Documentary filmmaker, animator, and interactive media creator Eli Noyes died of cancer on Saturday (3/23) at the age of 81 in San Francisco, surrounded by family.
The son of modernist architect Eliot Noyes and Mary “Molly” (Weed) Noyes, Eli Noyes grew up in an environment imbued with art and music. In 1966, while an undergraduate at Harvard, Noyes was nominated for an Academy Award® for his eight-minute animated film, Clay, or the Origin of Species. The short is credited as establishing the genre of clay animation and remains a classic of stop motion filmmaking. Subsequent animated films employed diverse techniques such as sand animation (Sandman, 1973) and pixelated stop motion (Peanut Butter and Jelly, 1976).
In the early 1970’s Eli Noyes and Claudia Weil filmed a number of documentaries, many of which are still shown in film schools today, including This Is the Home of Mrs. Levant Graham (1970). More