Terence Macartney-Filgate (6 August 1924 – 11 July 2022) was a British-Canadian film director who directed, wrote, produced or shot more than 100 films in a career spanning more than 50 years.

Early life

Born in England, Macartney-Filgate lived in India until the age of nine. His family returned to England in 1933 and three years later he became an admirer of documentaries after seeing the 1936 film '' Night Mail'', which was narrated by

John Grierson John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Fl ...

(the founder of the NFB) and based on a poem by W.H. Auden. Macartney-Filgate was only 15 years old at the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and ultimately joined the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

as a flight engineer, flying more than a dozen operations in Europe. He then went on to obtain a degree in politics, philosophy and economics from

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, in 1946, and held down a succession of jobs before immigrating to Canada.

National Film Board

Macartney-Filgate, who had long admired the work of the National Film Board of Canada, applied repeatedly for a job with Canada's public producer, before being hired as a scriptwriting assistant in 1954. The technical knowledge of airplanes picked up while in the RAF served him well, and he wrote commentary for sponsored films at the NFB from 1954 to 1957. He soon graduated from assistant scriptwriter to director-photographer and producer and directed his first film in 1956. Macartney-Filgate worked the NFB's Unit B, with such filmmakers as Wolf Koenig, Roman Kroitor, ''Stanley Jackson'', Michel Brault, and Pierre Perrault, all of which were at the forefront of the new unscripted, observational documentaries. He worked extensively as a director and cinematographer on the

Candid Eye ''Candid Eye'' is a Canadian documentary television series which aired on CBC Television in 1958. Production Wolf Koenig, Terence Macartney-Filgate, and Stanley Jackson filmed ''The Days Before Christmas'' in December 1957, and the Canadian B ...

series. The NFB was able to sell the series of 14 30-minute shorts to the CBC, and Candid Eye (1958–61) was broadcast. Executive producer Tom Daly oversaw the filmmakers, and the shorts were shot on location using new lightweight equipment with an emphasis on recording everyday life. Macartney-Filgate was personally responsible for seven of the fourteen films and he helped shape the series' unscripted and observational approach.

Robert Drew Associates

In 1960, Macartney-Filgate left the NFB and Canada to work freelance for the U.S-based. ''Robert Drew Associates'' – Bob Drew's stable of pioneering documentarians that included Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert Maysles. This group produced three films for Time-Life Broadcast that year: ''Yanqui, No!'', ''Eddie (On the Pole)'' and ''Primary''. He was the principal (but uncredited) cameraman on Primary, a seminal documentary about the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary campaign between senators John F. Kennedy and

Hubert Humphrey Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing M ...

. Macartney-Filgate soon left Drew Associates and worked freelance throughout most of the sixties in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

Other projects

In 1962, he was hired by American producer Robert Hughes to assume the direction and photography of a documentary about the poet Robert Frost when the original director, Shirley Clarke, left the project. The film, '' Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World'' (1963), went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, with Clarke credited as the sole director, despite Macartney-Filgate directing the majority of it. He returned to the NFB briefly to work on the 1963 series ''

Lewis Mumford Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a w ...

on the City'', co-directing four of the six films. He won a Peabody Award (the Institutional Award for Television Education) for his 1964 documentary, ''Changing World: South African Essay'' and, working again with Robert Hughes, conducted a rare interview with

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...

. In New York City, he worked with William Greaves, who he had previously collaborated with on the ''Candid Eye'' series, and made films for television about such writers as Harold Pinter, Marshall McLuhan and Henry David Thoreau. He returned to Canada in the late sixties and again rejoined the NFB briefly to work on the Challenge for Change series, before moving to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. At the CBC, he directed the ''Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Road to Green Gables'' (1975), ''Grenfell of Labrador: The Great Adventure'' (1977), and '' Fields of Endless Day'' (1978). Perhaps his two most accomplished films for the CBC were '' Dieppe 1942'' (1979), which was co-written by Timothy Findley and William Whitehead and was nominated for seven Genie Awards, and '' Timothy Findley: Anatomy of a Writer'' (1992), which won the Donald Brittain Award for best social/political documentary program at the 7th Gemini Awards in 1993. Macartney-Filgate also won two Canadian Film Awards for ''Blood and Fire'' (1958) and '' The Hottest Show on Earth'' (1977) and received an Ontario Film Institute Award in 1981. In the 1970s, Macartney-Filgate taught at the Department of Film,

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,000 faculty and staf ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...

, when James Beveridge was chair of the department. While still a student,

Jennifer Hodge de Silva Jennifer Hodge de Silva (28 January 1951 – 5 May 1989) was a Canadian filmmaker. Her film, ''Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community'', revealed tensions between and police and residents of the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto. The resid ...

worked with Macartney-Filgate as assistant director and associate producer on ''Fields of Endless Day'', "one of the first Canadian productions to significantly chronicle nearly 400 years in the history of African Canadians." In 1979 she was associate producer for ''Dieppe 1942''.

Retirement

In retirement, after 1990, he continued to work with

Adrienne Clarkson Adrienne Louise Clarkson (; ; born February 10, 1939) is a Hong Kong-born Canadian journalist who served from 1999 to 2005 as Governor General of Canada, the 26th since Canadian Confederation. Clarkson arrived in Canada with her family in 19 ...

on her arts show for CBC Television, '' Adrienne Clarkson Presents''. In 1995, he worked with the NFB once again, directing ''Canada Remembers'', a 3-part series about Canada's role in World War II. In 2007, he completed ''Raising Valhalla'', a television documentary about the opening of a new opera stage at the Four Seasons Centre for Performing Arts. As an advocate of small-format video, he worked freelance, based in Toronto.

Honors

In May 2011, Macartney-Filgate was given

Hot Doc ''Hot Doc'' is a Greek news magazine, launched in April 2012 by its owner and editor Kostas Vaxevanis. It is issued every fifteen days. In October 2012, it published a special issue containing a list of names claimed to be the contents of the Lag ...

's outstanding achievement award, which included a retrospective of his work. Also in 2011, Macartney-Filgate was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Personal life

Macartney-Filgate died in

on 11 July 2022 at the age of 97.

References

External links

*
Watch films by Terence Macartney-Filgate Filmography
at the National Film Board of Canada
Terence Macartney-Filgate Filmography at CITWF
{{DEFAULTSORT:Macartney-Filgate, Terence 1924 births 2022 deaths Canadian documentary film directors Canadian cinematographers Canadian male screenwriters National Film Board of Canada people English film directors English emigrants to Canada Canadian Broadcasting Corporation people English documentary filmmakers York University faculty Canadian film educators Officers of the Order of Canada British people in colonial India Royal Air Force personnel of World War II Royal Air Force airmen