Lipsett was born in Montreal into a Jewish family. His father was a chemist, his mother was an immigrant from Kiev who committed suicide in front of Arthur when he was 10. His father remarried without consulting Arthur and his daughter, Marian. Lipsett's teachers recognized him as gifted at age 8 and, after graduating from West Hill High School, he went to the School of Fine Arts in Montreal, where he was named 'best student' three times. His mentor, Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer, recommended him to the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Career
Lipsett joined the NFB in 1958 as an editor in the animation department.[3] While he is not credited, two of his earliest projects were as a cameraman on À St-Henri le cinq septembre (Hubert Aquin, 1962) and as a post-production advisor on the 1961 film Wrestling.
Lipsett's particular passion was sound. He collected pieces of sound from a variety of sources, including garbage bins, and fitted them together to create interesting auditory sensations. After playing one such creation to friends, they suggested that Lipsett combine images with the sound collage. The result was his first short film, a 7-minute film Very Nice, Very Nice which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects in 1962.[4][5] Despite not winning the Oscar, the film brought Lipsett considerable praise from critics and directors. Stanley Kubrick was one of Lipsett's fans, writing him to say that the film was "the most imaginative and brilliant uses of the movie screen and soundtrack that I have ever seen."[6] Kubrick also asked him to create a trailer for his upcoming movie Dr. Strangelove. Lipsett declined Kubrick's offer. Kubrick went on to direct the trailer himself; however, Lipsett's influence on Kubrick is clearly visible in the released trailer.[7]
Lipsett's meticulous editing and combination of audio and visual montage was both groundbreaking and influential. His 1963 film 21-87 had a profound influence on director George Lucas, who said it was "the kind of movie I wanted to make — a very off the wall, abstract kind of film."[6] Lucas used thematic approaches from 21–87 in THX 1138, his Star Wars films and American Graffiti, stating that his use of the term "The Force" in Star Wars was "an echo of that phrase in 21-87".[8] Lucas never met Lipsett, but tributes to 21–87 appear in several places in Star Wars, e.g. the holding cell of Princess Leia in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope on the Death Star is cell No. 2187.[9]
By 1970, Lipsett's mental health had deteriorated to the point where he was forced to resign, citing a phobia of film tape and a loss of creativity. In 1978, he briefly returned to the NFB but, by then, he was chaining up his editing equipment, wearing winter coats in summer and taping his fingers into the Buddhist mantra position for protection from phantom voices. In 1982, he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. After numerous suicide attempts, which he called “little experiments”, he took his own life on May 1, 1986.[2][9][11] He was survived by his partner, artist Judith Sandiford.
Works about Lipsett
In 2006, a feature-length documentary about Lipsett, Remembering Arthur, was produced by Public Pictures in association with the NFB, Bravo! and TVOntario.[12]The Arthur Lipsett Project: A Dot on the Histomap is a 2007 NFB documentary directed by Eric Gaucher.[13] In 2010, the NFB produced the short animated documentary Lipsett Diaries, directed by Theodore Ushev and written by Chris Robinson.[14] In 2012, Amelia Does, a consulting producer on Remembering Arthur, published the biography Do Not Look Away: The Life of Arthur Lipsett.[15][16]
Legacy
In 2014, the Prism Prize inaugurated the Arthur Lipsett Award "for innovative and unique approaches to music video art".[17]
