Manitoba filmmakers Vonnie Von Helmolt and Alan Pakarnyk’s animated film Carried Away (1987) has been selected for the inaugural film program at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.
The museum is presenting 19 works from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in continuous screenings in its theatres. The program includes 15 animated films, three documentaries, and one experimental film.
Founded by filmmaker George Lucas and businesswoman Mellody Hobson, the museum opened on September 22, 2026. It celebrates visual storytelling across a range of mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, illustration, comic art, performance, and video. The museum is located in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, California.
About Carried Away
Carried Away celebrates the creative process—its beauty, fury, and consequences. Highly stylized and impressionistic, the film presents each scene as a stage in the creative journey. Black-and-white photographs, representing reality, are overlaid with animated colour drawings that represent fantasy.
The film depicts an artist braving creative storms, indulging a runaway imagination, and learning through trial and error to take possession of his creative energy. The film contains no dialogue.
Alongside this Manitoba-made film, the program showcases the NFB’s enduring contribution to moving-image art, from early classics by Norman McLaren, Evelyn Lambart, and Jean-Claude Labrecque to more recent acclaimed works by Martine Chartrand, Christopher Hinton, and Theodore Ushev.
Carried Away can be seen here: https://www.nfb.ca/film/carried-away/
About Vonnie Von Helmolt
Vonnie Von Helmolt has been active in Manitoba’s film and television industry since its inception. Based in Manitoba, she has produced internationally released feature films, television movies, series, documentaries, and specials. Her productions have received numerous film and television awards worldwide, including an International Emmy. Her work has also received nominations for US CableACE Awards and a Banff Rockie.
Vonnie is the founding chair of Film Training Manitoba and the Manitoba District Council of the Directors Guild of Canada. She is chair emerita of the Winnipeg Arts Council board and serves on the national board of the Documentary Organization of Canada. Vonnie was also selected to be the first honorary Canada’s Supporting Women in Film Trades (SWIFT) committee member. This honour was to recognize her role in being the founding chair of FTM and her years of service to the film industry in Canada.
Her theatrical documentary TuTuMUCH, produced with Merit Motion Pictures, won Best Documentary at two major youth film festivals in China and Chicago. The film screened widely across Canada, at the Cannes Film Festival as part of Telefilm Canada’s Perspective Canada program, and at festivals worldwide. TuTuMUCH was released in the United States in 2014.
With Merit Motion Pictures, Vonnie also produced the three-part documentary miniseries Ballet Girls and the documentary feature Ballet High. Both productions received Canadian Gemini Award nominations.
Her Emmy-winning CBC dance film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, directed by Guy Maddin, was named a Canadian Top Ten feature film, appeared on The Village Voice’s list of the year’s top 10 films in New York, and won numerous Canadian and international film festival awards. IMDb ranked Dracula eighth on a list of the 70 best vampire films.
About Alan Pakarnyk
Alan Pakarnyk was a Winnipeg-based artist, animator, and director. In addition to Carried Away his credits include Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, Terra (NFB), A Passion for Murder, and Adam’s Dream. His project Daydream won film awards in Chicago, New York, and Ann Arbor.
Alan was invited and served as Artist in Residence at the University of Southern California in 1991, and had a major retrospective of his work at the Winnipeg Film Group in February 2024.
Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Pakarnyk died in 2025.
For more information about the program, visit the National Film Board of Canada’s Lucas Museum of Narrative Art channel.
FTM is a non-for-profit charity and member of the Province of Manitoba’s Sector Council program funded through the Department of Business, Mining, Trade and Job Creation. FTM builds a highly skilled and adaptable film industry workforce to support the activities of Manitoba production companies. FTM collaborates and partners with members of the film industry to identify training needs to support workforce development.