![]() “And, outwardly at least, unconcerned about his legacy.” “Of the big filmmakers I’ve worked with over the years, he was by far the least pretentious and the least concerned with his own image,” he told Variety. In spite of his achievements, friend and filmmaker Mark Cook recalls a director who typified one of the quintessential Canadian characteristics: modesty. In later life, he taught in Toronto and at UCLA, where his film students included Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek of The Doors. and raised in India, he joined Britain’s Royal Air Force at the age of 18, going on to fly 17 missions over Italy as a flight engineer during the Second World War. After marrying in 1993, they spent most summer weekends wind-borne together at the Southern Ontario Soaring Association.įlying proved a defining feature for much of Filgate’s life. When they first met, Filgate was Novosel’s gliding instructor. He used to say, albeit facetiously, that he would become a forgotten footnote.” As his wife Lorna Novosel, a retired speech-language pathologist, recalled: “Terry was confident and had a healthy self-image, but he never played politics to move his career forward. Such under-appreciation perhaps befits a filmmaker oft-noted among friends and colleagues for his modesty. The picture went on to take the 1963 Oscar for best documentary feature. After finishing the doc, however, Clarke exercised a contractual right to be credited as the movie’s sole director, relegating Filgate to a lesser credit. In 1962, he was hired by producer Robert Hughes to helm “Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World,” a film on the life of the titular iconic American poet, following the departure of original director Shirley Clarke. He received the Hot Docs festival’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 2011 and was named an Officer of the Order of Canada – one of the country’s highest civilian merits – the same year.Īnd, perhaps most remarkably, he can lay claim to having directed an Academy Award-winning documentary – albeit without receiving the statue or glory that typically accompanies such a feat. The latter was one of many trophies bestowed in his home of Canada, where he also claimed two Canadian Film Awards (for “Blood and Fire” and “The Hottest Show on Earth” ) and an Ontario Film Institute Award. ![]() He was honored with a Peabody Award for “Changing World: South African Essay” (1964), a WGBH doc examining the political machinery behind Apartheid he won the Cannes Film and Television Festival’s Eurovision Grand Prize for documentary for “The Back-Breaking Leaf” and he earned a Canadian Gemini prize for best social/political documentary program, for “Timothy Findley: Anatomy of a Writer” (1992). While perhaps lesser-known than his American contemporaries, Filgate nevertheless accrued an impressive list of accolades. Whatever he did, he approached with his enormous talent and dedication.” Terry would go on to make historic contributions in the independent sector, both in Canada and the U.S., and as an educator at York University. ![]() “A key figure in the NFB’s legendary Unit B and its Candid Eye series, he helped to revolutionize non-fiction storytelling. “With the passing of Terence Macartney-Filgate, the NFB has lost a dear friend and passionate champion of documentary cinema,” said NFB chairperson Claude Joli-Coeur. The filmmaker also worked extensively with Canadian public broadcaster CBC, with credits including “Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Road to Green Gables” (1975), “Grenfell of Labrador: The Great Adventure” (1977) and “Fields of Endless Day” (1978). (Both docs, along with a dozen of his other films, are free-to-view on the NFB website.) Beginning with “Emergency Rescue – T33 Jet Aircraft” (1956) and ending with three-part epic “Canada Remembers” (1995), Filgate contributed immeasurably to documenting life in the Big Country.Ĭareer highlights include “The Days Before Christmas” (1958), an observational doc that chronicles the run-up to the festive holiday in Montreal, and which was among the first films to capture cinema vérité using a handheld 16mm camera and “The Back-Breaking Leaf” (1960), an eye-opening portrait of the arduous seasonal work taken on by travelling tobacco leaf-pickers in rural Ontario. American work aside, he will be remembered for his remarkable filmography with the NFB, with which he made 31 documentaries across a 40-year period.
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