Evelyn Lambart (July 23, 1914 – April 3, 1999) was a Canadian animator and film director with the National Film Board of Canada, known for her independent work, and for her collaborations with Norman McLaren.

Early years

Born in Ottawa, she was hearing impaired from an early age, which she later credited with focusing her attention on the visual world as a means of communication. After attending Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Ottawa, Lambart studied at the Ontario College of Art for five years, graduating in 1937. Her plan had been to continue her art studies in the U.K., however, the outbreak of Second World War made that impossible. Instead, Lambart spent a year and a half working with Grace Melvin on illuminations and lettering for the first Books of Remembrance, commemorating Canadian war dead in the First World War (now on display at St. Paul's Cathedral).

NFB career

In 1942, due to an ever-growing demand for animation, NFB commissioner John Grierson asked McLaren to form an animation unit and, in January 1943, 'Studio A' formally came into existence. Lambart was one of McLaren's first recruits and the first female animator hired by the board. She would also train other animators; both Colin Low and Robert Verrall credited her with teaching them their animation skills. Lambart and McLaren were an immediate and permanent fit; she was methodical and pragmatic, he was a creative 'dreamer'. In 1949, they co-directed Begone Dull Care, which was designated as a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada. She did animation for McLaren and Claude Jutra's pixilation film A Chairy Tale, and for several other ground-breaking films, many of which she co-directed or directed, including Rythmetic (1956), Lines: Vertical (1960), Lines: Horizontal" (1962), and Mosaic'' (1965). In its 1999 obituary for Lambart, Animation World Network stated that: "In the early 1960s, McLaren became interested in ballet films, which held no interest for Lambart, so she started thinking about doing her own films. She perfected the technique of paper cutouts transferred to lithograph plate which she would then paint and animate. She used this technique in seven award-winning films: Fine Feathers (1968), The Hoarder (1969), Paradise Lost (1970), The Story of Christmas (1973), Mr. Frog Went A-Courting (1974), The Lion and the Mouse/Le Lion et la Souris (1976) and The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse/Le Rat de maison et le Rat des champs (1980)." These animated morality tales for children included several adaptations of Aesop's fables, and were all rendered with the same style of paper cut-outs transferred to lithograph plates, painted and animated. In 1978, she was the subject of the biographical documentary Eve Lambart directed by Margaret Wescott. Her last known film, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (1980), was completed at her home studio in Quebec's Eastern Townships after her retirement in 1977. She died in Ottawa in 1999.

Honours

Lambart was awarded a posthumous Winsor McCay Award in 2022.

Filmography

Awards

Begone Dull Care (1949) Family Tree (1950) Now is the Time (1951) Around Is Around (1951) Rythmetic (1956) Lines: Vertical (1960) Mosaic (1965) The Hoarder (1969) Paradise Lost (1970)