Lois Siegel (born 1946) is an American-born Canadian film director and photographer. [1] She is most noted for her 1989 short documentary film Stunt People , [2] and her 1995 feature documentary Baseball Girls . [3]
Born in Wisconsin, [4] Siegel attended Ohio University, where she was a sportswriter for the student newspaper. [3] After graduating with a master's degree in English, she moved to Montreal in 1970 to study French at McGill University. [1] After completing her studies, she decided to stay in Canada, becoming a Canadian citizen and working in various roles in film, including assistant camera credits on the films East End Hustle , The Rubber Gun and Happiness Is Loving Your Teacher . [4]
Her first film for the NFB was 1979's Stunt Family, part of the Canada Vignettes series. [4]
In 1983 she released the experimental feature film A 20th Century Chocolate Cake . [5] She followed up in 1988 with Strangers in Town, a mid-length documentary film about people with albinism.
In this era she also had numerous credits as a casting director, including on the films Train of Dreams , Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller , Princes in Exile and Vincent and Me . [6]
Stunt People, released in 1989, was a longer film about the same family of stunt performers she had profiled in Stunt Family. [2] It was the winner of the Genie Award for Best Short Documentary at the 11th Genie Awards in 1990, [7]
She followed up in 1993 with Lip Gloss, a documentary film about the drag scene in Montreal whose participants included Armand Larrivée, Derek McKinnon and Guilda. [8] Baseball Girls, a film about the history of women's baseball, followed in 1995. [3]
She has also taught film studies courses at John Abbott College and the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. [1]
Throughout her career, Siegel was also a photographer, regularly photographing both film sets and jazz, blues and rock concerts. [9] She did this mainly as a hobby at first, but after Baseball Girls she began to exhibit her photography in gallery shows. [9]
She later moved to Ottawa, where she taught video production at the University of Ottawa, [10] and continued to work as a freelance photographer for media, arts organizations and community groups in the city. [11] She was also the writer of "A Man for All Stages", a documentary about actor Christopher Plummer, for the CBC Television biographical documentary series Life and Times . [11]