C O N T E N T S:
Welcome to the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema |
Message from the Chair |
About Mel Hoppenheim |
Why Study at Concordia? |
Notable Alumni |
Information for International Students |
Advisory Board |
Supporters and Donors |
Welcome to the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
The Cinema School offers three areas of study: FILM ANIMATION, FILM PRODUCTION and FILM STUDIES. The School's programmes are distinguished from many others in cinema by the fact that we are a part of the Faculty of Fine Arts and each programme approaches the subject matter primarily as a means of artistic expression. Consequently, a central aim of these programmes is to prepare students to become filmmakers, film animators or film historians/critics/theorists who have a two fold awareness: on the one hand, of the artistic and cultural potential of their medium and, on the other, of its history and traditions. A B.F.A. in Art History and Film Studies is also offered jointly with the Art History Department
Although the programmes are oriented towards art and culture, the financial and commercial aspects of filmmaking are also addressed. Film Animation and Film Production are “hands-on” programmes involving intensive aesthetic as well as technical education. The School attempts to strike a balance between practical aspects and purely creative ones, just as it recognizes that art can reflect both social and aesthetic concerns.
NOTE: The purpose of this website is to provide general information about the programmes and courses in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. It is recommended that this information be used in conjunction with the University Undergraduate and Graduate Calendars and supplemented with academic advising at the School level. However, students should be aware that the Calendars contain the formal statement of regulations, course descriptions and programmes.
Although the programmes are oriented towards art and culture, the financial and commercial aspects of filmmaking are also addressed. Film Animation and Film Production are “hands-on” programmes involving intensive aesthetic as well as technical education. The School attempts to strike a balance between practical aspects and purely creative ones, just as it recognizes that art can reflect both social and aesthetic concerns.
NOTE: The purpose of this website is to provide general information about the programmes and courses in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. It is recommended that this information be used in conjunction with the University Undergraduate and Graduate Calendars and supplemented with academic advising at the School level. However, students should be aware that the Calendars contain the formal statement of regulations, course descriptions and programmes.
Message from the Chair
The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, is the largest, university-based centre for the study of film animation, film production and film studies in Canada. Each year it accepts some 200 students from across Canada and many other countries into its undergraduate and graduate programmes. They are taught by internationally-known film artists and scholars, all of whom are exceptionally active in their specialties.
The School’s programmes are focused on the moving image as a form of artistic expression that has been of extraordinary importance since the late nineteenth century, and we are proud of our graduates who, through the making of award-winning, independent films or though innovative teaching and research, contribute to the on-going development and understanding of cinema as a vital component of the visual arts. Central to the School’s efforts is the determination to explore all possibilities of the medium of film, while also addressing newer technologies and paradigms pertaining to moving images. Every student takes film studies courses in which they see work from around the world in original format; all film production students shoot in 16mm or Super 16mm film, and can elect to work in other media, while learning both analog and digital post-production strategies; film animation students create frame-by-frame art in a remarkable variety of ways, capturing their visions on everything from Oxberry cameras to 3D software. Whatever means is used for expression, however, the emphasis is placed decisively on helping student enhance their individual talents and ideas.
Another view of the Faubourg TowerCurrently housed on three floors in a downtown Montreal office building, the School looks forward to the promised construction of a new building that will permit it to expand such facilities as shooting studios and screening rooms for students, as well as research spaces for faculty. Despite being in less than ideal premises, the School offers what many recognize as the finest education available in Canada, one which views cinema as an international field of study. Its film studies scholars teach and publish on a wide range of national cinemas as well as on issues of importance to filmmakers and film viewers everywhere, its film production and film animation faculty have traveled and made films on several continents, and the School is currently developing new academic exchanges in China, Cuba, France and Germany.
Faculty and students, along with prominent members of the Montreal film community who support us through their activities on our Advisory Board, invite you to learn more about the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. Enjoy our website, and this glimpse into our community.
The School’s programmes are focused on the moving image as a form of artistic expression that has been of extraordinary importance since the late nineteenth century, and we are proud of our graduates who, through the making of award-winning, independent films or though innovative teaching and research, contribute to the on-going development and understanding of cinema as a vital component of the visual arts. Central to the School’s efforts is the determination to explore all possibilities of the medium of film, while also addressing newer technologies and paradigms pertaining to moving images. Every student takes film studies courses in which they see work from around the world in original format; all film production students shoot in 16mm or Super 16mm film, and can elect to work in other media, while learning both analog and digital post-production strategies; film animation students create frame-by-frame art in a remarkable variety of ways, capturing their visions on everything from Oxberry cameras to 3D software. Whatever means is used for expression, however, the emphasis is placed decisively on helping student enhance their individual talents and ideas.
Another view of the Faubourg Tower
Faculty and students, along with prominent members of the Montreal film community who support us through their activities on our Advisory Board, invite you to learn more about the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. Enjoy our website, and this glimpse into our community.
About Mel Hoppenheim
Responding primarily to the vocal concerns and urgent needs of local Montreal cinematographic productions, Mel Hoppenheim founded Panavision (Canada) in 1965. Providing cameras and other shooting equipment, Mel was soon traveling all over the world to equip ever more elaborate productions. After six years of success in his hometown of Montreal, Mel decided to open a second technical installation in Toronto in 1972. A Vancouver facility followed in 1977. Still committed to what he saw as Montreal’s vast and largely untapped potential and possibility for the production industry, Mel acquired the historic Theatre Expo de la Cité du Havre in 1988. Building five state-of-the-art studios, he soon had created the most modern of facilities available to the Canadian film and television industry. Mel’s Cité du Cinéma was born.
Through an initial investment of some $14 million, the first building in La Cité du Cinéma quickly pumped an estimated $250 million into the local economy and created more than 500 new jobs.
In 1997, Mel donated $1 million to Montreal’s Concordia University, which was subsequently used to open the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, now renowned throughout North America and the world. Mel and his partners have also helped in the development of Montreal’s Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS), a well-known and respected private school for the development of world-class writers, directors and producers for film and television.
Find out more about our principal donor, Mel Hoppenheim here.
Through an initial investment of some $14 million, the first building in La Cité du Cinéma quickly pumped an estimated $250 million into the local economy and created more than 500 new jobs.
In 1997, Mel donated $1 million to Montreal’s Concordia University, which was subsequently used to open the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, now renowned throughout North America and the world. Mel and his partners have also helped in the development of Montreal’s Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS), a well-known and respected private school for the development of world-class writers, directors and producers for film and television.
Find out more about our principal donor, Mel Hoppenheim here.
Why Study at Concordia?
Concordia is a large, urban university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Montreal has a population of three million, and is one of the oldest cities in North America. As the largest francophone city on the contintent, Montreal hosts many international cultural events and is within driving distance of both Toronto and New York City. While French is the predominant language, there is also a large English-speaking population. Many ethno-cultural communities also help maintain a lively, cosmopolitan atmosphere. Films, concerts, plays, art exhibitions and athletic events are plentiful, and there is a 1000-acre mountain in the heart of the city, with parks, jogging and bike paths available. You can also retreat to the nearby Laurentian Mountains or the Eastern Townships. Once there, you can do everything from windsurfing to skiing (alpine, as well as cross-country), or just explore the beautiful countryside. It’s all within an hour or two of Montreal.
Downtown Montréal as seen from Ile Ste-Hélène
A vibrant artistic centre, Montreal is the home of Cirque du Soleil, La La La Human Steps, Le Mois de la Photo, La Biennale de Montréal, Musee d’art contemporain, the Musée des beaux arts, The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Nuit d’Afriques, Agora de la Danse, Mutek, numerous music and film festivals, and one of the largest networks of artist-run centres.
Over the past twenty years, the Concordia’s School of Cinema has developed extensive ties with the dynamic Montreal art/film milieu, including such notable organizations as the Cinémathèque québécoise, the National Film Board of Canada, and the Montreal Festival of New Cinema. The School of Cinema also features one of the largest equipment bases in North America, augmented by the School of Cinema’s impressive collection of classic and contemporary films.
Downtown Montréal as seen from Ile Ste-Hélène
A vibrant artistic centre, Montreal is the home of Cirque du Soleil, La La La Human Steps, Le Mois de la Photo, La Biennale de Montréal, Musee d’art contemporain, the Musée des beaux arts, The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Nuit d’Afriques, Agora de la Danse, Mutek, numerous music and film festivals, and one of the largest networks of artist-run centres.
Over the past twenty years, the Concordia’s School of Cinema has developed extensive ties with the dynamic Montreal art/film milieu, including such notable organizations as the Cinémathèque québécoise, the National Film Board of Canada, and the Montreal Festival of New Cinema. The School of Cinema also features one of the largest equipment bases in North America, augmented by the School of Cinema’s impressive collection of classic and contemporary films.
Notable Alumni
Jeff Abugov is a successful television writer whose writing, producing and consulting credits include Cheers, Roseanne, Roc, My Two Dads, The Golden Girls, Grace Under Fire, Caroline in the City, The Tony Danza Show, and many others.
Louise Archambault earned a MFA in Film from Concordia University. She has directed and produced a number of commercials for television and made her first short, Là-haut les étoiles, in 1993, followed by Deux grands-mamans in 1997. Since its premiere at the 1999 Festival du Nouveau Cinéma et des Nouveaux Médias, Atomic Saké has enjoyed considered public and critical success, winning the Prix Jutra for best short film in 2000. The film, which she also wrote, has been invited to several festivals in Quebec and Europe. Familia (2005) is her debut feature film.
In making her films, Louise Bourque often uses images from her family’s old home movies as well as other “found” footage that she alters through various unorthodox techniques and processes involving the direct manipulation of film’s photographic emulsion (low-tech contact printing, hand-processing and coloring, bleaching, scratching, and even burying). The resulting moving short avant-garde films touch on themes of memory and loss. A French-Canadian filmmaker, Bourque has been teaching cinema in Boston since 1996. She received her BFA in film production from Concordia University in Montreal and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been presented in more than twenty-five countries and broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Her films have screened at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco International Film Festival, as well as many international venues.
After studying film at Concordia University Manon Briand began her career in 1987 by writing screenplays. Three years later, she wrote, directed and produced her first short film, Les Sauf-Conduits (1992), which won numerous awards including the Prix Claude-Jutra/OFQJ du Meilleur Espoir at the 10th Rendezvous du Cinéma Québécois, the Graine de Cinéphage Jury Prize at the International Women's Film Festival in Créteil, France, "Golden Sheaf" Awards for Best Film and Best Director at the Yorkton Short Film Festival in Saskatchewan, and the National Film Board-John Spotton Award at the Toronto Film Festival. In 1992 she released Croix De Bois, following it with Picoti Picota (1995), which won the Alexander S. Scotty Foundation prize for best film dealing with aging and death at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in 1996. Briand received nationwide attention in 1998 with her first solo feature-length film, the critically acclaimed 2 Secondes. It was honored as Best Canadian film, Best First Film and Most Popular Film at the 1998 Montreal World Film Festival. Her next venture was a collaborative affair when she joined forces with five other young filmmakers and contributed a segment titled Boost to the 1996 film, Cosmos. One year later it was screened during the Director's Fortnight at the Cannes film festival, winning the Prix de la Confédération internationale des cinémas d'art et d'essai. In 2002, Briand released her most ambitious project, La turbulence des fluids, co-starring Gabriel Arcand, Genevieve Bujold and Pascale Bussières.
Gary Burns combines a wry sense of humour with an observational style to craft his films. Burns' first feature, The Suburbanators (1995) was a critical success at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival. The Toronto film critics placed The Suburbanators in the top ten Canadian films of 1996 as well as naming Gary in the top ten of both directors and screenwriters in Canada. Mondo Canuck placed The Suburbanators on its list of "English Canada's Coolest Movies," calling Gary's debut feature "the most promising first feature by a Canadian director to come along in years." The Suburbanators was also invited to the 1996 Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah. Burns' second feature Kitchen Party (1997) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to great acclaim and was invited to the 27th New Directors/New Films held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art where the New York Times called it "the funniest, nastiest, comedy of manners to come down the pike in months." Other festival screenings included Rotterdam (in competition) and Turin (in competition, FIPRESCI Award, Special Mention). Kitchen Party opened the Slam Dance festival in Park City and won best feature at the Atlanta Film Festival. Waydowntown (2000) was the winner of the Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival, Most Popular Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and named Best Canadian Film by the Toronto Film Critics Association. His most recently completed film is A Problem with Fear (2003).
Combining understated passion with carefully modulated intensity, Pascale Bussières has become the most compelling and charismatic Quebec actress of her generation. Bussières first attracted attention as a suicidal teenager in Micheline Lanctôt’s rigorously dark Sonatine (1984), for which the sixteen-year-old received a Genie nomination for Best Actress. She took a long hiatus from acting to complete a degree in film production at Concordia University, then appeared in Jacques Leduc’s La Vie fantôme (1992), which netted her the Best Actress award at the Montreal World Film Festival, and Deux Actrices (1993), which reunited her with Lanctôt. But it was Bussières’s starring role in the TV mini-series Blanche (1993), Charles Binamé’s popular historical melodrama, which rocketed her to stardom and non-stop work in Quebec film and television. Blanche was one of the most-watched programmes ever broadcast in Quebec, and in 1994 Bussières received the Metro Star award as the Most Popular Actress in Quebec. It is a measure of her range that she leapt from her role as the heroine in Blanche to that of the roller-blading cokehead in Binamé’s Generation X picture Eldorado (1994), then followed that with her portrayal of a prim theology professor who uncovers her desire for women in Patricia Rozema’s When Night is Falling (1995). Equally proficient performing in English as in French, Bussières has since appeared in films by many of Canada’s major directors, including Guy Maddin’s Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997), Denis Villeneuve’s Un 32 auôt sur terre (1998), Léa Pool’s Emporte-moi (1999) and The Blue Butterfly (2003), Jeremy Podeswa’s The Five Senses (1999), Manon Briand’s La Turbulence des fluids (2002) and Denise Filiatrault’s Ma vie en cinemascope (2004) for which she won her first Genie Award for Best Leading Actress. She has also worked extensively in France on such films as La Répétition (2001), and is currently in production on the CBC-TV mini series René Lévesque.
Erik Canuel was born in Montreal into a theatrical family who introduced him to the stage at an early age. Canuel tried his hand at movie making and enrolled in the film production faculty at Concordia University. Over a period of three years, Canuel worked on some 82 short films covering all aspects of movie making. During his last year at Concordia, he founded Kino Films, a small production company. In 1992, he left Kino Films to join Cinélande, Montreal's largest television commercials production company. He has since directed over 200 commercials, 50 rock videos and many TV mini-series episodes (Big Wolf on Campus for Fox Network, Fortier for TVA, The Hunger for ShowTime and The Movie Network), and, in 1998, directed the large-format docu-drama Hemingway; A Portrait, the live-action prologue to Alexander Petrov's large-format animated adaptation of The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway's classic tale.
After twelve years at Industrial Light & Magic, Rob Coleman moved divisions within the Lucas Companies to Lucasfilm Animation as their Animation and Development Director. Lucasfilm Animation was created to develop and produce digitally animated television and feature-film projects. Based at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California and in Singapore, their first project includes a computer animatied television series that explores the Star Wars Galaxy. Coleman was Animation Director on Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, a role he has fulfilled on the two previous Star Wars films. He was chosen as one of the most creative people in entertainment when he was added to Entertainment Weekly’s It List in 2002 as their It CG-Creature Crafter for his work on the digital Yoda. Rob received his BFA degree from the film animation program at Concordia University in Montreal in 1987 before working at the National Film Board of Canada and at a number of small animation studios in Toronto. He has been nominated for two Oscars for his work on Attack of the Clones and The Phantom Menace and two British Academy Awards for his work on Men In Black and The Phantom Menace. He has received two MTV Movie Awards and two Saturn Awards for best visual effects on Star Wars.
A graduate of the film programme at Concordia University, Ghyslaine Côté has scripted several short films for children and teens. In 1993, she wrote and directed her first film, the short Aux Voleurs! which won the La Presse award for Best Screenplay at the Stony Brook Festival in Long Island, New York, and received Jutra and Genie award nominations for Best Short Film. In 1999, she directed the children’s feature Pin-Pon, le film, which garnered Jutra nominations for Best Editing and Best Art Direction. Her follow-up, the sensitive drama Elles étaient cin (2004), opened the Montreal World Film Festival, where it was named Most Popular Film. It went on to gross a very respectable $1.9 million at the Quebec box office and was named one of Canada’s Top Ten of 2004 by an independent, national panel of filmmakers, programmers, journalists and industry professionals.
Luc Des Groseillers received a BFA in Film Studies from Concordia University. He is currently attending the AFI (American Film Institute) Film School. His film I Was Here, screened at the 2005 International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal.
Montreal-born Christian Duguay was a graduate of Concordia University's film school, where his student projects earned him numerous awards. Duguay began his career as an editor and director of photography, and for several years, shot news documentaries around the world for four television networks. He returned to Canada and worked on various commercials as a director of photography. In 1996, Duguay directed the much-acclaimed miniseries Million Dollar Babies, a Canadian-American co-production about the Dionne quintuplets, starring Beau Bridges and Kate Nelligan, which aired on CBS. His work on this project garnered him the Best Director Award from the Geminis. Duguay has since earned acclaim as both a feature film and television director in Canada, the United States and abroad. His television miniseries Joan of Arc, which aired on CBS in 1999, was nominated for 12 Emmy Awards and four Golden Globes, including in both instances nominations for Best Miniseries and Best Director. Among his other major directorial film credits are the critically-acclaimed thriller The Assignment (1997), starring Donald Sutherland, Ben Kingsley and Aidan Quinn, and the science fiction film Screamers (1995), starring Peter Weller. When not working on films, Duguay also directs award-winning commercials, including spots for Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Chrysler, General Motors, McDonalds, the Yellow Pages and Labatt Blue Dry.
A graduate of the Film Studies program at Concordia University, Sean Farnel is a programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival Group.
Born in Quebec, self-taught musician Dominic Gagnon has made the following award winning experimental films and videos: Parapluie Bomb City (1996), Beluga Crash Blues (1997), Anchorage (1998), Du Moteur a Explosion (2000), The Matrix (2004) and the documentaries: ISO (2001), Be Loyal and Sincere (2003), and The Making of a Cobra (2004). Since 1996, Gagnon has exhibited live public presentation of his film, music and video works in galleries, festivals and biennial around Europe and North America. As a performance artist, he dragged his camera on stage at Bone 5, Performance International, Bern, Switzerland (2002) and at Festival de Théâtre des Amériques, Montréal (2003). In the summer of 2003 he developped a technique that allows him to produce sound and music from television screens. The first public presentation of this new series took place at CESTA, Czech Republic (2003) and the second at the gallery Play for still and motion picture in Berlin. He recently had a show in Montreal at the Cinémathèque québécoise where he created an installation entitled Total Recall / Réanimétrie. This last work was accompanied by a retrospective of his films and videos.
Vincent Gauthier arrived at Concordia from his hometown of Joliette, Quebec, in the late 1980s. In his second year he entered and won the Cinéaste recherché contest, offered by the NFB’s French animation studio. This allowed him to make his first professional film, Territoire/Borderlines (1992). In 1995, the NFB accepted Gauthier’s project for The Dead Tree, released in 1998. With vampire bats as its main characters, the film evokes the AIDS crisis. He then continued at the film board, working as assistant director to Cilia Sawadogo for Christopher Changes His Name (2000), and as director for Christopher, Please Clean Up Your Room! (2001). Over the years, Gauthier has also taught part-time at Concordia and one year at Cégep du Vieux Montréal.
Laurence Green is a past nominee for the prestigious Chalmers Award, and his autobiographical documentary Reconstruction won eight major film awards at festivals from Ann Arbor to Leipzig. His films present provocative and poetic images from the archival footage and home movies of our collective memories and explore notions of family, personal history and Canadian identity politics. His most ambitious project to date, Thin Ice (NFB) is an adaptation of New York satirist Bruce McCall’s acclaimed sardonic memoir about his formative and miserable childhood in Canada. Green has also directed several episodes for various documentary series on television and writes for a number of film magazines.
Susie Grondin is a producer for Nelvana, a children’s and family entertainment company in Toronto. She has worked on childrens’ shows such as Miss Spider’s Sunnypatch Kids and Rolie Polie Olie, which was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award.
John Hazlett is a Producer-Director who first studied Art and Design at Red Deer College and then at Concordia University in Montreal. After taking some time off to work he returned to university to study filmmaking, graduating from Concordia in 1993. Hazlett's producing and directing credits include Population 420 (1994-PD), The Suburbanators (1995-P), Kitchen Party (1997-P), and Bad Money (1999-PD) .
Before making films, Federico Hidalgo worked as a performer, writer and director in theatre improv, political cabaret, and traditional drama. He studied film production and made several award-winning short films at Concordia University, where he later taught courses in film history. His films Lotería (1997) and Gesture (1999) were shot in Mexico City with Toronto-based filmmaker Roberto Ariganello. A Silent Love is his first feature film.
Born in Norway, Torill Kove studied animation at Concordia University in Montreal, where she won the Kodak Award for her quirky films All you can eat, Fallen Angel, and Squash and Stretch. She has worked in a variety of roles on several NFB productions, and as a scriptwriter for Studio Magica in Oslo. My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts, her first professional film, was nominated for an Academy Award.
David Lemieux, Archivist for the Grateful Dead, received a BFA in Film Studies from Concordia in 1997. Lemieux, who previously worked at the National Archives of Canada and the British Columbia Archives, is one of only two holders of the key to the revered Grateful Dead Vault, which contains close to 17,000 audio- and videotapes of the band’s performances, dating back to 1965.
Pascal Maeder studied film production at Concordia University in the eighties. In the nineties, along with the feature film Motel, which he produced and directed, Maeder produced six original plays with Dummies Theatre, a company that he co-founded in 1992. In 1999, he produced the film, Between the Moon and Montevideo, on location in Havana. In 2000, he founded ATOPIA through which he produced SPIT: Squeegee Punks In Traffic (2001); El Ring (2002); A Silent Love (2003) and Jimmywork (2004).
Catherine Martin was born in Hull, Québec and received her BFA from Concordia University with a major in film and a minor in photography. She has written, directed and produced various short and medium length films, in both the fiction and documentary genres, including: Odile ou réminiscences d'un voyage (1985), Nuits d'Afrique (1990), Les Fins de semaine (1995) and Les Dames du 9e (1998). Her debut feature film Mariages (2001) screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, was voted one of Canada's Top Ten films in 2001 and was nominated for a Genie and three Jutra awards. Her latest film Océan (2002) also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and was voted one of Canada's Top Ten films in 2002.
George Mihalka is one of Canada’s most prolific directors, working in both English and French-language productions. His first feature, My Bloody Valentine, was directed for Paramount studios, and was entered in the Fantastic Film Festival in Avoriaz, France in 1981 and quickly became a cult classic. Six years later, Mihalka won the Prix du Public at the same festival for his film The Blue Man. His 1993 film, La Florida, brought him a Genie Award nomination for Best Direction and went on to win the Golden Reel Award as the top box-office grossing film of the year. Mihalka also directed L’Homme Ideale, which also surpassed the one million dollar mark at the box office. His long list of television credits includes such films as Dr. Lucille: The Lucille Teasdale Story, which won the Gemini Award for Best Film and for which he was nominated for Best Direction; Jack Higgins’ Thunder Point and Windsor Protocol; and Le Chemin de Damas, for which he was nominated for a Gemeaux. Mihalka also has the distinction of directing the first 19 hours of the hit Quebec series Scoop, and the entire third season of Omerta, the province’s top-rated drama. He was nominated for three Gemeaux Awards for Best Direction for both series. He also directed most of the episodes for Da Vinci's Inquest in 2002 and 2003.
Frédéric Moffet was born in Montreal. He graduated from Concordia University with a BFA in filmmaking. He received a full scholarship to complete a MFA in video at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he presently teaches digital video production. He has also worked as a coordinator and curator for Vidéographe, an artist run media center and video distribution house in Montréal. His work deals with transformation, desire and the “out of control body.” Recent projects include: Hard Fat (2002), More is More (2002), 24xCaprices (2001), An Objective Measure of Arousal (2001), and Five O’clock Shadow (1998). His videos and films have been shown in festivals and galleries internationally, including at VideoEx (Zurich), Para/Site and Microwave (Hong Kong), Art in General (New York), BBC Short Film Festival (Londres), Frameline (San Francisco), The New Festival (New York) et le Festival Nouveau Cinema Nouveau Media (Montréal).
Montreal-based independent filmmaker Jean François Monette has produced and directed several award winning films. His work has been broadcast on PBS National, The Discovery Channel, Life Network, RDI and the History Channel as well as in major film festivals worldwide. His documentary work includes Anatomy of Desire, a film dealing with biodeterminism and homosexuality; Rene Richard: Painter of the North, a biography about acclaimed Quebecois painter Rene Richard; Out in the City, a docu-vérité series about gay life in Montreal, and Where Lies the Homo?, an experimental documentary about gay representation, awarded the Best Lesbian and Gay Film Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1999. Take-Out (2000), a short fiction dealing with a young man's sexual awakening, won the Telefilm Canada award at the Rendez-Vous du Cinema Quebecois. Jean-François is currently developing his first feature.
Dan Mucha is a writer and filmmaker who served as the video archivist for the Austin Film Society from 1996-2002, following film studies at Ohio State University and Concordia University in Montreal. He acted as Consulting Producer for the Criterion DVD release of Slacker, and has previously taught Part One of "True to Life: The Films of Louis Malle" at Facets Film School in addition to "The British New Wave: From Angry Young Men to Swinging London."
An Armenian-Canadian, Arto Paragamian studied illustration and design before being accepted into Concordia University's film program. In 1987, he won the Canadian Student Film Festival's Norman McLaren Award for best movie, The Fish Story, and then caused a stir in 1988 by taking the prize again for Across the Street. He is the only person to have won the award two years in a row. Between Because Why and his latest feature, Two Thousand and None Paragamian joined Denis Villeneuve, Manon Briand, Andre Turpin, Jennifer Alleyn and Marie-Julie Dallaire on producer Roger Frappier's anthology project, Cosmos.
John Pozer began his career at the age of ten as understudy to the New York lead in the touring musical production of Oliver! He went on to star in Oliver! and Peter Pan, as well as numerous other roles in theatre and television productions in Vancouver and Ottawa. After receiving the E.V. Young Acting Award, he attended the University of British Columbia and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre and Film. He earned the UBC Film Society Award and was a finalist in the BC Festival of the Arts; however his short horror film, 156 & Counting, was banned from public screening by the judges who claimed it was “too disturbing.” Moving to Montreal, Pozer attended Concordia University and graduated with a MFA in Cinema. His first feature film, The Grocer's Wife, which he wrote, directed, edited, and produced, was invited to the Cannes Film Festival as opening film for the International Critic’s Week and went on to win the Prix Georges Sadoul Award for Best First Film. In Canada, Pozer was awarded the inaugural Claude Jutra Award by the Academy of Cinema and Television for Best Direction of a First Feature. He premiered his second feature, The Michelle Apartments, at the Toronto Festival of Festivals. Pozer also executive produced and edited the independent feature, Kissed, which was selected for the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes in 1997. The film garnered eight Genie nominations and was a box-office success, both domestically and internationally. Turning his hand to digital technology, Pozer went on to direct hours of computer animation for Mainframe Entertainment, reaching audiences in over sixty countries with his episodes of Beast Wars and Transformers. Pozer has also directed a slate of episodic television, including Disney’s So Weird, CTV’s Cold Squad, CBC’s These Arms of Mine, MTV’s 2Gether, and Sausage Factory. He won a Leo Award for Best Director of a Comedy for his work on the latter in 2002. In addition to teaching university film courses, Pozer also mentors developing filmmakers. His production company, Medusa Films, is currently developing a slate of feature screenplays.
John Price is an independent filmmaker who has produced experimental documentaries, dance and diary films since 1984. John received an MFA from Concordia University (1996) and grants from The National Film Board, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council. In addition to festival screenings across North America and Europe, he has produced film projections for opera and dance, and has instructed numerous workshops in alternative film production, hand-processing and optical printing.
Tico Romao graduated with a BFA in Film Studies from Concordia University. He received his PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. He currently teaches in the School of Arts, Media and Design at the University of Gloucestershire.
Lynne Stopkewich began making Super 8 movies at the age of thirteen, obtained her BFA in film from Concordia University and made two short films before entering the largely self-directed graduate film programme at the University of British Columbia. She split her time between her ongoing studies and work in the film industry; her efforts as production designer on The Grocer’s Wife (1991) – a film directed by her fellow UBC grad student John Pozer that was a hit at both the Festival de Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival – led to production designer roles on other films, including Sandy Wilson's Harmony Cats (1993), which earned her a Genie Award nomination. In 1994, Stopkewich began work on her thesis film, an adaptation of Barbara Gowdy’s short story "We So Seldom Look on Love." The $80,000, self-financed Kissed debuted at the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival; it was the most talked about film at the Festival, became the buzz film at the Sundance Film Festival and screened in the Director’s Fortnight programme at the Festival de Cannes. It went on to enjoy significant commercial success and worldwide theatrical release and launched the careers of both Stopkewich and the film’s star, Molly Parker (both were signed by the William Morris talent agency). Stopkewich followed Kissed with Suspicious River (2000), starring Parker as a young woman in a small town who prostitutes herself at the motel where she works. She then directed Lilith on Top (2001), a raucous documentary chronicling the final year of Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair concert tour. She currently directs for television.
Born in Hull, in 1965, André Turpin has been living in Montreal since his student days, a time when he dreamt about pursuing his fascination with astro and nuclear physics, both of which he still follows closely “in a very amateur way.” A seriously experimental risk-taking director of photography Turpin shot Denis Villeneuve's two features Maelstrom (2000) and Un 32 Aout sur terre (1998). Quebec's current auteur-du-chou also directed a segment for Roger Frappier's 1996 anthology film, Cosmos. Turpin's other cinematography credits include Jean-Philippe Duval's Matron et mar (1999) Arto Paragamian's Because Why (1993) and Marc Andre Former's surrealistic autobiographical La Comtesse in Baton Rouge (1995). Produced by the indie company Jeux d'Ombres, Turpin's first try at a feature, Zigrail, tracks a fictional Andre, played by another Andre (Charlebois), as he races around Europe in search of his pregnant girlfriend and ultimately himself. Une Crabe dans la tete is Turpin’s second feature.
While at Concordia, Philippe Vaucher received the Atypic Inc. Award for The Colours of Mourning (1997) and the Dean’s Award for The Maskarade (1998). In his third year, he entered and won the NFB’s Cinéaste recherché contest, allowing him to make Chasse papillon/The Song-Catcher (2001), about an old man obsessed by the memory of the woman he once loved. Vaucher now does freelance illustrations, storyboarding (such as for live-action films) and teaching (including a stint at Concordia). He recently began working on a new film at the NFB, Rave, but the project is currently on hold. Such problems are not uncommon, so Vaucher has teamed up with four other animators - all Concordia alumni - to create the Montreal Animation Collective. Their objective is to help members make their own films.
Peter Wellington is an accomplished writer and director whose first feature, Joe's So Mean To Josephine, won the Claude Jutra Award for Best Feature Film at the 1996 Genie Awards and was an audience favorite at the Sundance International Film Festival. Luck, starring Sarah Polley and Luke Kirby, is his second feature. For television, Wellington directed the Movie Network's six-part television series Slings and Arrows (2003), starring Paul Gross. He has also directed episodes of Canadian series such as Traders, The City, Blue Murder and Exhibit A. Wellington is currently directing the six-part series, Final Curtain for Rhombus productions.
Steven Woloshen was born in Montreal in 1960. After high school he entered Vanier College, which proved to be an ideal environment to study alternative expressions with Super-8 film and video. In 1980, he was admitted to Concordia University and specialized in 16mm independent film techniques. Woloshen has created many animated and experimental film projects and has been invited to show his work at numerous festivals, screenings and galleries in his country and around the globe. In addition, he has been commissioned to create short animated pieces for other filmmakers, artists and events.
Louise Archambault earned a MFA in Film from Concordia University. She has directed and produced a number of commercials for television and made her first short, Là-haut les étoiles, in 1993, followed by Deux grands-mamans in 1997. Since its premiere at the 1999 Festival du Nouveau Cinéma et des Nouveaux Médias, Atomic Saké has enjoyed considered public and critical success, winning the Prix Jutra for best short film in 2000. The film, which she also wrote, has been invited to several festivals in Quebec and Europe. Familia (2005) is her debut feature film.
In making her films, Louise Bourque often uses images from her family’s old home movies as well as other “found” footage that she alters through various unorthodox techniques and processes involving the direct manipulation of film’s photographic emulsion (low-tech contact printing, hand-processing and coloring, bleaching, scratching, and even burying). The resulting moving short avant-garde films touch on themes of memory and loss. A French-Canadian filmmaker, Bourque has been teaching cinema in Boston since 1996. She received her BFA in film production from Concordia University in Montreal and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been presented in more than twenty-five countries and broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Her films have screened at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco International Film Festival, as well as many international venues.
After studying film at Concordia University Manon Briand began her career in 1987 by writing screenplays. Three years later, she wrote, directed and produced her first short film, Les Sauf-Conduits (1992), which won numerous awards including the Prix Claude-Jutra/OFQJ du Meilleur Espoir at the 10th Rendezvous du Cinéma Québécois, the Graine de Cinéphage Jury Prize at the International Women's Film Festival in Créteil, France, "Golden Sheaf" Awards for Best Film and Best Director at the Yorkton Short Film Festival in Saskatchewan, and the National Film Board-John Spotton Award at the Toronto Film Festival. In 1992 she released Croix De Bois, following it with Picoti Picota (1995), which won the Alexander S. Scotty Foundation prize for best film dealing with aging and death at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in 1996. Briand received nationwide attention in 1998 with her first solo feature-length film, the critically acclaimed 2 Secondes. It was honored as Best Canadian film, Best First Film and Most Popular Film at the 1998 Montreal World Film Festival. Her next venture was a collaborative affair when she joined forces with five other young filmmakers and contributed a segment titled Boost to the 1996 film, Cosmos. One year later it was screened during the Director's Fortnight at the Cannes film festival, winning the Prix de la Confédération internationale des cinémas d'art et d'essai. In 2002, Briand released her most ambitious project, La turbulence des fluids, co-starring Gabriel Arcand, Genevieve Bujold and Pascale Bussières.
Gary Burns combines a wry sense of humour with an observational style to craft his films. Burns' first feature, The Suburbanators (1995) was a critical success at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival. The Toronto film critics placed The Suburbanators in the top ten Canadian films of 1996 as well as naming Gary in the top ten of both directors and screenwriters in Canada. Mondo Canuck placed The Suburbanators on its list of "English Canada's Coolest Movies," calling Gary's debut feature "the most promising first feature by a Canadian director to come along in years." The Suburbanators was also invited to the 1996 Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah. Burns' second feature Kitchen Party (1997) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to great acclaim and was invited to the 27th New Directors/New Films held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art where the New York Times called it "the funniest, nastiest, comedy of manners to come down the pike in months." Other festival screenings included Rotterdam (in competition) and Turin (in competition, FIPRESCI Award, Special Mention). Kitchen Party opened the Slam Dance festival in Park City and won best feature at the Atlanta Film Festival. Waydowntown (2000) was the winner of the Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival, Most Popular Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and named Best Canadian Film by the Toronto Film Critics Association. His most recently completed film is A Problem with Fear (2003).
Combining understated passion with carefully modulated intensity, Pascale Bussières has become the most compelling and charismatic Quebec actress of her generation. Bussières first attracted attention as a suicidal teenager in Micheline Lanctôt’s rigorously dark Sonatine (1984), for which the sixteen-year-old received a Genie nomination for Best Actress. She took a long hiatus from acting to complete a degree in film production at Concordia University, then appeared in Jacques Leduc’s La Vie fantôme (1992), which netted her the Best Actress award at the Montreal World Film Festival, and Deux Actrices (1993), which reunited her with Lanctôt. But it was Bussières’s starring role in the TV mini-series Blanche (1993), Charles Binamé’s popular historical melodrama, which rocketed her to stardom and non-stop work in Quebec film and television. Blanche was one of the most-watched programmes ever broadcast in Quebec, and in 1994 Bussières received the Metro Star award as the Most Popular Actress in Quebec. It is a measure of her range that she leapt from her role as the heroine in Blanche to that of the roller-blading cokehead in Binamé’s Generation X picture Eldorado (1994), then followed that with her portrayal of a prim theology professor who uncovers her desire for women in Patricia Rozema’s When Night is Falling (1995). Equally proficient performing in English as in French, Bussières has since appeared in films by many of Canada’s major directors, including Guy Maddin’s Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997), Denis Villeneuve’s Un 32 auôt sur terre (1998), Léa Pool’s Emporte-moi (1999) and The Blue Butterfly (2003), Jeremy Podeswa’s The Five Senses (1999), Manon Briand’s La Turbulence des fluids (2002) and Denise Filiatrault’s Ma vie en cinemascope (2004) for which she won her first Genie Award for Best Leading Actress. She has also worked extensively in France on such films as La Répétition (2001), and is currently in production on the CBC-TV mini series René Lévesque.
Erik Canuel was born in Montreal into a theatrical family who introduced him to the stage at an early age. Canuel tried his hand at movie making and enrolled in the film production faculty at Concordia University. Over a period of three years, Canuel worked on some 82 short films covering all aspects of movie making. During his last year at Concordia, he founded Kino Films, a small production company. In 1992, he left Kino Films to join Cinélande, Montreal's largest television commercials production company. He has since directed over 200 commercials, 50 rock videos and many TV mini-series episodes (Big Wolf on Campus for Fox Network, Fortier for TVA, The Hunger for ShowTime and The Movie Network), and, in 1998, directed the large-format docu-drama Hemingway; A Portrait, the live-action prologue to Alexander Petrov's large-format animated adaptation of The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway's classic tale.
After twelve years at Industrial Light & Magic, Rob Coleman moved divisions within the Lucas Companies to Lucasfilm Animation as their Animation and Development Director. Lucasfilm Animation was created to develop and produce digitally animated television and feature-film projects. Based at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California and in Singapore, their first project includes a computer animatied television series that explores the Star Wars Galaxy. Coleman was Animation Director on Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, a role he has fulfilled on the two previous Star Wars films. He was chosen as one of the most creative people in entertainment when he was added to Entertainment Weekly’s It List in 2002 as their It CG-Creature Crafter for his work on the digital Yoda. Rob received his BFA degree from the film animation program at Concordia University in Montreal in 1987 before working at the National Film Board of Canada and at a number of small animation studios in Toronto. He has been nominated for two Oscars for his work on Attack of the Clones and The Phantom Menace and two British Academy Awards for his work on Men In Black and The Phantom Menace. He has received two MTV Movie Awards and two Saturn Awards for best visual effects on Star Wars.
A graduate of the film programme at Concordia University, Ghyslaine Côté has scripted several short films for children and teens. In 1993, she wrote and directed her first film, the short Aux Voleurs! which won the La Presse award for Best Screenplay at the Stony Brook Festival in Long Island, New York, and received Jutra and Genie award nominations for Best Short Film. In 1999, she directed the children’s feature Pin-Pon, le film, which garnered Jutra nominations for Best Editing and Best Art Direction. Her follow-up, the sensitive drama Elles étaient cin (2004), opened the Montreal World Film Festival, where it was named Most Popular Film. It went on to gross a very respectable $1.9 million at the Quebec box office and was named one of Canada’s Top Ten of 2004 by an independent, national panel of filmmakers, programmers, journalists and industry professionals.
Luc Des Groseillers received a BFA in Film Studies from Concordia University. He is currently attending the AFI (American Film Institute) Film School. His film I Was Here, screened at the 2005 International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal.
Montreal-born Christian Duguay was a graduate of Concordia University's film school, where his student projects earned him numerous awards. Duguay began his career as an editor and director of photography, and for several years, shot news documentaries around the world for four television networks. He returned to Canada and worked on various commercials as a director of photography. In 1996, Duguay directed the much-acclaimed miniseries Million Dollar Babies, a Canadian-American co-production about the Dionne quintuplets, starring Beau Bridges and Kate Nelligan, which aired on CBS. His work on this project garnered him the Best Director Award from the Geminis. Duguay has since earned acclaim as both a feature film and television director in Canada, the United States and abroad. His television miniseries Joan of Arc, which aired on CBS in 1999, was nominated for 12 Emmy Awards and four Golden Globes, including in both instances nominations for Best Miniseries and Best Director. Among his other major directorial film credits are the critically-acclaimed thriller The Assignment (1997), starring Donald Sutherland, Ben Kingsley and Aidan Quinn, and the science fiction film Screamers (1995), starring Peter Weller. When not working on films, Duguay also directs award-winning commercials, including spots for Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Chrysler, General Motors, McDonalds, the Yellow Pages and Labatt Blue Dry.
A graduate of the Film Studies program at Concordia University, Sean Farnel is a programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival Group.
Born in Quebec, self-taught musician Dominic Gagnon has made the following award winning experimental films and videos: Parapluie Bomb City (1996), Beluga Crash Blues (1997), Anchorage (1998), Du Moteur a Explosion (2000), The Matrix (2004) and the documentaries: ISO (2001), Be Loyal and Sincere (2003), and The Making of a Cobra (2004). Since 1996, Gagnon has exhibited live public presentation of his film, music and video works in galleries, festivals and biennial around Europe and North America. As a performance artist, he dragged his camera on stage at Bone 5, Performance International, Bern, Switzerland (2002) and at Festival de Théâtre des Amériques, Montréal (2003). In the summer of 2003 he developped a technique that allows him to produce sound and music from television screens. The first public presentation of this new series took place at CESTA, Czech Republic (2003) and the second at the gallery Play for still and motion picture in Berlin. He recently had a show in Montreal at the Cinémathèque québécoise where he created an installation entitled Total Recall / Réanimétrie. This last work was accompanied by a retrospective of his films and videos.
Vincent Gauthier arrived at Concordia from his hometown of Joliette, Quebec, in the late 1980s. In his second year he entered and won the Cinéaste recherché contest, offered by the NFB’s French animation studio. This allowed him to make his first professional film, Territoire/Borderlines (1992). In 1995, the NFB accepted Gauthier’s project for The Dead Tree, released in 1998. With vampire bats as its main characters, the film evokes the AIDS crisis. He then continued at the film board, working as assistant director to Cilia Sawadogo for Christopher Changes His Name (2000), and as director for Christopher, Please Clean Up Your Room! (2001). Over the years, Gauthier has also taught part-time at Concordia and one year at Cégep du Vieux Montréal.
Laurence Green is a past nominee for the prestigious Chalmers Award, and his autobiographical documentary Reconstruction won eight major film awards at festivals from Ann Arbor to Leipzig. His films present provocative and poetic images from the archival footage and home movies of our collective memories and explore notions of family, personal history and Canadian identity politics. His most ambitious project to date, Thin Ice (NFB) is an adaptation of New York satirist Bruce McCall’s acclaimed sardonic memoir about his formative and miserable childhood in Canada. Green has also directed several episodes for various documentary series on television and writes for a number of film magazines.
Susie Grondin is a producer for Nelvana, a children’s and family entertainment company in Toronto. She has worked on childrens’ shows such as Miss Spider’s Sunnypatch Kids and Rolie Polie Olie, which was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award.
John Hazlett is a Producer-Director who first studied Art and Design at Red Deer College and then at Concordia University in Montreal. After taking some time off to work he returned to university to study filmmaking, graduating from Concordia in 1993. Hazlett's producing and directing credits include Population 420 (1994-PD), The Suburbanators (1995-P), Kitchen Party (1997-P), and Bad Money (1999-PD) .
Before making films, Federico Hidalgo worked as a performer, writer and director in theatre improv, political cabaret, and traditional drama. He studied film production and made several award-winning short films at Concordia University, where he later taught courses in film history. His films Lotería (1997) and Gesture (1999) were shot in Mexico City with Toronto-based filmmaker Roberto Ariganello. A Silent Love is his first feature film.
Born in Norway, Torill Kove studied animation at Concordia University in Montreal, where she won the Kodak Award for her quirky films All you can eat, Fallen Angel, and Squash and Stretch. She has worked in a variety of roles on several NFB productions, and as a scriptwriter for Studio Magica in Oslo. My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts, her first professional film, was nominated for an Academy Award.
David Lemieux, Archivist for the Grateful Dead, received a BFA in Film Studies from Concordia in 1997. Lemieux, who previously worked at the National Archives of Canada and the British Columbia Archives, is one of only two holders of the key to the revered Grateful Dead Vault, which contains close to 17,000 audio- and videotapes of the band’s performances, dating back to 1965.
Pascal Maeder studied film production at Concordia University in the eighties. In the nineties, along with the feature film Motel, which he produced and directed, Maeder produced six original plays with Dummies Theatre, a company that he co-founded in 1992. In 1999, he produced the film, Between the Moon and Montevideo, on location in Havana. In 2000, he founded ATOPIA through which he produced SPIT: Squeegee Punks In Traffic (2001); El Ring (2002); A Silent Love (2003) and Jimmywork (2004).
Catherine Martin was born in Hull, Québec and received her BFA from Concordia University with a major in film and a minor in photography. She has written, directed and produced various short and medium length films, in both the fiction and documentary genres, including: Odile ou réminiscences d'un voyage (1985), Nuits d'Afrique (1990), Les Fins de semaine (1995) and Les Dames du 9e (1998). Her debut feature film Mariages (2001) screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, was voted one of Canada's Top Ten films in 2001 and was nominated for a Genie and three Jutra awards. Her latest film Océan (2002) also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and was voted one of Canada's Top Ten films in 2002.
George Mihalka is one of Canada’s most prolific directors, working in both English and French-language productions. His first feature, My Bloody Valentine, was directed for Paramount studios, and was entered in the Fantastic Film Festival in Avoriaz, France in 1981 and quickly became a cult classic. Six years later, Mihalka won the Prix du Public at the same festival for his film The Blue Man. His 1993 film, La Florida, brought him a Genie Award nomination for Best Direction and went on to win the Golden Reel Award as the top box-office grossing film of the year. Mihalka also directed L’Homme Ideale, which also surpassed the one million dollar mark at the box office. His long list of television credits includes such films as Dr. Lucille: The Lucille Teasdale Story, which won the Gemini Award for Best Film and for which he was nominated for Best Direction; Jack Higgins’ Thunder Point and Windsor Protocol; and Le Chemin de Damas, for which he was nominated for a Gemeaux. Mihalka also has the distinction of directing the first 19 hours of the hit Quebec series Scoop, and the entire third season of Omerta, the province’s top-rated drama. He was nominated for three Gemeaux Awards for Best Direction for both series. He also directed most of the episodes for Da Vinci's Inquest in 2002 and 2003.
Frédéric Moffet was born in Montreal. He graduated from Concordia University with a BFA in filmmaking. He received a full scholarship to complete a MFA in video at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he presently teaches digital video production. He has also worked as a coordinator and curator for Vidéographe, an artist run media center and video distribution house in Montréal. His work deals with transformation, desire and the “out of control body.” Recent projects include: Hard Fat (2002), More is More (2002), 24xCaprices (2001), An Objective Measure of Arousal (2001), and Five O’clock Shadow (1998). His videos and films have been shown in festivals and galleries internationally, including at VideoEx (Zurich), Para/Site and Microwave (Hong Kong), Art in General (New York), BBC Short Film Festival (Londres), Frameline (San Francisco), The New Festival (New York) et le Festival Nouveau Cinema Nouveau Media (Montréal).
Montreal-based independent filmmaker Jean François Monette has produced and directed several award winning films. His work has been broadcast on PBS National, The Discovery Channel, Life Network, RDI and the History Channel as well as in major film festivals worldwide. His documentary work includes Anatomy of Desire, a film dealing with biodeterminism and homosexuality; Rene Richard: Painter of the North, a biography about acclaimed Quebecois painter Rene Richard; Out in the City, a docu-vérité series about gay life in Montreal, and Where Lies the Homo?, an experimental documentary about gay representation, awarded the Best Lesbian and Gay Film Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1999. Take-Out (2000), a short fiction dealing with a young man's sexual awakening, won the Telefilm Canada award at the Rendez-Vous du Cinema Quebecois. Jean-François is currently developing his first feature.
Dan Mucha is a writer and filmmaker who served as the video archivist for the Austin Film Society from 1996-2002, following film studies at Ohio State University and Concordia University in Montreal. He acted as Consulting Producer for the Criterion DVD release of Slacker, and has previously taught Part One of "True to Life: The Films of Louis Malle" at Facets Film School in addition to "The British New Wave: From Angry Young Men to Swinging London."
An Armenian-Canadian, Arto Paragamian studied illustration and design before being accepted into Concordia University's film program. In 1987, he won the Canadian Student Film Festival's Norman McLaren Award for best movie, The Fish Story, and then caused a stir in 1988 by taking the prize again for Across the Street. He is the only person to have won the award two years in a row. Between Because Why and his latest feature, Two Thousand and None Paragamian joined Denis Villeneuve, Manon Briand, Andre Turpin, Jennifer Alleyn and Marie-Julie Dallaire on producer Roger Frappier's anthology project, Cosmos.
John Pozer began his career at the age of ten as understudy to the New York lead in the touring musical production of Oliver! He went on to star in Oliver! and Peter Pan, as well as numerous other roles in theatre and television productions in Vancouver and Ottawa. After receiving the E.V. Young Acting Award, he attended the University of British Columbia and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre and Film. He earned the UBC Film Society Award and was a finalist in the BC Festival of the Arts; however his short horror film, 156 & Counting, was banned from public screening by the judges who claimed it was “too disturbing.” Moving to Montreal, Pozer attended Concordia University and graduated with a MFA in Cinema. His first feature film, The Grocer's Wife, which he wrote, directed, edited, and produced, was invited to the Cannes Film Festival as opening film for the International Critic’s Week and went on to win the Prix Georges Sadoul Award for Best First Film. In Canada, Pozer was awarded the inaugural Claude Jutra Award by the Academy of Cinema and Television for Best Direction of a First Feature. He premiered his second feature, The Michelle Apartments, at the Toronto Festival of Festivals. Pozer also executive produced and edited the independent feature, Kissed, which was selected for the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes in 1997. The film garnered eight Genie nominations and was a box-office success, both domestically and internationally. Turning his hand to digital technology, Pozer went on to direct hours of computer animation for Mainframe Entertainment, reaching audiences in over sixty countries with his episodes of Beast Wars and Transformers. Pozer has also directed a slate of episodic television, including Disney’s So Weird, CTV’s Cold Squad, CBC’s These Arms of Mine, MTV’s 2Gether, and Sausage Factory. He won a Leo Award for Best Director of a Comedy for his work on the latter in 2002. In addition to teaching university film courses, Pozer also mentors developing filmmakers. His production company, Medusa Films, is currently developing a slate of feature screenplays.
John Price is an independent filmmaker who has produced experimental documentaries, dance and diary films since 1984. John received an MFA from Concordia University (1996) and grants from The National Film Board, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council. In addition to festival screenings across North America and Europe, he has produced film projections for opera and dance, and has instructed numerous workshops in alternative film production, hand-processing and optical printing.
Tico Romao graduated with a BFA in Film Studies from Concordia University. He received his PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. He currently teaches in the School of Arts, Media and Design at the University of Gloucestershire.
Lynne Stopkewich began making Super 8 movies at the age of thirteen, obtained her BFA in film from Concordia University and made two short films before entering the largely self-directed graduate film programme at the University of British Columbia. She split her time between her ongoing studies and work in the film industry; her efforts as production designer on The Grocer’s Wife (1991) – a film directed by her fellow UBC grad student John Pozer that was a hit at both the Festival de Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival – led to production designer roles on other films, including Sandy Wilson's Harmony Cats (1993), which earned her a Genie Award nomination. In 1994, Stopkewich began work on her thesis film, an adaptation of Barbara Gowdy’s short story "We So Seldom Look on Love." The $80,000, self-financed Kissed debuted at the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival; it was the most talked about film at the Festival, became the buzz film at the Sundance Film Festival and screened in the Director’s Fortnight programme at the Festival de Cannes. It went on to enjoy significant commercial success and worldwide theatrical release and launched the careers of both Stopkewich and the film’s star, Molly Parker (both were signed by the William Morris talent agency). Stopkewich followed Kissed with Suspicious River (2000), starring Parker as a young woman in a small town who prostitutes herself at the motel where she works. She then directed Lilith on Top (2001), a raucous documentary chronicling the final year of Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair concert tour. She currently directs for television.
Born in Hull, in 1965, André Turpin has been living in Montreal since his student days, a time when he dreamt about pursuing his fascination with astro and nuclear physics, both of which he still follows closely “in a very amateur way.” A seriously experimental risk-taking director of photography Turpin shot Denis Villeneuve's two features Maelstrom (2000) and Un 32 Aout sur terre (1998). Quebec's current auteur-du-chou also directed a segment for Roger Frappier's 1996 anthology film, Cosmos. Turpin's other cinematography credits include Jean-Philippe Duval's Matron et mar (1999) Arto Paragamian's Because Why (1993) and Marc Andre Former's surrealistic autobiographical La Comtesse in Baton Rouge (1995). Produced by the indie company Jeux d'Ombres, Turpin's first try at a feature, Zigrail, tracks a fictional Andre, played by another Andre (Charlebois), as he races around Europe in search of his pregnant girlfriend and ultimately himself. Une Crabe dans la tete is Turpin’s second feature.
While at Concordia, Philippe Vaucher received the Atypic Inc. Award for The Colours of Mourning (1997) and the Dean’s Award for The Maskarade (1998). In his third year, he entered and won the NFB’s Cinéaste recherché contest, allowing him to make Chasse papillon/The Song-Catcher (2001), about an old man obsessed by the memory of the woman he once loved. Vaucher now does freelance illustrations, storyboarding (such as for live-action films) and teaching (including a stint at Concordia). He recently began working on a new film at the NFB, Rave, but the project is currently on hold. Such problems are not uncommon, so Vaucher has teamed up with four other animators - all Concordia alumni - to create the Montreal Animation Collective. Their objective is to help members make their own films.
Peter Wellington is an accomplished writer and director whose first feature, Joe's So Mean To Josephine, won the Claude Jutra Award for Best Feature Film at the 1996 Genie Awards and was an audience favorite at the Sundance International Film Festival. Luck, starring Sarah Polley and Luke Kirby, is his second feature. For television, Wellington directed the Movie Network's six-part television series Slings and Arrows (2003), starring Paul Gross. He has also directed episodes of Canadian series such as Traders, The City, Blue Murder and Exhibit A. Wellington is currently directing the six-part series, Final Curtain for Rhombus productions.
Steven Woloshen was born in Montreal in 1960. After high school he entered Vanier College, which proved to be an ideal environment to study alternative expressions with Super-8 film and video. In 1980, he was admitted to Concordia University and specialized in 16mm independent film techniques. Woloshen has created many animated and experimental film projects and has been invited to show his work at numerous festivals, screenings and galleries in his country and around the globe. In addition, he has been commissioned to create short animated pieces for other filmmakers, artists and events.
Information for International Students
Concordia University welcomes students from more than 100 different countries, who make up about 7 per cent of our total 30,000 full- and part-time students. For more information, visit Concordia’s Prospective International Student Section: http://www3.concordia.ca/info/students/prospective/international/
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Advisory Board
Michel Golitzinsky
Kodak
President, Advisory Board
Sylvain Archambault
Agence Omada
Paul Bellerose
Vision Globale
Daniel Bissonnette
Montreal Film & TV Commission
Pascal Blais
Pascal Blais Studio
Mel Hoppenheim
Mel's Cite du Cinema
John V. Kennedy
Bruce Mallen
Former Director, DeSantis Center for the Study of the Motion Picture Industry
René Malo
Laurem Productions
Lucie Marchand
Consultant
Brian Peterson
Autodesk
Yolande Racine
Cinémathèque québécoise
Denise Robert
Cinémaginaire
Michel Trudel
Locations Michel Trudel
Philip Turp
Ubisoft
Joan Vogelesang
Toon Boom
last updated October 28, 2009
Kodak
President, Advisory Board
Sylvain Archambault
Agence Omada
Paul Bellerose
Vision Globale
Daniel Bissonnette
Montreal Film & TV Commission
Pascal Blais
Pascal Blais Studio
Mel Hoppenheim
Mel's Cite du Cinema
John V. Kennedy
Bruce Mallen
Former Director, DeSantis Center for the Study of the Motion Picture Industry
René Malo
Laurem Productions
Lucie Marchand
Consultant
Brian Peterson
Autodesk
Yolande Racine
Cinémathèque québécoise
Denise Robert
Cinémaginaire
Michel Trudel
Locations Michel Trudel
Philip Turp
Ubisoft
Joan Vogelesang
Toon Boom
last updated October 28, 2009
Supporters and Donors
The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema acknowledges the invaluable support of members of the Montreal community for their collaboration and their contributions of materials, services, awards and scholarships. Further, we are grateful for the support provided to Cinema students through the Concordia University Awards, Prizes and Scholarships programmes.
SUPPORTERS AND DONORS
Astral Media Inc.
Banque Nationale du Canada, Groupe cinéma et télévision
Alvin Segal Family Foundation
Bloomfield & Schachter Families / Eldee Foundation
Cinélande
Fondation René Malo
Galafilm
Gluskin Sheff & Associates
Incendo Productions
Jet Films
Kodak Canada
La Fabrique d'images
Locations Michel Trudel Inc.
Mel Hoppenheim
Muse Entertainment Entr.
Nathan Steinberg Family Foundation
NBC Universal
Power Corporation of Canada
Reitmans Canada Limited
Richard J. Renaud
Sandra and Leo Kolber
Technicolor
Transfilms
Vision Globale
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY AWARDS, PRIZES AND SCHOLARSHIPS
Each year the Mel Hoppenheim offers awards and scholarships, which are donated by Mel Hoppenheim and various individuals (including faculty and staff), companies, production facilities, and foundations. Scholarships and awards are given at the end of the academic year to recognize students' scholastic and artistic achievement. Recipients are selected by faculty juries. The awards are either cash or services from various production facilities. Scholarships are offered as tuition waivers.
André Bazin / George Sadoul Film Award
Autodesk
Concordia University Stop-Motion Animation Award
Concordia University Entrance Bursaries and Scholarships
Concordia University In-Course Bursaries and Scholarships
Don Arioli Award
Emru Townsend Award
Faculty Development Fund Scholarships
Film Studies Graduate Recognition Award
Fondation de Sève Awards and Scholarships
Frank Cole Award
Fuji Awards
Full Circle Award
Heather Walker Memorial Scholarship
Jean-François Bourassa Memorial Bursary
Kodak Awards
Le prix de la Cinémathèque québécoise pour l’Excellence en cinema d’animation
Lotte Eisner Prize
Matthew Czerny Award
Mel Hoppenheim Award
Norman McLaren Award
Philip Russell George Award
Susan Schouten Documentary Film Award
Sean Wall Scholarship
The Carol and Bruce Mallen Award for Cinema Entrepreneurship
Vidéographe Productions Awards
William K. Everson Award
Zlatko Grgic Award
SUPPORTERS AND DONORS
Astral Media Inc.
Banque Nationale du Canada, Groupe cinéma et télévision
Alvin Segal Family Foundation
Bloomfield & Schachter Families / Eldee Foundation
Cinélande
Fondation René Malo
Galafilm
Gluskin Sheff & Associates
Incendo Productions
Jet Films
Kodak Canada
La Fabrique d'images
Locations Michel Trudel Inc.
Mel Hoppenheim
Muse Entertainment Entr.
Nathan Steinberg Family Foundation
NBC Universal
Power Corporation of Canada
Reitmans Canada Limited
Richard J. Renaud
Sandra and Leo Kolber
Technicolor
Transfilms
Vision Globale
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY AWARDS, PRIZES AND SCHOLARSHIPS
Each year the Mel Hoppenheim offers awards and scholarships, which are donated by Mel Hoppenheim and various individuals (including faculty and staff), companies, production facilities, and foundations. Scholarships and awards are given at the end of the academic year to recognize students' scholastic and artistic achievement. Recipients are selected by faculty juries. The awards are either cash or services from various production facilities. Scholarships are offered as tuition waivers.
André Bazin / George Sadoul Film Award
Autodesk
Concordia University Stop-Motion Animation Award
Concordia University Entrance Bursaries and Scholarships
Concordia University In-Course Bursaries and Scholarships
Don Arioli Award
Emru Townsend Award
Faculty Development Fund Scholarships
Film Studies Graduate Recognition Award
Fondation de Sève Awards and Scholarships
Frank Cole Award
Fuji Awards
Full Circle Award
Heather Walker Memorial Scholarship
Jean-François Bourassa Memorial Bursary
Kodak Awards
Le prix de la Cinémathèque québécoise pour l’Excellence en cinema d’animation
Lotte Eisner Prize
Matthew Czerny Award
Mel Hoppenheim Award
Norman McLaren Award
Philip Russell George Award
Susan Schouten Documentary Film Award
Sean Wall Scholarship
The Carol and Bruce Mallen Award for Cinema Entrepreneurship
Vidéographe Productions Awards
William K. Everson Award
Zlatko Grgic Award