Claude Fournier (filmmaker)
Claude Fournier is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, editor and cinematographer. He is one of the forerunners of the Cinema of Quebec. He is the twin brother of Guy Fournier.Career
Claude Fournier began his career in journalism then moved to the Radio-Canada as a news cameraman. He joined the National Film Board of Canada in 1957 as a writer and director, and he worked on early cinéma-vérité films such as À Saint-Henri le cinq septembre and La lutte. He left the Board to work in the United States with famed documentary filmmakers Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker, then returned to Montreal in 1963 to set up his own production company, Rose Films.
In 1970, he directed Deux femmes en or, one of the most successful Quebec films of its time. In the private sector, Fournier produced over 100 short films, co-wrote the Sophia Loren film A Special Day, a Canada-Italy co-production that was nominated for an Oscar, and directed The Tin Flute with Marilyn Lightstone and The Book of Eve with Claire Bloom. The Tin Flute was entered into the 13th Moscow International Film Festival. His 1988 TV series The Mills of Power won him a Gémeaux Award for best direction of a television drama and a Genie Award for Best Screenplay.
Donald Sutherland described him as "one of the truly wretched directors of the world."
Also a published poet, novelist and essayist, Claude Fournier is one of the most durable and respected Quebec filmmakers of his generation.Filmography
Features
- Deux femmes en or
- Les chats bottés
- Alien Thunder
- La pomme, la queue...et les pepins
- Je suis loin de toi mignonne
- Hot Dogs
- Bonheur d'occasion
- Page trois: un ordinateur au coeur
- J'en suis!
- The Book of Eve
- Je n'aime que toi
Documentaries
- Télésphore Légaré, garde-pêche
- Alfred Desrochers, poète
- La France sur un caillou
- La lutte
- Midwestern Floods
- Nehru
- Vingt ans express
- Nomades de l'ouest
- Calgary Stampede
- Deux femmes
- Columbium
- Londres
- On sait où entrer Tony, mais c'est les notes
- Québec an 2000
- Sebring, La cinquième heure
- Ti-Jean
- Tony Roman
- Du général au particulier
- Canada Today
- La greffe cardiaque
- La greffe cardiaque, symposium de Montréal
- Coeurs neufs
- Le dossier Nelligan
- ...Et Dieu créa l'été
- Aliments, gentils aliments
Television
- The Newcomers - TV miniseries, 1977)
- The New Avengers - TV series, 1977
- Tales of the Klondike - TV miniseries a.k.a. The Scorn of Women, 1981
- The Mills of Power - TV miniseries, 1987
- Golden Fiddles - TV miniseries, 1990
- Juliette Pomerleau - TV miniseries, 1999
- Félix Leclerc: Les esprits du fleuve - TV miniseries, 2005