Terence Macartney-Filgate
| Terence Macartney-Filgate | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 6, 1924 England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation |
Film director Cinematographer Film producer |
| Years active | 1954 - 2007 |
Terence Macartney-Filgate OC (born August 6, 1924 in England, United Kingdom) is a British-Canadian film director who has directed, written, produced or shot more than 100 films in a career spanning more than 50 years.
Born in England, Macartney-Filgate was 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 (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 and ultimately joined the Royal Air Force 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, in 1946, and held down a succession of jobs before immigrating to Canada.
Macartney-Filgate, who had long admired the work of 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 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.
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