The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has shared the news that animator and director Co Hoedeman died on May 26 in Montreal at the age of 84. Born in Amsterdam on August 1, 1940, Hoedeman was a master of stop-motion animation whose 1977 NFB production The Sand Castle received the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
“Co Hoedeman was a master animator, whose long career at the NFB was distinguished by innovative filmmaking and powerful humanitarian themes,” said Suzanne Guèvremont, Government Film Commissioner and NFB Chairperson. “He cared deeply for the well-being of children and was also a fierce defender of the importance of public filmmaking. The NFB and the Canadian animation community have lost a dear friend and colleague. Fortunately for us, we have his legacy of beloved works, which embody so much of his unique spirit.”
Shortly after directing his early films with the NFB, including his award-winning Oddball (1969), Hoedeman travelled to then-Czechoslovakia in 1970 to study puppet animation, then returned to the NFB to create series of stop-motion gems: Tchou-tchou (1972), created with wooden blocks, received the British Academy award (BAFTA) for Best Animated Film. During the 1970s, he created a series of acclaimed animated films based on Inuit traditional stories, collaborating closely with artists from Nunavut and Nunavik.
Following his Oscar win for The Sand Castle, Hoedeman continued to experiment with a range of techniques and themes. In 1992, he worked with Indigenous inmates at La Macaza Institution to create The Sniffing Bear, a cautionary tale about substance abuse. In 1998, he began work on a beloved children’s series about Ludovic, a young teddy bear, available in the NFB collection Four Seasons in the Life of Ludovic.
After completing his final film with the NFB, Marianne’s Theatre (2004), Hoedeman began a busy independent animation career. He collaborated with the NFB on the co-production 55 Socks (2011), a deeply personal project drawing on his childhood memories during a dark period of Dutch history, the Hunger Winter of 1944–45. He would also adapt his Ludovic character into a popular children’s TV series.
In 2003, the Cinémathèque québécoise and the NFB paid tribute to Hoedeman and his importance to Quebec cinema with an exhibition entitled “Exposition Co Hoedeman – Les Jardins de l’enfance.” The exhibition was presented the following year at the Musée-Château d’Annecy in France.
Hoedeman was interviewed in 2013 for the NFB online anthology Making Movie History and was the subject of the 1980 NFB documentary Co Hoedeman, Animator. All of his NFB films are available online free of charge at NFB.ca.
A selection of Hoedeman’s shorts is also available to watch on the NFB’s YouTube channel.
[Source: NFB]
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