Blackfly is a classic animated short from Canada’s celebrated National Film Board. Dizzying, frenetic animated scenes provide visual accompaniment to a song by Canadian folk musician Wade Hemsworth. Hemsworth wrote The Blackfly Song in 1949, about his experiences as a surveyor in Labrador, Northern Ontario, and Quebec. The song is now considered a classic of Canadian folk music.
A swarm of black flies torments the protagonist of the animated short. Photo: Screenshot
A cartoon menace
As the song recounts, Hemsworth went up north to work on a crew surveying the Little Abitibi River for a future dam project. In this region, the black fly, really a whole crew of flies in the Simuliidae family, are an extreme nuisance for much of the season.
In the accompanying animation, expressive anthropomorphic black flies pursue Hemsworth and the crew with malicious intent, sighting them with binoculars and chasing the men underwater using miniature scuba gear. The animation has a charming sketchy style which leaps easily from one visual gag to the next.
I particularly liked the scene wherein a dinner party of man-sized black flies feasts on human bones. As they do, Hemsworth sings that he’ll “die with the black fly a-picking my bones.”
This black fly has paired human bones with a nice red wine. Photo: Screenshot
They really do sound like a nightmare. Hemsworth recounts, through cheerful verse, swarms of biting insects crawling through his beard and hair, getting into the food and drink, and following them wherever they went. It’s a common theme for Canadian explorers and adventurers. As much as the cold makes the northern winters harsh, the insects make the summer misery.
Hemsworth’s song was already a well-loved staple in 1991, when director Christopher Hinton animated it. The result buzzed and swatted its way into the hearts of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, securing an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short. All in all, a delightful way to spend five minutes.
