Professor McLaren graduated with honors from Canada’s Ontario College of Art (OCA), where he also did post-graduate work. Currently, McLaren teaches film and video courses at Cooper Union, Fordham University, the Millennium Film Workshop, and Pratt Institute. He has lectured extensively throughout North America and Europe, and has conducted courses on film and video in Italy over the last ten summers with Fordham University and Pratt Institute.

For the last 30 years, Mr. McLaren has worked as a filmmaker, scholar, teacher, curator, critic, and community organizer. He founded and was first director of the Funnel Film Centre in Toronto, an institution devoted to the production, exhibition, and distribution of film. As founder/director, McLaren encouraged continued recognition of film in his native country, a contribution that speaks to both his dedication to the medium and his singular vision as an artist.

His films include: Wave, Weather Building, Crash ‘n’ Burn: the "self-destructive document of Toronto’s eponymous punk club," Dance of the Sacred Foundation Application (feat. Jack Smith), Muted Horn, Squeaky Stool, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival award-winning sensation Summer Camp.

A recipient of such prestigious grants as Canada and Ontario Arts Council awards, McLaren has shown his works worldwide. His films screened at MoMA, Anthology Film Archives, the Menil Collection, the National Film Theatre in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Biennale du Paris, Documenta VI, Jyväskylä University in Finland, and ARKEN in Denmark. His work, which was presented in such esteemed venues as the Edinburgh, Toronto, and Oberhausen Film Festivals, is found in several permanent collections, including that of the American Federation of Arts, New York, the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ottawa’s National Film Archives and the National Gallery of Canada.