The Top of His Head | |
---|---|
Directed by | Peter Mettler |
Written by | Peter Mettler |
Produced by | Niv Fichman |
Starring | Christie MacFadyen Stephen Ouimette Gary Reineke |
Cinematography | Peter Mettler Tobias A. Schliessler |
Edited by | Peter Mettler Margaret Van Eerdewijk |
Music by | Fred Frith |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Cinephile |
Release date | August 3, 1989 |
Running time | 110 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
The Top of His Head is a 1989 Canadian comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Mettler. [1] The film stars starring Stephen Ouimette as Gus, a satellite dish salesman whose life is turned upside down when he meets Lucy (Christie MacFadyen), a politically radical performance artist who is on the run from mysterious people pursuing her. [2]
The film premiered in the Perspective Canada program at the 1989 Festival of Festivals. [3]
The film was shot in Toronto, Ontario, in the fall of 1987. [4]
The film's soundtrack, The Top of His Head was written and composed by Fred Frith. Jane Siberry also contributed a song, "This Old Earth", which received a Genie Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 1990 Genie Awards. [5] The song also appeared on her 1989 album Bound by the Beauty , under the alternate title "Something About Trains".
In addition to Siberry's Best Original Song nod, the film also received Genie nominations for Best Actor (Ouimette) and Best Original Screenplay (Mettler). [5]
Bound By the Beauty is a 1989 album by Jane Siberry. It received better reviews than her previous album, The Walking, and the title track received more extensive radio airplay than Siberry had seen since "One More Colour" in 1985.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role to the best performance by a lead actor in a Canadian film. The award was first presented in 1968 by the Canadian Film Awards, and was presented annually until 1978 with the exception of 1969, when no eligible feature films were submitted for award consideration, and 1974 due to the cancellation of the awards that year.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television presents an annual award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role to the best performance by a lead actress in a Canadian film. The award was first presented in 1968 by the Canadian Film Awards, and was presented annually until 1978 with the exception of 1969, when no eligible feature films were submitted for award consideration, and 1974 due to the cancellation of the awards that year.
The Top of His Head is a soundtrack by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith, of the 1989 Canadian comedy-drama film, The Top of His Head. Frith wrote and composed all the music, with the exception of "This Old Earth", which was written and sung by Jane Siberry, and a cover of "The Way You Look Tonight". The music was recorded at l'Office National du Film, Montreal, Quebec, Canada in August and September 1988, and was released on LP and CD in 1989 by the Belgian independent label, Crammed Discs. The CD release contained two extra tracks, "Driving to the Train" and "The Long Drive".
Susan Hogan is a Canadian film, television and stage actress.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role to the best performance by a supporting actor in a Canadian film. The award was first presented in 1970 by the Canadian Film Awards, and was presented annually until 1978 with the exception of 1974 due to the cancellation of the awards that year.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role to the best performance by a supporting actress in a Canadian film. The award was first presented in 1970 by the Canadian Film Awards, and was presented annually until 1978 with the exception of 1974 due to the cancellation of the awards that year.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Achievement in Direction to the best work by a director of a Canadian film.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Achievement in Cinematography, to honour the best Canadian film cinematography.
The Canadian Screen Award for Best Achievement in Art Direction/Production Design is awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the best Canadian film art direction/production design.
The Canadian Screen Award for Best Costume Design is awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the best Canadian costume designer. It was formerly called the Genie Award for Best Achievement in Costume Design before the Genies were merged into the Canadian Screen Awards.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Achievement in Music: Original Song to the best original song in a Canadian motion picture.
The Canadian Screen Award for Best Live Action Short Drama is awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the best Canadian live action short film. Formerly part of the Genie Awards, since 2012 it has been presented as part of the Canadian Screen Awards.
Christie MacFadyen is a Canadian actress best known for appearing in the film The Top of His Head.
Peter Mettler is a Swiss-Canadian film director and cinematographer. He is best known for his unique, intuitive approach to documentary, evinced by such films as Picture of Light (1994), Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), and The End of Time (2012). "His peripatetic lens is ever gravitating toward outsiders in search of ecstatic states," writes José Teodoro in Brick, "strange spectacles that defy straightforward documentation, and sacred places that promise some metaphysical deliverance. There are precedents for his methodologies—the films of Chris Marker and Werner Herzog come to mind—but Mettler’s gifts as an open and unobtrusive interviewer and his capacity to discover shared sensibilities between people of vastly diverse cultures and creeds feels singular."
House is a Canadian drama film, released in 1995. Written and directed by Laurie Lynd as an adaptation of Daniel MacIvor's one-man play House, the film stars MacIvor as Victor, an antisocial drifter with some hints of paranoid schizophrenia, who arrives in the town of Hope Springs and invites ten strangers into the local church to watch him perform a monologue about his struggles and disappointments in life.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Feature Length Documentary. First presented in 1968 as part of the Canadian Film Awards, it became part of the Genie Awards in 1980 and the contemporary Canadian Screen Awards in 2013.
Cherie Camp is a Canadian musician. She is most noted as cowriter with John Welsman of "Oh Love", a song from the film Nurse.Fighter.Boy which won the Genie Award for Best Original Song at the 30th Genie Awards.
Clean Rite Cowboy is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Michael Downing and released in 2000. The film stars John Robinson as Henry, an unhappily married man with a dead-end job as a carpet cleaner, who knocks on a client's door one day only to have his high school girlfriend Diane open the door.
Jane Tattersall is a Canadian sound editor, most noted as a six-time Genie Award and Canadian Screen Award winner for Best Sound Editing.