Mark Achbar | |
|---|---|
| Born | Canadian |
| Occupation(s) | film director, film producer |
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Mark Achbar (born in Ottawa in 1955 [1] ) is a Canadian filmmaker, best known for The Corporation (2003), Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1994), and as an Executive Producer on over a dozen feature documentaries.
Achbar is a graduate of Syracuse University's Fine Arts Film Program. He interned in Hollywood on the children's TV programme Bill Daily's Hocus Pocus Gang, followed by three-years in Toronto with Sunrise Films on its documentary series Spread your Wings and briefly on the CBC/Disney series Danger Bay . He subsequently worked with his friend, director/writer Robert Boyd, and received a Gemini nomination for Best Writer on The Canadian Conspiracy , a cultural/political satire for CBC and HBO's Comedy Experiments hosted by Martin Mull, and featuring Canadian-born stars: Eugene Levy, Lorne Greene, Leslie Nelson, William Shatner, Morley Safer, Howie Mandel, Peter Jennings, John Candy, Dave Thomas, Margot Kidder, and Anne Murray. The fake documentary chronicled Canada’s secret takeover of the United States. The program won a Gemini for Best Entertainment Special and was nominated for an International Emmy.
Achbar moved into independent media, working in many capacities on films, videos, and books, notably Peter Watkins' epic 14.5 hr documentary The Journey, and the book At Work In The Fields of The Bomb, with photojournalist Robert Del Tredici. With Peter Wintonick, Achbar co-directed and co-produced Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) , which was, until the release of The Corporation Canada's all-time, top-grossing feature documentary. Achbar’s companion book to the film hit the national best-seller list in Canada.
Achbar collaborated with Jennifer Abbott to create Two Brides and a Scalpel: Diary of a Lesbian Marriage, a video diary by the couple who became known as Canada's first legally married same-sex couple. This video diary was filmed by Georgina Scott, a transsexual heavy equipment operator who legally married Linda Fraser, a lesbian woman, and then underwent male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. The film received festival invitations from around the world and was broadcast in Canada on Pridevision and the Knowledge Network.
In 1997, Achbar initiated a documentary film project titled The Corporation with author and University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan. Bakan wrote the film and book, while Achbar co-directed, produced and executive-produced the film, with Jennifer Abbott joining the team as co-director and editor in 2000. The Corporation was released theatrically in 2004 and stands as the all-time, top-grossing feature documentary ever made in Canada. During its 5-year existence, Encore+, a Youtube portal for "classic" Canadian films and TV shows (2017-2022), accumulated over 8,263,108 views of the film, its top-ranked title out of 2,500+ titles. Manufacturing Consent was 2nd ranked, with over 7,380,819 views, an indication of the enduring relevance of the issues the film explores.
Telefilm, a Canadian film and television financing agency, had a generous incentive program for producers of successful theatrical films. Until 2004, those films were exclusively dramas. The Corporation changed that. For the first time, a documentary’s box office gross qualified it for a “performance envelope” – a reserve fund for the top Canadian producers whose films gross over $1m. A total of $2.38m was awarded to Achbar's company, Invisible Hand Productions Inc—diminished from the $4.5m the program would have awarded a dramatic production—which he, in collaboration with co-EP Betsy Carson, invested into ten Canadian feature documentaries: five in development and five in production; $270,000 of development financing and a further $5.85m of production financing was locked in for those productions. The completed, theatrically-released productions which benefited from this funding are: Velcrow Ripper's Fierce Light, When Spirit Meets Action]; Denis Delestrac's Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space , Kevin McMahon's Waterlife , Frederick Gertten's Bananas: Poison in a Banana Republic; Mathieu Roy's and Harold Crooks' Surviving Progress; and Oliver Hockenhull's Neurons to Nirvana: Understanding Psychedelic Medicine.
In 2022, Achbar helped shoot, and is an Executive Producer on DOSED2-The Trip Of A Lifetime
Achbar continues his film career as an Executive Producer of feature documentary films and the occasional mockumentary. He has contributed his videography skills to two animal rights videos, Penny's Story and Meat The Victims: Excelsior Farms.
Achbar is co-founder, with Sarah Butterfield, of Speakables, a Vancouver technology startup.
Achbar was a Seed Investor in Humanitas Smart Planet Systems, Quantified Citizen, Portable Electric, and Versance.ai
Director and Producer:
Executive Producer with Betsy Carson:
Executive Producer
Awards for "The Canadian Conspiracy"
Awards for "The Corporation"
Awards for Manufacturing Consent
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media is a 1992 documentary film that explores the political life and ideas of linguist, intellectual, and political activist Noam Chomsky. Canadian filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick expand the analysis of political economy and mass media presented in Manufacturing Consent, a 1988 book Chomsky wrote with Edward S. Herman.
The National Film Board of Canada is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.
The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan and filmmaker Harold Crooks, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern corporation. Bakan wrote the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power during the filming of the documentary.
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