Pierre Hébert earned a BSc in Anthropology from the University of Montreal in 1964 and undertook studies at the graduate level in 1965.
During this time, he made a few small independent films and practised engraving at the Atelier libre de recherche graphique with Richard Lacroix. Throughout his career as an animator, Hébert would continue to pursue his interest in fine arts (engraving, drawing, silk-screen).

Inspired by Norman McLaren, Hébert joined the National Film Board's animation studio in 1965. His first film there was the experimental work Op Hop - Hop Op, which was awarded the grand prize for short films at the Canadian Film Festival in 1967. Always looking for new techniques, Hébert studied computer animation at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1967, resulting in the film Autour de la perception/Around Perception.
Hébert's films soon began to be less abstract and to convey a social message (Père No»l, père No»l/Santa Claus Is Coming Tonight, 1974) or to address political issues, first through humour (Le Corbeau et le Renard, 1969) and then more directly, denouncing unemployment in Entre chiens et loup (1978) and war in Memories of War (Souvenirs de guerre, 1982). His preferred animation technique was scratching images directly on the film emulsion, although he occasionally used paper cutouts and sometimes a combination of the two techniques.

Wanting to renew his craft and broaden the audience for his work, Hébert started exploring new technologies and multimedia. Working with artists in fields as varied as dance, music and literature, he gave improvisational animation performances in Canada, the United States and Europe, some of the most notable being the European tour of La Symphonie interminable, a film/music performance he did with musicians Jean Derome, Robert M. Lepage and René Lussier, Chants et Danses du monde inanimé presented in Quebec with the same musicians, and Adieu Léonard!/Goodbye Leonardo! created specially for the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Often the film stock scratched during a performance became a film, as was the case with Chants et Danses du monde inanimé - Le Métro/Songs and Dances of the Inanimate World: The Subway (1985), Adieu bipède (1987) and La Lettre d'amour (1988). This last film resulted from a performance entitled Conversations, which grew out of a series of improvisation workshops exploring the interaction of different means of expression - dance, writing, music and "live" animation. As the other artists performed, Hébert would scratch a 36-second loop of film fed through a 16mm projector, grabbing a piece of slack and scratching as many images as possible before that section of film was pulled into the projector, and repeating the frenzied process over and over until the animation eventually took shape. For the film, 18 of these loops were assembled along with the text of the initial improvisation.
Hébert has also collaborated with contemporary dance companies and dancers such as O Vertigo, Louise Bédard and Rosalind Newman. He teamed up with avant-garde musician Fred Frith for live animation/music improvisations at various international jazz festivals, and with David Borden and Bob Ostertag for film/music performances in the United States and Europe.

In addition to his own films and live animation performances, Hébert often makes scratched-on-film promotional clips for festivals and other events as well as animated sequences for inclusion in documentaries or dramas such as Knowing to Learn (Comment savoir, 1966) by Claude Jutra, A Piece of Cake/C'est pas chinois (1973), which he co-directed with Gilles Gascon, Beirut! Not Enough Death to Go Round (Beyrouth! "À défaut d'être mort", 1983) by Tahani Rached, O Picasso (1985) by Gilles Carle and Trois pommes à côté du sommeil (1988) by Jacques Leduc. He also did the special effects for Robert Favreau's film Portion d'éternité (1989).

Hébert has completed, at the end of 1996, a feature co-production with France. Based on the performance La Plante humaine, the film combines animation, live action and archival footage.
Hébert has conducted regional workshops and taught animation at various universities. He was a regular contributor to the cinema magazine Objectif from 1964 to 1967 and has continued to publish his reflections, winning a number of awards for his articles.

He is very active in the film community, having served as president of the Conseil québécois sur la diffusion du cinéma from 1970 to 1971 and participated in the Convergence organizing committee (1990-93). He has been on the board of directors of the Cinémathèque québécoise since 1989, serving as secretary in 1990 and president since 1992. He has also been a member of the artistic committee of the Agora de la danse since January 1994.
Retrospectives of Hébert's work are held regularly in Canada and abroad. You can find more details on the films directed by Pierre Hébert in the Film Collection.

Bibliography

For recent articles by Hébert or articles written about him, see bibliographic references following his biography in French. Hébert's drawings and illustrations have also been published.