Taking the day off? Looking for some Canadian shorts to watch? We’ve got you covered with a collection of films new and old that we’ve spotlighted in our Monday Shorts series over the past couple years, listed in no particular order:

Quickdraw Alumni

H. Kristen Campbell’s Swift (2012) A 2D-stopmotion film textured in fur and felt.

Trevor Mahovsky’s Stampede Eats Me Up Inside (1998) Offbeat anecdotes from the greatest outdoor show on Earth.

Richard Reeves’ Linear Dreams (1997) Cameraless animation at its most magnificent

Carol Beecher and Kevin DA Kurytnik’s Skin for Skin (2017) A tale of profit and loss from the height of the fur trade.

Brandon Blommaert’s e:e:e:e:e: (2015) Abstract animated synaesthesia.

Carl Spencer & Neal Moignard’s Les Autres (2014) A sci-fi myth made over the course of a single long weekend.

Malcolm Sutherland’s This (2015) A meditation on meditation.

NFB Productions

Ishu Patel’s Bead Game (1977) Its French name calls it a history in beads — probably a more accurate title.

Michèle Lemieux’s Here and the Great Elsewhere (2012) A melding between message and medium, using the pin screen as a metaphor for universal particles.

Jacques Drouin’s Mindscape (1976) Another pin screen marvel, proof of Drouin’s mastery of a difficult technique.

Vivek Shraya’s Reviving the Roost (2019) A messy portrait of Edmonton’s queer history from a multidisciplinary Canadian artist

Roman Kroitor & Colin Low’s Universe (1960) The classic (and pleasantly outdated) science documentary whose special effects inspired 2001

Philip Eddolls’ Git Gob (2009) Short. Silly. Profound. Amazing.

Ryan Larkin’s Street Musique (1972) A visually magnificent portrait of sidewalk performers.

Matthew Rankin’s The Tesla World Light (2017) At the end of his life, the famous inventor falls in love with a pigeon. A true story told with modernist flair.

Richard Condie’s The Big Snit (1985) One of the all-time greats, an absurd, dysfunctional, apocalyptic, and oddly loving day-in-the-life.

Peter Foldes’ Hunger (1974) Early CG, but not in the way you might think.

Other Favourites

Esther Cheung’s In Passing (2019) Nostalgia twice-removed, a portrait of the filmmakers’ parents’ youth.

Scott Portingale’s Infinitude (2015) Cosmic journeys from an Edmonton effects artist. Think of it as a spiritual sequel to Universe (above).

Nick Cross’ Yellow Cake (2009) A tale of capitalist exploitation, authoritarianism and militarism, via Pastry Town and The Smurfs.

Nicolas Ménard’s Wednesdays with Goddard (2016) Deadpan humour and existential yearning mix in this maybe-comedy, maybe-tragedy.

Amanda Strong’s How to Steal a Canoe (2016) The story of a young Nishnaabeg woman and an elder Nishnaabeg man rescuing a canoe from a museum and returning it to the lake it was meant to be with.

Robin Joseph’s The Fox And The Whale (2016) A gorgeous, slow-paced journey of discovery.

Evan DeRushie’s Birdlime (2017) This tale of a trafficked bird is a crowd-pleaser in the best of ways, created at the Toronto Animated Image Society.

William Allinson’s New Math (2017) An ever-shifting claymation interpretation of a dense, difficult poem.

Winston Hacking’s Erodium Thunk (2018) A free-form re-interpretation of pop-culture flotsam.

Fluorescent Hill’s Migration (2014) A nature documentary recovered from an alternate reality.

Bonus

If you still need more, have a look at the pack we curated last year for the MONSTRA animation festival in Lisbon, Portugal on “Canadian Animation at the Fringes.” It includes some of the films listed above, but plenty of other pleasant surprises, too.