Mireille Dansereau

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Mireille Dansereau
Born (1943-12-19) 19 December 1943 (age 79)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Occupation(s) Film director
Screenwriter
Years active 1967 - Present

Mireille Dansereau (born December 19, 1943) is a Canadian director and screenwriter who is known for "emulating the style and approach of her aesthetic role model, John Cassavetes". [1] She received several accolades throughout her film career which spans over 50 years.

Contents

Biography

Mireille Dansereau was a dancer for 15 years before turning to filmmaking. After finishing her studies at the University of Montreal, she made her first film, a short entitled Moi, un jour... for Expo 67. The film was well received and enabled her to move to London, England to attend the Royal College of Art. She obtained her master's degree in Film and Television and made another short film, Compromise, which won first prize at the 1969 Great Britain Student Film Festival. Dansereau worked a variety of jobs - researcher, script assistant, sound recorder - before returning to Quebec. There, she co-founded L’Association Coopérative des Productions Audio-visuelles (ACPAV) and became the first woman in Quebec to direct a fiction feature film in the private sector; the film, La vie rêvée (1971) was produced by the ACPAV and became a landmark that received a wide theatrical release and national critical acclaim. [2]

Dream Life was the first privately produced feature film in Canada to be directed by a woman. [3]

She joined the NFB following her success and directed 2 feature documentaries for the En tant que femmes Series, J'me marie, j'me marie pas (1973) and Famille et variations (1977). She returned to the private sector to direct her next fiction feature, L'Arrache-Coeur (1979), a bleak, and penetrating examination of a marriage in crisis which earned Dansereau a Genie Award for Best Screenplay nomination, and Le Sourd dans la ville (1987), a dark, disturbing and experimental adaptation of Marie-Claire Blais's novel centered on a rooming house. [4]

In 2022, she was named the winner of the Prix Albert-Tessier for lifetime achievement in the film industry. [5]

Filmography

Fiction

Documentaries

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References

  1. "Canadian Film Encyclopedia - Mireille Dansereau". Archived from the original on 2012-07-15.
  2. "Mireille Dansereau - The Canadian Encyclopedia". Archived from the original on June 6, 2013.
  3. Marshall 2001, p. 220.
  4. "NFB Artisans - Mireille Dansereau".[ permanent dead link ]
  5. Charles-Henri Ramond, "Mireille Dansereau : Prix Albert-Tessier 2022". Films du Québec, December 5, 2022.

Works cited