The Cinematheque

“Frédéric Back is my master, my mentor in life, as well as in my animation work.”

Takahata Isao, director (Pom Poko, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya)

The films of Frédéric Back (1924–2013) are tales of creation and destruction, rendering the epic and the eternal in gentle, impressionist pencil strokes. Back knew the beauty of the world was the most important gift to children, and the most fragile. As a child in France, he and his schoolmates helped to dig people out of rubble after waves of bombings during WWII, saying later, ​“It was an important experience to know how ugly people can be to each other.” After moving to Canada in his 20s at the urging of his pen pal Ghylaine Paquin (the two married a year later), Back found work at Radio-Canada at a time when its animation department was thriving. The films he made, which continually find new ways to depict the vitality of motion, tradition, and thought, influenced countless animators. A stunned Miyazaki Hayao, after a viewing of Crac, remarked to Takahata Isao, ​“I guess we’re failures, aren’t we?”

Illusion
Canada 1975
12 min. DCP

Tout rien
aka All Nothing
Canada 1978
11 min. DCP

Crac
Canada 1980
15 min. DCP

The Man Who Planted Trees
L’homme qui plantait des arbres
Canada 1987
30 min. DCP English narration version

Best Animated Short Film
Academy Awards 1982, 1988, for Crac and The Man Who Planted Trees

The Greatest Animation Films of All Time (#4, #12)
Laputa Animation Festival 2003 for The Man Who Planted Trees and Crac

“Cinema [can] play an important role to overcome the impact of our lack of understanding … It takes time. Beauty isn’t achieved easily. The first pencil stroke is maybe not the kind of line you need. It is always a search. Without end. It is very important.”

Frédéric Back