Les Harris is a Canadian television producer and filmmaker.
Harris co-founded Canamedia Productions with his wife & executive producer, Jane Harris in 1979. He was also the co-founder of the YTV children's cable television network in Canada. Apart from founding Canamedia he also designed and had built a sports car whilst at Sheffield University called a Harmoke. tele [1] By the time of its acquisition by Distribution Access in 2010, the production company had built up a factually-based catalog of more than 1500 titles. [1]
“International Dragging In Olde England”. A half hour 16mm documentary written, directed and edited by Les Harris on early drag car racing that aired on London Weekend Television in the UK. “Chabot Solo”. Pts1,2&3. Three one hour 16mm documentaries on the history of flight told through the eyes of the world’s oldest aviator at the time of filming, Englishman Charles Chabot. Pt. 1 starts in 1914 with Chabot learning in a Maurice Farnham Longhorn & then a Bleriot and ends with him flying Bristol Fighters & ending up alive but in hospital. Pt2 starts in 1918 and ends in 1939 & includes Chabot failing to win the UK to Australia air race & failing to convince P&O that mail could go by air. Pt 3 starts in 1939 with Chabot being sent to South Africa to train pilots and then to India where he discovered why all our Mosquitoes were crashing. It ends with Chabot illegally piloting Concorde at Mach 2.3 on a test flight from Gander, Newfoundland to Heathrow. The three 16mm one hour films were researched, written, directed, produced and edited by Les Harris whilst he was in London England before he moved to Toronto, Canada. They are the first examples of the technique he used throughout his directing career that use no narration and have the subject always look right into the camera lens. The 3 films were all broadcast by BBC TV throughout the UK. They are currently stored at the Museum of Aviation in Ottawa, Canada.
Other films for TV directed, written, produced and edited made by Harris include:
FRONTIER FOOTLIGHTS, a one hour documentary about the Sudbury Theatre company's touring group who were the first to ever venture into the high arctic to perform live theatre to first nation school kids. First aired on TV Ontario.
PADRE PABLO: FIGHTER FOR JUSTICE. A tv one hour doc on Father Harvey Steele, a Canadian Scarboro Foreign Missionary Roman Catholic priest who started the co-op movement in Latin America. Filmed in Panama & the Dominican Republic. Aired on TVO and CBCTV. BY THE SEAT OF THEIR PANTS. A one hour documentary about the bush pilots of Canada's arctic. Includes the only in depth interview with Marten Hartwell, the pilot who ate the killed British nurse, in order to survive. Harris also produced & was the supervising editor of THREADS OF HOPE, directed by his assistant, Andrew Johnson. Other dramas produced by Harris were: THE KING OF FRIDAY NIGHT, a TV musical adaption commissioned by CBC TV of John Gray's play "Rock'nRoll". It won 7 international awards including a Rockie for best film. ADDERLY, a one hour TV drama series for CBS TV daytime, for which he was the originating producer, and starred Winston Reckert . TAKE OFF, a 26 part half hour children's educational drama, which he produced with Hilary Jones-Farrow in Vancouver & Victoria. B.C.
The Iranian hostage crisis was a diplomatic standoff between Iran and the United States. Fifty-three American diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, including Hossein Dehghan, Mohammad Ali Jafari and Mohammad Bagheri, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took them as hostages. The hostages were held for 444 days, from November 4, 1979 to their release on January 20, 1981. The crisis is considered a pivotal episode in the history of Iran–United States relations.
Operation Eagle Claw was a failed operation by the United States Armed Forces ordered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter to attempt the rescue of 53 embassy staff held captive at the Embassy of the United States, Tehran on 24 April 1980.
The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy on Prince's Gate in South Kensington, London. The gunmen, Iranian Arabs campaigning for sovereignty of Khuzestan Province, took 26 people hostage, including embassy staff, several visitors, and a police officer who had been guarding the embassy. They demanded the release of prisoners in Khuzestan and their own safe passage out of the United Kingdom. The British government quickly decided that safe passage would not be granted and a siege ensued. Subsequently, police negotiators secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions, such as the broadcasting of the hostage-takers' demands on British television.
Kenneth Douglas Taylor was a Canadian diplomat, educator and businessman, best known for his role in the 1979 covert operation called the "Canadian Caper" when he was the Canadian ambassador to Iran. With the cooperation of the American Central Intelligence Agency, Taylor helped six Americans escape from Iran during the Iran hostage crisis by procuring Canadian passports for the Americans to deceive the Iranian Revolutionary guard by posing as a Canadian film crew scouting locations. Had the IRG known, every Canadian in the embassy would have been executed. Before the escape, the six Americans spent several weeks hiding in the homes of Taylor and another Canadian diplomat, John Sheardown.
Irwin Allen was an American film and television producer and director, known for his work in science fiction, then later as the "Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. His most successful productions were The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). He also created and produced the popular 1960s science-fiction television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.
Robin Spry was a Canadian film director, producer and writer. He was perhaps best known for his documentary films Action: The October Crisis of 1970 and Reaction: A Portrait of a Society in Crisis about Quebec's October Crisis. His 1970 film Prologue won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary.
Christopher John Wiggins was an English-born Canadian actor.
Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam is a non-fiction work written by Mark Bowden.
The "Canadian Caper" was the joint covert rescue by the Canadian government and the CIA of six American diplomats who had evaded capture during the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979, after the Iranian Revolution, when Islamist students took most of the American embassy personnel hostage, demanding the return of the US-backed Shah for trial.
John Chambers was an American make-up artist and prosthetic makeup expert in both television and film. He received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1968. He is best known for creating the pointed ears of Spock in the television series Star Trek (1966), and for his groundbreaking prosthetic make-up work on the Planet of the Apes film franchise.
Nikolai Müllerschön is a German film Writer/Director.
Michel Brault, OQ was a Canadian cinematographer, cameraman, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He was a leading figure of Direct Cinema, characteristic of the French branch of the National Film Board of Canada in the 1960s. Brault was a pioneer of the hand-held camera aesthetic.
Kenneth Steven Gord is a Canadian film and television producer.
Argo is a 2012 American biographical historical drama thriller film directed, produced by, and starring Ben Affleck. The screenplay, written by Chris Terrio, was adapted from the 1999 memoir The Master of Disguise by U.S. C.I.A. operative Tony Mendez and the 2007 Wired article "The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran" written by Joshuah Bearman and edited by Nicholas Thompson. The film deals with the "Canadian Caper", in which Mendez led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, under the guise of filming a science-fiction film during the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis.
Our Man in Tehran is a 2013 Canadian documentary film, profiling the role of Kenneth D. Taylor, Canada's ambassador to Iran in the 1970s, in helping six American hostages escape from Iran during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980 by engineering the Canadian Caper.
Michael Shenstone was a Canadian diplomat.
John Vernon Sheardown was a Canadian diplomat who played a leading role in the "Canadian Caper". He and his wife Zena personally sheltered Americans hiding in Iran during the Iran hostage crisis.
Escape from Iran: The Canadian Caper is a Canadian-American television film from 1981 about the "Canadian Caper" during the Iranian Revolution and hostage crises.
Kenneth L. Kraus is a former United States Marine who was the first American taken hostage by Iranian militants prior to the Iran hostage crisis.
Victor L. Tomseth is a former American diplomat and U.S. Ambassador (1993–1996) to Laos. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Tehran, Iran and was among the Americans taken hostage by the Iranians from 1979 to 1981.