Phil Comeau | |
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| Born | 1956 (age 67–68) Saulnierville, Nova Scotia, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Years active | 1977–present |
| Notable work | Jerome's Secret |
Phil Comeau CM ONB ONS (born 1956) is a Canadian film and television director, born in Saulnierville, Nova Scotia. He lives in Moncton, New Brunswick and Montreal, Quebec.
Phil Comeau is a film and television director and scriptwriter, based in Moncton, New Brunswick and in Montreal, Quebec. His documentary and drama films have won over 700 awards at film festivals worldwide. [1] [2] He has directed films and TV episodes in Canada and in over 20 countries. His films have been translated in 27 languages, and been broadcast in almost 190 countries. A globetrotter, Phil has traveled on all continents and visited over 50 countries.
In drama, he directed and co-wrote the award-winning drama feature film Jerome's Secret in Canada, and two TV movies Crash of the Century in France, and Teen Knight in Romania and the USA. His popular drama series include Tribu.com (I & II) with viewer ratings in Quebec of 1.3 million, La Sagouine, Lassie, Emily of New Moon, Pit Pony, Les couleurs de mon accent, World Legends and the docu-drama series Mayday broadcast worldwide.
His recent award-winning feature documentaries include The Secret Order, Zachary Richard Cajun Heart, Acadian Music Wave, Secretariat's Jockey Ron Turcotte, and The Nature of Frederic Back. He also directed many documentary series.
Comeau has directed and written numerous films about his Acadian culture. Among them, the first independent Acadian drama feature film Jerome's Secret, [3] the first Acadian comedy The Gossips, the first Acadian children's film The Hooked Rug of Grand-Pré, and a popular series remake on an iconic Acadian character La Sagouine. [4] On the subject of the world Acadian diaspora, he had directed an Acadian feature in Louisiana Zachary Richard Cajun Heart, a series in Quebec Les Acadiens du Québec and documentaries in France Belle-Ile-en-Mer, a Breton and Acadian Island and Belle-Ile in Acadie.
As an author, he has also published poetry in two books Plumes d'ictte and Éloizes, a published film script Les Gossipeuses, an Acadian dictionary Le parler Acadjonne, and in 2014 was the editor and co-director of the anthology Acadie Then and Now, a 500-page collective containing both history and contemporary articles on the world diaspora Acadian, which won the international award Prix France-Acadie in Paris.
Phil Comeau is a member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC), the Association des réalisateurs et réalisatrices du Quebec (ARRQ), and the Front des réalisateurs indépendants du Canada (FRIC).
His films and TV series have received over 700 awards at film festivals worldwide. Phil Comeau has received five (5) Orders: he has been appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2011; [5] the Order of New Brunswick and the Ordre de la Pléiade from the Assemblée des Parlementaires de la Francophonie in 2016; the distinction of the Ordre des francophones d'Amérique at the National Assembly in Quebec in 2007; and was promoted to the rank of "Officer" of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2022. He also received two Honorary Doctorats in Arts from the Université de Moncton, N.B. (2013) and from Université Sainte-Anne in N.S. (2007); the Prix Meritas of the Federation acadienne du Quebec in 1999; the Grand-Pre Award from the Minister of Culture of Nova Scotia in 1997, and the Prix Champion in Ottawa in 1995. His feature film Zachary Richard, Cajun Heart was presented at the United Nations in Geneva in 2017. [6] In 2021, Comeau was awarded the Médaille Léger-Comeau, the highest Acadian distinction by the Société Nationale de l'Acadie. [7] In 2023, he was appointed a member of the Order of Nova Scotia for "preserving and promoting Acadian culture". [8]
The Secret Order (L'Ordre secret) won the "People's choice award" at the 2022 Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie. [9] His next film Roots, Diaspora & War (Racines, diaspora & guerre) also won the "People's choice award" at the same festival in 2023, and has won over 115 awards at film festivals. [10]
His film Belle-Ile in Acadie is the Guinness World Record holder for "Most awards won by a documentary short film" at 458 awards worldwide. [11]
The Acadians are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Acadia was a colony of New France in northeastern North America which included parts of what are now the Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula and Maine to the Kennebec River.
Antonine Maillet, is an Acadian novelist, playwright, and scholar. She was born in Bouctouche, New Brunswick, Canada.
Beaubassin was an important Acadian village and trading centre on the Isthmus of Chignecto in what is now Nova Scotia, Canada. The area was a significant place in the geopolitical struggle between the British and French empires. It was established in the 1670s on an upland close to an extensive area of saltwater marsh. Settlers reclaimed the land to engage in cattle ranching and trade.
Grand-Pré is a Canadian rural community in Kings County, Nova Scotia. Its French name translates to "Great/Large Meadow" and the community lies at the eastern edge of the Annapolis Valley several kilometres east of the town of Wolfville on a peninsula jutting into the Minas Basin surrounded by extensive dyked farm fields, framed by the Gaspereau and Cornwallis Rivers. The community was made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline and is today home to the Grand-Pré National Historic Site. On June 30, 2012, the Landscape of Grand-Pré was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Caisse populaire acadienne ltée, operating as UNI Financial Cooperation, is a Francophone credit union based in New Brunswick, Canada whose members are primarily Acadians. UNI's administrative headquarters are in Caraquet on the Acadian Peninsula.
Ralph Zachary Richard is an American singer-songwriter and poet. His music is a combination of Cajun and Zydeco musical styles.
The Acadians are the descendants of 17th and 18th century French settlers in parts of Acadia in the northeastern region of North America comprising what is now the Canadian Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the Gaspé peninsula in eastern Québec, and the Kennebec River in southern Maine.
Tintamarre is an Acadian tradition of marching through one's community making noise with improvised instruments and other noisemakers, usually in celebration of National Acadian Day. The term originates from the Acadian French word meaning "clangour" or "din". The practice is intended to demonstrate the vitality and solidarity of Acadian society, and to remind others of the presence of Acadians. It originated in the mid-twentieth century, likely inspired by an ancient French folk custom.
Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre was a Catholic priest and missionary for the Paris Foreign Missions Society. Le Loutre became the leader of the French forces and the Acadian and Mi'kmaq militias during King George's War and Father Le Loutre's War in the eighteenth-century struggle for power between the French, Acadians, and Miꞌkmaq against the British over Acadia.
L'Acadie Nouvelle is an independent French newspaper published in Caraquet, New Brunswick, Canada since June 6, 1984. It is published from Monday through Saturday and is the only French-language daily newspaper in New Brunswick.
Belliveau is an Acadian surname brought to North America before 1650 by Antoine Belliveau, who was among the first 50 French immigrant families to colonize Port Royal in l'Acadie (Acadia), present day Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, Canada, in unceded Mi'kmaq territory. In the diaspora following Le Grand Dérangement in 1755, in which about 10,000 Acadians were imprisoned and deported by the British at the outset of the War of the Conquest, several Belliveau descendants settled in Québec, Canada where the surname became known as Béliveau or Beliveau.
Acadian cuisine comprises the traditional dishes of the Acadian people. It is primarily seen in the present-day cultural region of Acadia. Acadian cuisine has been influenced by the Deportation of the Acadians, proximity to the ocean, the Canadian winter, bad soil fertility, the cuisine of Quebec, American cuisine, and English cuisine, among other factors.
The Acadia River flows Northerly over 82 km through seven municipalities in the MRC La Vallée-du-Richelieu, Les Jardins-de-Napierville and Le Haut-Richelieu, in Montérégie, on the South Shore of St. Lawrence river, the Quebec, Canada. The Acadia river empties into the Richelieu River, in Carignan, skirting the city of Chambly by the north.
Germaine Comeau is a Canadian writer of Acadian descent.
Jerome's Secret is a Canadian drama film, directed by Phil Comeau and released in 1994. The first-ever Acadian feature film, it dramatizes the story of Jerome, a mysterious man who washed up on a beach at Baie-Sainte-Marie, Nova Scotia, mute and with his legs recently amputated, and lived in the community for the remainder of his life.
Louis Haché was a Canadian writer considered to be one of the great Acadian novelists.
Wandering: A Rohingya Story is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Mélanie Carrier and Olivier Higgins and released in 2020. The film is a portrait of the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, which houses a large number of refugees from the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar.
Mathilda Blanchard was a Canadian labour leader. She was nicknamed la pasionaria acadienne due to her engagement and defense of Acadian workers in New Brunswick, particularly in the seafood trade.
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