Donald Brittain,
O.C.The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
(June 10, 1928 – July 21, 1989) was a
film directorA film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and
producerA film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
with the
National Film Board of CanadaThe National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
.
Fields of SacrificeFields of Sacrifice is a 1964 documentary by Donald Brittain about Canadian war dead. The film visits former battlefields where over 100,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in World War I and World War II and examines Canadian military cemeteries and memorials from Hong Kong to...
(1964) is considered Brittain's first major film as director.
His other notable directorial credits include the 1965 documentaries
Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard CohenLadies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen is a 1965 documentary about Leonard Cohen, co-directed by Don Owen and Donald Brittain, and written by Brittain...
and
MemorandumMemorandum is a one-hour 1965 documentary co-directed by Donald Brittain and John Spotton, following a Jewish Holocaust survivor on an emotional pilgrimage back to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Produced by John Kemeny for the National Film Board of Canada, the film received several awards...
and the
Genie AwardGenie Awards are given out to recognize the best of Canadian cinema by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. From 1949-1979, the awards were named the Canadian Film Awards...
-winning 1979 documentary
Paperland: The Bureaucrat ObservedPaperland: The Bureaucrat Observed is a 1979 documentary film critiquing bureaucracy, written and directed by Donald Brittain and produced by the National Film Board of Canada and CBC-TV.-Genie Awards:...
. He also directed the first-ever
IMAXIMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
film,
Tiger ChildTiger Child was the first IMAX movie ever made. It was directed by Canadian filmmaker Donald Brittain and produced by Roman Kroitor and Kichi Ichikawa. It premiered at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan at the Fuji Group Pavilion....
for
Expo '70was a World's Fair held in Suita, Osaka, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. The theme of the Expo was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese Expo '70 is often referred to as Ōsaka Banpaku...
, and
Earthwatch, a 70mm film for
Expo 86The 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication, or simply Expo '86, was a World's Fair held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from Friday, May 2 until Monday, October 13, 1986...
.
He wrote the 1975 Oscar-nominated short documentary
Whistling SmithWhistling Smith is a 1975 Canadian short documentary film about Vancouver policeman Sergeant Bernie "Whistling" Smith, directed by Marrin Canell. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short at the 48th Academy Awards....
. He co-directed the 1976 feature documentary
Volcano: An Inquiry Into the Life and Death of Malcolm LowryVolcano: An Inquiry Into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry is a 1976 Canadian documentary film about writer Malcolm Lowry. Written and directed by Donald Brittain and John Kramer, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature....
garnered 6 Canadian Film Awards and an Academy Award nomination.
Brittain also directed the three-part
CBCThe Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
-coproduced series
The ChampionsThe Champions is a three-part Canadian documentary mini-series on lives of Canadian political titans and adversaries Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René Lévesque....
, chronicling the lives and battles of Canadian political titans
René LévesqueRené Lévesque was a reporter, a minister of the government of Quebec, , the founder of the Parti Québécois political party and the 23rd Premier of Quebec...
and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. His most ambitious project was
The King Chronicle, a three-part 1987-88 television series about the remarkable career of Prime Minister
William Lyon Mackenzie KingWilliam Lyon Mackenzie King, PC, OM, CMG was the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s through the 1940s. He served as the tenth Prime Minister of Canada from December 29, 1921 to June 28, 1926; from September 25, 1926 to August 7, 1930; and from October 23, 1935 to November 15, 1948...
.
He won the
Gemini AwardThe Gemini Awards are annual television broadcasting industry awards in Canada.First awarded in 1986, the Geminis celebrate the achievements of TV members of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. Essentially, it presents awards for the best television productions in Canada. Awards are...
for best screenplay and direction for the 1985 drama
Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. BanksCanada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks is a Canadian docudrama, written and produced by Donald Brittain. It aired in 1985 on CBC Television....
.
As NFB producer, Brittain's credits included
Arthur LipsettArthur Lipsett was a Canadian avant-garde director of short experimental films.In the 1960s he was employed as an animator by the National Film Board of Canada . Lipsett's particular passion was sound. He collected pieces of sound from a variety of sources and fit them together to create an...
's
A Trip Down Memory LaneA Trip Down Memory Lane is a 1965 experimental film by Arthur Lipsett, created by editing together images and sound clips from over fifty years of newsreel footage....
.
Often a narrator of his own documentaries, Brittain also lent his voice to the animated
mockumentaryA mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
What on Earth!What on Earth! is a 1966 National Film Board of Canada animated short co-directed by Les Drew and Kaj Pindal, which takes a humorous look at car culture from the point of view of fictional Martians, who mistake automobiles for Earth's true inhabitants and people as their parasites...
Lifetime achievement awards and posthumous honours
In 1989, Brittain was the recipient of a
Margaret Collier AwardThe Margaret Collier Award is the lifetime achievement honor presented the Gemini Awards to a writer for their outstanding body of work in Canadian television...
. In 1990, he was posthumously appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition of "his masterful visual records of our social and cultural past.
The Donald Brittain Award for the best political or social documentary at the
Academy of Canadian Cinema and TelevisionThe Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television is a Canadian non-profit organization created in 1979 to recognize over 4,000 Canadian film industry and television industry professionals...
's Gemini Awards are named in his honour.
Brittain is interred in Montreal's
Notre Dame des Neiges CemeteryFounded in 1854, Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is a 343-acre cemetery located in the borough of Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The entrance and the grounds run along a part of chemin Côte-des-Neiges and up the slopes of Mount Royal...
.
External links