Pinscreen animation makes use of a screen filled with movable pins, which can be moved in or out by pressing an object onto the screen. The screen is lit from the side so that the pins cast shadows. The technique has been used to create animated films with a range of textural effects difficult to achieve with traditional cel animation.

The technique was developed by Alexandre Alexeïeff and his wife Claire Parker who were often guests of the National Film Board of Canada. They made a total of 6 very short films with it, over a period of fifty years. Despite the short running time and the monochrome nature of these films, they won numerous awards over the years.

On August 7, 1972, Alexeïeff and Parker demonstrated the pinscreen to a group of animators at the National Film Board of Canada. This demonstration was filmed, and released by the NFB as Pin Screen. This film, along with "Pinscreen Tests" (1961), appear on disc 7 of the Norman McLaren: The Master's Edition DVD collection.

Until his retirement in 2005, the National Film Board's Jacques Drouin remained involved in pinscreen animation. Drouin's pinscreen work included the 1976 film Mindscape/Le paysagiste. The most recent NFB animator to use the medium is Michèle Lemieux, with her 2012 film Here and the Great Elsewhere.

Alexandre Alexandrovitch Alexeieff (Russian: Александр Александрович Алексеев Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Alekseyev (sometimes credited as Alexander Alexeieff or Alexander Alexeïeff or Alexandre Alexieff); 18 April 1901 – 9 August 1982) was a Russian-born artist, filmmaker and illustrator who lived and worked mainly in Paris. He and his second wife Claire Parker (1910–1981) are credited with inventing the pinscreen as well as the animation technique totalization. In all Alexeieff produced 6 films on the pinscreen, 41 advertising films and illustrated 41 books.

Alexeieff was born in the town of Kazan in Russia. He spent his early childhood in Istanbul where his father, Alexei Alexeieff, was a military attaché.

Alexeieff had two older brothers: Vladimir, who caught syphilis from an Moscow actress with whom he had an affair. His mother forced him to remain in his room and never touch his brothers. This pressure was such Vladimir shot himself. Before he died, he wrote a note to Alexandre saying, “You are very talented. You must keep on drawing.” His second brother, Nikolai, disappeared in Georgia, Russia, during the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was never heard from again; the family suspected that he died of typhus.