Frame by Frame: An Animator's Journey by Co Hoedeman

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“During the Nazi occupation, my father was forced to make uniforms for the German army, but this clothing wasn’t always prêt-a-porter! Sometimes he and his colleagues would deliberately cut one leg of the trousers shorter than the other, or sew buttonholes in the wrong places on the uniforms. It was all hush-hush, and the Germans didn’t discover the shoddy work until the goods were safely delivered to far-away Germany.

Helping my father and Opa make clothes with their hands was an experience that I later employed in my film career to create puppets and sets for animation projects. It was also during the Second World War that I had my first encounter with puppets, which would eventually lead to my career in stop-motion animation in Canada.

At a time when there was no television and little access to any kind of entertainment, puppet shows were the most brilliant experience imaginable. Puppet theatre and puppet animation have a lot in common. The animator and his team, just like the puppet master in a puppet show, are in control of everything: the storyline, the movements, the sets, the puppets, the animation and the emotions of the audience.”

A series of images taken from one of Co Hoedeman’s animated films – a cardinal in the stages of opening its wings in flight – is on the cover of his autobiographical Frame by Frame: An Animator’s Journey, and the same thoughtful presentation of his story continues from the cover to the last page. Every detail has been considered and refined, the way one of his animations might be carefully created.

Frame by Frame: An Animator’s Journey reflects the kind of filmmaker Hoedeman has been all his adult life: meticulous, imaginative, and affecting. Writing like a puppet master, Hoedeman controls every moment in this written account of his singular journey. He gives the sparsest of details in the telling, as though he might have to make and create each scene as stop-animation; every character and move he writes of would need careful planning and time to stage (from his childhood amidst the Second World War to his early training to be a film-maker, to his move to Canada to become a world-class, Oscar-winning short film animator with the National Film Board, to his search for cultural depth and indigenous stories – in Canada’s North – to this point in his life when he can no longer practice his craft). As you read the pages of his autobiography, you can almost feel the hand of this master of short-form storytelling at work.

Co Hoedeman’s life began in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, and he tells his memories of boyhood and war through visceral, framed moments. He writes from a point of view that reads like he is looking at his own life from a distance (or from the perspective of the audience), and he tells his own story from there – as though directing the story of his life as he tells it.

“It was May of 1945, I was almost five years old and the war was over! As a young child I had no clue what was going on. For me, the liberation by the Canadians was like a big parade that never ended, but for my dad it was a big deal. As the airplanes were flying over, he stood on the rooftop waving with a big white sheet to welcome the Allies.”

It takes him three sentences and one image to show how the end of the war felt. (I doubt I will ever forget that image of his father on the roof.)

This is a perfect example of how he tells the story of his life. Hoedeman squeezes a lot of living and creating into Frame by Frame. He takes the reader from his early days in Amsterdam to Montreal, Canada. We follow him to Canada’s North, to puppet making in Czechoslovakia, to teaching in Japan, to he and his wife’s working farm in the Quebec countryside, to Montreal where he commuted to work at the National Film Board, to the apartment he now shares with his second wife and where he writes this (perhaps) last set of frame by frames.

And, like the master animator he is, he controls the readers’ emotions throughout. He wants us to feel the loss of the exacting and magical art that stop-animation once was, for the world-class opportunity and institution the National Film Board once was, and for the man and artist he was (and is). But he also wants us to feel the excitement and thrill of making his most successful and rewarding films. He wants us to feel his love and gratitude for it all. And we do.

I was halfway through Co Hoedeman’s compact Frame by Frame: An Animator’s Journey when I realized I was familiar with his work, though it was lodged deep in my memory. I didn’t think I’d seen National Film Board animations growing up – I’d had no access to them, I didn’t think – but as he described it, I was sure I remembered a short film about people made of sand, and their rush to get inside their sand castle as a windstorm swept across the beach.

From my childhood mind’s view, I remember being terribly sad for the sand people who were in one moment so carefree and happy in their domestic, sand castle lives, but who entirely disappeared by the end. Though they escape quickly into the hopeful safety of their sand castle when the wind picks up, the wind then smooths out and erases the sand castle as well. Hoedeman’s animations are both simple and complicated, and the imagery you will never forget.

“At a point in his life when he can no longer tell stories through film due to a loss of sight and strength, Hoedeman gives us this book – his most personal work.”

After remembering it, I went looking for his film, The Sand Castle, and I am happy to report that you can view Co Hoedeman’s exceptional animated films on Youtube. It doesn’t feel right to watch this incredible craftsmanship online, it’s not what he envisioned, surely, but that they are enables for his films what his art is about: capturing and preserving cultural and imagined stories forever, before they disappear.

At a point in his life when he can no longer tell stories through film due to a loss of sight and strength, Hoedeman gives us this book – his most personal work. If he could animate the storyboards of his life that he shares here in this condensed autobiography, the scenes would be like engravings. He is a writer of stopped-in-time visual moments, and as I read the pages of Frame by Frame, I could almost see the moments of his life unfolding in front of me.

Frame by Frame: An Animator’s Journey reads like a succinct and riveting storyboard script of this animator’s life – and we can only hope that the animated version of Frame by Frame is in the works.

Before I leave you to go find and read a copy of Frame by Frame yourself (and you should!), I have to admit that sometimes I wanted more from the book. I wanted the author to offer up more detail and description about his life and work. I wanted to hear more about his journeys in the north, the people he met and the stories he heard. I wanted more about what inspired his films. I wanted to know more about his first wife and how they carved out their life in Canada together. I wanted to know what happens to the sand creatures. What did Hoedeman want people to learn or feel at the end of The Sand Castle, with only wind left shimmering above the sand?

But that is what a short film animator does: he gives you only the basics of what you need to know for the story to be told, and then he lets the questions hang in the air.

The National Film Board playlist: Films of Co Hoedeman

Co Hoedeman arrived in Montreal from the Netherlands in 1965 with a film reel under his arm and a dream to work for the National Film Board of Canada’s renowned animation unit. It was there that he became part of the vanguard in Quebec animation launching a distinguished career combining animated film, writing and directing. He is the director of a number of independent productions and of more than 27 acclaimed NFB films, including an Academy Award for Le Château de sable / The Sand Castle. He is recognized worldwide as a master of stop-motion animated films. His films have garnered more than 80 awards and mentions at film festivals the world over.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ At Bay Press (Nov. 5 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 168 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1988168554
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1988168555

Wanda Baxter

Wanda Baxteris originally from the Kingston Peninsula, New Brunswick, and is the author of If I Had an Old House on the East Coast. She works as a creative and environmental consultant, and lives and works on an old farm in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia.