Bruce McDonald
Bruce Cameron McDonald (born May 28, 1959 in Kingston, Ontario ) is a Canadian film director and producer .
life and work
McDonald grew up in Rexdale, a suburb of Toronto , and studied film and photography at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. In Toronto's independent film scene, he co-founded the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) , made a number of short films and published the "Outlaw Edition" (October 1988) of the film magazine Cinema Canada . He worked as an editor for films by Ron Mann and Atom Egoyan ; at Norman Jewison as assistant director .
Bruce McDonald, like Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg , Ron Mann, Peter Mettler, Denys Arcand , Don McKellar , John Greyson and Patricia Rozema, is counted as part of the Toronto New Wave , a loose group of filmmakers who studied in Toronto in the 1980s influenced and worked together on film projects.
He achieved fame as a director with his road movie trilogy. His feature film debut Roadkill (1989), "a rock 'n' roll film about a girl who learns to drive", shows the strange encounters between Valerie Buhagiar in search of a missing rock band in northern Ontario . Buhagiar also stars in Highway 61 (1991), a road trip on the famous US Highway 61 from Canada to New Orleans. Both films received numerous awards. In 1996, Hard Core Logo was the third part of the trilogy, a mockumentary about the reunion tour of a fictional Canadian punk band through Western Canada.
From the 1990s onwards, McDonald was responsible for numerous television films and series. In 1994 he shot the film Dance Me Outside to the First Nations with producer Norman Jewison and with a larger budget , which was set on an Indian reservation and aroused critical reception. The film resulted in a hit television series made by McDonald's film production company Shadow Shows .
In the films The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess (2004) and The Tracey Fragments (2007) presented at the Berlinale, he experimented with the use of a variety of technical means, from coarse-grained Super-8 recordings to cartoons, and multiple split screens that allow the reflecting the fragmented consciousness of the main character Tracey (played by Ellen Page ).
With the film Weirdos (2016), shot in black and white, McDonald returned to the road movie genre.
literature
- Aaron Taylor: Straight Outta 'Hogtown: Sex, Drugs, and Bruce McDonald. In: George Melnyk (ed.): Great Canadian film directors. Univ. of Alberta Press, Edmonton 2007, ISBN 978-0-88864-479-4 , pp. 199-226
- George Melnyk: One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema. Univ. of Toronto Press, Toronto et al. 2004, ISBN 0-8020-3568-X , pp. 211-217
- Steve Gravestock: Outlaw Insider: The Films of Bruce McDonald. In: William Beard, Jerry White (Eds.): North of everything: English-Canadian cinema since 1980. Univ. of Alberta Press, Edmonton 2002, ISBN 0-88864-390-X , pp. 242-255
Filmography (selection)
- 1989: Roadkill
- 1991: Highway 61
- 1994: Dance Me Outside
- 1996: Hard Core Logo
- 2001: Picture Claire
- 2004: The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess
- 2007: The Tracey Fragments
- 2008: Pontypool
- 2010: My Babysitter is a Vampire - The Movie
- 2016: Weirdos
- 2019: Dreamland
Web links
- Bruce McDonald in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Birgit Glombitza: Canadian Cinema: The Daily Little Revolte , Der Spiegel , July 23, 2007
- Adam O. Thomas: An Oral History of Bruce McDonald's 'Hard Core Logo': Twenty years after its release, the classic punk rock road trip movie is just as awesome , Vice (Magazin) , October 26, 2016
- David Hanley: Bruce McDonald and Don McKellar's Deconstruction of Canadian Realism: Roadkill and Highway 61: Being Canadian, or Not Being American , Offscreen , Volume 21, Issue 4-5, May 2017
- Justin H. Langlois: The Road, Red and White (and Blue): Canadian Identity in Bruce McDonald's Road Trilogy , Offscreen , Volume 21, Issue 4-5, May 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c The Tracey Fragments , film data sheet of the Berlinale 2007
- ↑ a b c d Bruce McDonald , The Canadian Encyclopedia
- ↑ Katja Bruns: Toronto New Wave , in: Lexikon der Filmbegriffe , edited by Hans. J. Wulff and Theo Bender, November 6, 2011
- ↑ Wyndham Wise: The Toronto New Wave: Where Are They Now? , Northernstars.ca , October 10, 2017
- ↑ Chris Gittings: Canadian National Cinema. Taylor and Francis, Hoboken 2012, ISBN 978-0-415-14281-6 , pp. 212-215
- ^ The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess , film data sheet of the Berlinale 2005
- ↑ Birgit Glombitza: Canadian Cinema: The Daily Little Revolte , Der Spiegel , July 23, 2007
- ↑ Weirdos , film data sheet of the Berlinale 2017
- ↑ Sheri Linden: Weirdos : Film Review | Berlin 2017 , The Hollywood Reporter , February 14, 2017
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | McDonald, Bruce |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | McDonald, Bruce Cameron (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian film director, film producer and film editor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 28, 1959 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kingston, Ontario , Canada |