Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail

Last updated
Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail
Directed by Don Owen
Written byDon Owen
Gerald Taaffe
Produced by Julian Biggs
Starring Jackie Burroughs
Michèle Chicoine
Cinematography Jean-Claude Labrecque
Edited byBarrie Howells
John Knight (sound)
Music by Malca Gillson (editing)
Production
company
Release date
  • 1966 (1966)
Running time
48 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail is a 1966 Canadian drama film, directed by Don Owen for the National Film Board of Canada. [1] [2]

Contents

The film centres on Donna (Michèle Chicoine) and Gail (Jackie Burroughs), two young women who work together at a dress factory and live together as roommates, tracing the evolution and decline of their friendship in a documentary-style format. [1] It shows the currents that brought them together and the facets of their natures that first made them seem compatible but eventually drove them apart. Their story reflects, to a degree, the situation of anyone who has ever shared the life of another person.

The film makes use of the then-novel device of an unreliable narrator, [1] ultimately revealing that the film is much more about the narrator's skewed perceptions of the women's relationship than it is about the women themselves. [3] It was inspired in part by the contemporaneous films of Jean-Luc Godard. [1]

The characters of Donna and Gail recurred in Owen's 1967 feature film The Ernie Game . [4] Prior to the release of The Ernie Game, in which Donna and Gail were involved in a love triangle with Alexis Kanner's Ernie, some critics who had seen only Notes perceived Donna and Gail as being in a quasi-lesbian relationship; however, Owen demurred on this perception by saying "I really don't know, because, well, what is a lesbian relationship?" [5]

Awards

Related Research Articles

Roman Kroitor was a Canadian filmmaker who was known as a pioneer of Cinéma vérité, as the co-founder of IMAX, and as the creator of the Sandde hand-drawn stereoscopic 3D animation system. He was also the original inspiration for The Force. His prodigious output garnered numerous awards, including two BAFTA Awards, three Cannes Film Festival awards, and two Oscar nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Lipsett</span> Canadian collage filmmaker

Arthur Lipsett was a Canadian filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada. His short, avant-garde collage films, which he described as "neither underground nor conventional”, contain elements of narrative, documentary, experimental collage, and visual essay. His first film, Very Nice, Very Nice, was nominated for an Academy Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ryan Larkin</span> Canadian animator, artist, and sculptor

Ryan Larkin was a Canadian animator, artist, and sculptor who rose to fame with the psychedelic Oscar-nominated short Walking (1968) and the acclaimed Street Musique (1972). He was the subject of the Oscar-winning film Ryan.

The Montreal International Film Festival was an annual Canadian film festival, which took place in Montreal, Quebec from 1960 to 1967.

Don Owen was a Canadian film director, writer and producer who spent most of his career with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). His films Nobody Waved Good-bye and The Ernie Game are regarded as two of the most significant English Canadian films of the 1960s.

Colin Archibald Low was a Canadian animation and documentary filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was known as a pioneer, one of Canada's most important filmmakers, and was regularly referred to as "the gentleman genius". His numerous honors include five BAFTA awards, eight Cannes Film Festival awards, and six Academy Award nominations.

<i>Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives</i> 1992 Canadian documentary film directed by Lynne Fernie

Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is a 1992 Canadian hybrid drama-documentary film about Canadian lesbians navigating their sexuality while homosexuality was still criminalized. Interviews with lesbian elders are juxtaposed with a fictional story, shot in fifties melodrama style, of a small-town girl's first night with another woman. It also inserts covers of lesbian pulp fiction. The film presents the stories of lesbians whose desire for community led them on a search for the few public beer parlours or bars that would tolerate openly queer women in the 1950s and 60s in Canada. It was written and directed by Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman and featured author Ann Bannon. It premiered at the 1992 Toronto Festival of Festivals and was released in the United States on 4 August 1993. It was produced by Studio D, the women's studio of the National Film Board of Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grant Munro (filmmaker)</span> Canadian animator, filmmaker and actor

Grant Munro LL. D. was a Canadian animator, filmmaker and actor. In 1952, he co-starred with Jean-Paul Ladouceur in Norman McLaren's Neighbours. His film, Christmas Cracker, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1965.

Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen is a 1965 National Film Board of Canada documentary about Leonard Cohen, co-directed by Don Owen and Donald Brittain, written by Brittain and produced by John Kemeny.

<i>Blake</i> (film) 1969 Canadian film

Blake is a 1969 Canadian short documentary film produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The film was directed by Bill Mason, and his fellow filmmaker Blake James, who pilots his own aircraft and lives by a unique code. Blake is Mason's cinematic testimonial to his friend and his "hobo of the skies" lifestyle.

<i>The Ernie Game</i> 1967 Canadian film by Don Owen

The Ernie Game is a 1967 Canadian drama film directed by Don Owen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Daly (filmmaker)</span> Canadian film producer, film editor and film director

Thomas Cullen Daly was a Canadian film producer, film editor and film director, who was the head of Studio B at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

Jacques Leduc is a Canadian film director and cinematographer.

John Spotton C.S.C. was a Canadian filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada.

John Kemeny was a Hungarian-Canadian film producer whom the Toronto Star called "the forgotten giant of Canadian film history and...the most successful producer in Canadian history." His production credits include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Atlantic City, and Quest for Fire.

Stanley Jackson (1914–1981) was a Canadian film director, producer, writer and narrator with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

Julian Biggs (1920–1972) was a director and producer with the National Film Board of Canada and its first Director of English Production. Over the course of his 20-year career, he created 146 films, two of which were nominated for Academy Awards. His film 23 Skidoo (1964) received two BAFTA nominations, including the BAFTA United Nations award.

High Steel is a 1965 short National Film Board of Canada documentary film directed by Don Owen about Mohawk Ironworkers from Kahnawake building New York City skycrapers.

The 19th Canadian Film Awards were held on September 23, 1967 to honour achievements in Canadian film. The ceremony was hosted by broadcaster Fred Davis.

Malca Gillson (1926-2010) was a Canadian filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada, and one of the first women to join the NFB in a non-junior position. She was a multi-tasker, acting as composer, sound editor, editor, producer and director. She is best known for her ground-breaking trilogy about end-of-life care: The Last Days of Living, Reflections on Suffering and Time for Caring.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Steve Gravestock, Don Owen: Notes on a Filmmaker and His Culture. Indiana University Press, 2005. ISBN   9780968913246.
  2. "Notes for a Film About Donna & Gail". nfb.ca. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
  3. James Leach (1980). "Don Owen's Obliterated Environments" (PDF). The Dalhousie Review .
  4. Martin Knelman, "Donna and Gail shows what we ought to be doing in film". Toronto Star , August 17, 1968.
  5. Roy Shields, "Festival's fiction and MPs' fictions". Toronto Star , November 2, 1967.
  6. Geoffrey James, "Festival Awards Go Begging". Montreal Star , August 5, 1966.
  7. Maria Topalovich, And the Genie Goes To...: Celebrating 50 Years of the Canadian Film Awards. Stoddart Publishing, 2000. ISBN   0-7737-3238-1. pp. 77-79.