Arthur Lipsett is one of Canada’s most interesting artists. Through the 1960s he created groundbreaking experimental film and sound collages as a government employee of the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal. His award winning films, including the Oscar nominated Very Nice Very Nice (1961), were composed with recycled scraps of sound tape and film gleaned from NFB cutting room waste bins. Lipsett experimented fearlessly with various relationships between images and sounds, resulting in films that are dynamic, moving and profound.

Although Lipsett passed away in 1986, his films are still screened, studied and enjoyed in Universities and cinemas all over the world. Lipsett’s art and life were complex. He is not easily summed up as a filmmaker, artist, or intellectual, nor are his films easily labeled as experimental, documentary or Avant-garde. There is much to learn about this unique Canadian talent, who influenced such filmmakers as Stanley Kubrick, Walter Murch, George Lucas and Guy Maddin.

Lipsett’s life was touched by the tragic death of his mother and ended with his own suicide. After being asked to leave his job as a filmmaker at the National Film Board in 1970, Lipsett began to succumb to mental illness. Struggling to remain creative for many years, he made his last film, Strange Codes, in 1974. 

The body of work produced by Lipsett during his 13 years at the NFB is impressive. Not only did he create 6 award-winning artistic collage films, but he also worked on a dozen documentaries as an editor or director. Lipsett was also a talented photographer and created fantastic collages in paper which relate to his filmic explorations.

It has been seventeen years since the artist passed away, and other filmmakers, writers and the friends and family that knew Lipsett feel that his story should be told now - it’s about time. The aim of the Arthur Lipsett Project is to celebrate and venerate this important artist, and to tell his story. Among a few of the scattered articles and passages on the subject of Lipsett and his films, here are a few quotes that capture the essence of the filmmaker so well in few words:

Arthur Lipsett, the ghost of experimental film in the NFB documentary machine, was one of Canadian cinema’s most original artists and a key figure in the development of experimental cinema.
– Take One’s Essential Guide to Canadian Film (2001)

He was to film what Glenn Gould was to Music.
– Mark Slade (1987)

…he still is, I think, one of the best abstract filmmakers.
– George Lucas (2003)

Although he made award-wining films like Very Nice, Very Nice (1961), which was nominated for an Academy Award, his work has been largely ignored by film scholars.
– Michael Dancsok (1998)

In Very Nice, Very Nice, Lipsett had come upon a way of ‘reviewing’ the complexities of 20th century life without succumbing to the paralysis of ideology.
– Ihor Holubisky (1989)