21-87 is a 1963 Canadian abstract film created by Arthur Lipsett that lasts 9 minutes and 33 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 short films “6-18-67″, “1:42.08″, “Look At Life”, his short film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB and the feature it inspired, THX 1138. Lucas never met Arthur Lipsett, who committed suicide in 1986, but tributes to 21-87 appear throughout Star Wars to the extent that the phrase, “The Force”, itself is said to have been inspired by the short film. In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Princess Leia’s prison cell on the Death Star is 21-87.
“The Force” quote begins at 3’33″.
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