In 1958, twenty-two-year-old visual arts student Arthur Lipsett went to work for the National Film Board of Canada, the country’s public film producer and distributor. But what really interested the young Lipsett was collecting bits of sound and footage that NFB filmmakers had discarded.  

In Very Nice, Very Nice, he mixes archival photos with unused sound fragments. Retrospectively, he muses on life and wonders if it was all better 30 years ago. His very first film earned Lipsett an Oscar nomination.

This avant-garde mix of photography and sound offers a look behind the business-as-usual facade and shows fears we want to forget. At the time, The Shining director Stanley Kubrick called Lipsett’s film “one of the most imaginative and brilliant uses of the movie screen and soundtrack I have ever seen.” 

Encouraged, Lipsett went on to make a fistful of similarly intense short films. Unfortunately, his mental health deteriorated rapidly during this period, and before committing suicide at the age of 49, Lipsett spent the last 10 years of his life in various mental institutions. His explosive films can be seen as a dramatic insight into the artist’s deteriorating mind.