Describing Lipsett’s work is no easy task. Formally, the films consist of varying short clips of stills and/or moving images over which sounds are layered. The essence of his work is like an energy which emanates from the spaces between the images and sounds, the juxtapositions and the viewer’s experience of Lipsett’s unique arrangement of materials. Lipsett’s art is bold, and rare, because it exists within spaces that are too complex and too uninhabitable for most people to embrace while at the same time those films manage to communicate directly to the viewer on a level of a realist perception. Watching his films can be exhilarating because we are subjected to the experience of hyper-reality and hyper-sensitivity yet we are still safe in our seats as we take it all in.

     Although Lipsett’s critics and audiences always had a lot to say about his films, his position at the board ended after 13 years. Part of the reason was, as Julian Biggs said, “there is only room for one artist at the National Film Board: Norman McLaren”.

     After leaving the board, Lipsett made a film that is almost unknown to film scholars and the like, entitled Strange Codes (1974), before living out the last decade of his life in and out of the Montreal Jewish General Hospital. Sadly, Lipsett took his own life before his fiftieth birthday, yet he left behind a fascinating body of work which continues to be striking, fresh and influential to this day. His films are still screened regularly at galleries and in universities just as they were during his lifetime, yet until now, there have been no substantial investigations made into his life and work outside of a few unpublished Master’s theses.

     Currently, interests in Lipsett have been sparking and re-sparking on the Canadian film scene. One project, a documentary film, is under production at the NFB in Montreal, where Lipsett worked for 13 years, while another film project by Public Pictures is also underway. An interview was recently captured by Public Pictures with filmmaker George Lucas on the subject of his personal experience with Lipsett’s 21-87 (1963), a film that inspired and influenced Lucas as a film student at USC. Screenwriter Matt Holland’s script entitled Free Fall: The Arthur Lipsett Story was bought by the Canadian Film Center, however there is no telling when the project will be produced.

     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 these projects 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)