Myth and film...Gerald McDermott

Gerald McDermott began experimenting with film as an extracurricular activity while attending Detroit's Cass Technical High School, and made his first commercial film (Stonecutter) at the age of 19, an extremely complex animation short featuring 6000 animation cels presented in six minutes. Influenced by Klee and Matisse, McDermott used silk-screen and traditional painting techniques in crafting ethnographic folk tale animation shorts. Traveling to Paris, he introduced himself to Henri Langlois at the Cinémathèque Française, who in turn sent him to Alexandre Alexieff, master of the 'pinscreen' (a frame holding thousands of retractable pins which, when struck perpendicular light from each side, would produce a three dimensional image based on the manner in which the pins were pushed from the opposite side of the viewer). Returning to the US, the filmmaker attended Pratt Institute in New York, and began doing animation for several of Julien and Sam Bryan's International Film Foundation titles (e.g. Ancient Peruvian, 1968). McDermott's films have an international flavor, several of which are enhanced by accented narrator Athmani Magoma, and ethnically-influenced composer Thomas Wagner. Due primarily to a career change, his filmography consists of only five films, all of which are under 12 minutes in length. After his last film, McDermott turned to illustrating children's books, for which he won the Caldecott Award as outstanding illustrator for both 'Anansi the Spider' and 'Arrow to the Sun'. McDermott makes a brief appearance in Morton Schindel's From Pages to Screen (1981), reading in the studio for an animated version of Arrow to the Sun.

In addition to writing and illustrating children's books, McDermott serves as Primary Education Program Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Gerald is a prolific author....

McDermott's films include:

Stonecutter [1960]
Sun Flight [1966]
Anansi the Spider [1969]
The Magic Tree [1970]
Arrow to the Sun [1973]

Gerald McDermott [Wikipedia]

McDermott's website

Here are two films...

Stonecutter

1960



Sun Flight

1966