21-87

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21-87
Directed by	Arthur Lipsett
Produced by	Colin Low Tom Daly
Editing by	Arthur Lipsett
Distributed by	National Film Board of Canada
Release date(s)	1963
Running time	9 min 33 s
Country	Canada
Language	English
Official website
IMDb profile

21-87 is a notable Canadian abstract film created in 1963 by Arthur Lipsett that lasts nine minutes and 45 seconds.

The short film, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, is a collage of snippets from discarded footage found by Lipsett in the editing room of the National Film Board (where he was employed as an animator), combined with his own black and white 16mm footage which he shot on the streets of Montreal and New York City, among other locations.

21-87 has had a profound influence on director George Lucas and sound designer/editor Walter Murch. Lucas's aesthetic and style was strongly influenced by it for the Star Wars films and a number of other works, including American Graffiti and his pure cinema visual tone poems "6-18-67", "1:42.08", "Look At Life", his short film "THX 1138:4EB" and the feature it inspired, THX 1138. Lucas never met Arthur Lipsett, who died by his own hand in 1986, but tributes to 21-87 appear throughout Star Wars to the extent that "The Force" itself is said to have been inspired by the short film. [1] [2]