Born in Montreal, Claude Cloutier studied printmaking and worked as an illustrator before turning to comic strip art, mainly for Croc magazine. During that time, he cultivated an absurdist sense of humour based on shifts in meaning and gained recognition for his meticulous drawings whose aesthetic quality is suggestive of engravings. He published two comic strip albums with Kami-Case: Gilles la Jungle contre Méchant-Man in 1989 and La Légende des Jean-Guy in 1995.
In 1986, he joined the NFB and was invited to direct The Persistent Peddler, an adaptation of La Légende des Jean-Guy. The film was selected for screening in competition at Cannes in 1989. The following year, he co-directed the trailer for the Ottawa International Animation Film Festival, a collective endeavour that was honoured at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. His next film, Overdose (1994), which is part of the Rights from the Heart series, competed in the 1995 Berlinale. In 1999-2000, he collaborated… read more
Born in Montreal, Claude Cloutier studied printmaking and worked as an illustrator before turning to comic strip art, mainly for Croc magazine. During that time, he cultivated an absurdist sense of humour based on shifts in meaning and gained recognition for his meticulous drawings whose aesthetic quality is suggestive of engravings. He published two comic strip albums with Kami-Case: Gilles la Jungle contre Méchant-Man in 1989 and La Légende des Jean-Guy in 1995.
In 1986, he joined the NFB and was invited to direct The Persistent Peddler, an adaptation of La Légende des Jean-Guy. The film was selected for screening in competition at Cannes in 1989. The following year, he co-directed the trailer for the Ottawa International Animation Film Festival, a collective endeavour that was honoured at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. His next film, Overdose (1994), which is part of the Rights from the Heart series, competed in the 1995 Berlinale. In 1999-2000, he collaborated on the Gémeaux Award-winning Science, Please! series.
After From the Big Bang to Tuesday Morning (2000), he directed Sleeping Betty (2007), a short animated comedy that received wide public and critical acclaim and swept up 23 international awards, including a Jutra and a Genie. With The Trenches, Claude Cloutier delivers an anti-war film in which archival World War I images are reconstituted and contemporized through his artistic brushwork —National Film Board Of Canada
