Co Hoedeman, Oscar-Winning Stop-Motion Animator, Dies At 84

Oscar and BAFTA-winning Canadian stop-motion animator and filmmaker Co Hoedeman died yesterday in Montreal, Canada. He was 84. No cause of death was given.

Among the dozens of awards he won for his much-beloved short The Sand Castle (1977), the film received the grand prix at Annecy and the Academy Award for best animated short.

Born in Amsterdam on August 1, 1940, Jacobus-Willem Hoedeman started his career as an assistant animator at Multifilm in Haarlem, and studied at the School of Fine Arts in Amsterdam and the School of Photography in The Hague. By the time he emigrated to Canada in 1965, he was designing, directing, and editing commercials. He moved to Canada with the express intent of working at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and within two weeks had landed a job at the studio as a production assistant.

He directed his first film for the NFB, the educational Continental Drift, in 1968, but soon transitioned to entertainment films. He would make over two dozen films at the NFB over a nearly 40-year period.

“Co Hoedeman was a master animator, whose long career at the NFB was distinguished by innovative filmmaking and powerful humanitarian themes,” Suzanne Guèvremont, government film commissioner and NFB chairperson, said in a statement. “He cared deeply for the well-being of children and was also a fierce defender of the importance of public filmmaking. The NFB and the Canadian animation community have lost a dear friend and colleague. Fortunately for us, we have his legacy of beloved works, which embody so much of his unique spirit.”

During the 1970s, Hoedeman created a series of animated films based on Inuit traditional stories, collaborating closely with artists from Nunavut and Nunavik. One of those films, The Owl and the Raven: An Eskimo Legend, can be seen below:

In 1974, he won a BAFTA for his short film Tchou-tchou (1972), created with wood blocks. Asked why he chose wood blocks for the film, Hoedeman said in an interview, “I feel it’s important that you make a film for children with material that children can identify with.”

Hoedeman’s career is marked by consistent experimentation with materials. He used foam rubber puppets for his 1980 film The Treasure of the Grotoceans and papier mâché for his 1984 film Masquerade.

In 1992, he worked with Indigenous inmates at La Macaza Institution to create The Sniffing Bear, a cautionary tale about substance abuse. After completing his final film with the NFB, Marianne’s Theatre (2004), Hoedeman made independent animated films, but collaborated with the NFB on the co-production 55 Socks (2011), a personal project drawing on his childhood memories during a dark period of Dutch history, the Hunger Winter of 1944–45.

In the Nineties, he also created a series of children’s short films about Ludovic, a young teddy bear, which was adapted in 2009 into a preschool children’s series.

A documentary about Hoedeman and his creative process, Co Hoedeman: Animator, was released in 1980. It can be viewed below: