Gilles Carle

Biography

Gilles Carle, OC GOQ (July 31, 1928 – November 28, 2009) was a French Canadian director, screenwriter and painter. Gilles Carle, who was a key figure in the development of a commercial Quebec cinema, worked as a graphic artist and writer before he joined the National Film Board of Canada in 1960. His innovative debut feature, La Vie heureuse de Léopold Z., tracked the adventures of a snowplough operator during a madcap Christmas Eve. But after the NFB rejected several of his projects, he began working independently. In 1971 Carle joined forces with Pierre Lamy to form Les Productions Carle-Lamy, which produced Claude Jutra’s epic Kamouraska, Denys Arcand’s early features and all his early films. The quirkily paced, proto-feminist La Vraie Nature de Bernadette – widely regarded as his best film – and Le Mort d’un bûcheron eventually led to the more mainstream but graceful Les Plouffe and the epic love story Maria Chapdelaine, both classics of Quebec cinema. In 1972 Carle won the Canadian Film Award for best Director for his The True Nature of Bernadette. In 1990, he was awarded the Government of Quebec's Prix Albert-Tessier. In 1997, Carle received a Governor General's Performing A…

Directed

1. Red the Half Breed (1970) — Director
2. The Plouffe Family (1981) — Director
3. The Males (1971) — Director
4. The Merry World of Leopold Z (1965) — Director
5. The Angel and the Woman (1977) — Director
6. La Tête de Normande St-Onge (1975) — Director
7. Maria Chapdelaine (1983) — Director
8. The Death of a Lumberjack (1973) — Director
9. The True Nature of Bernadette (1972) — Director
10. The Rape of a Sweet Young Girl (1968) — Director
11. Fantastica (1980) — Director
12. The Postmistress (1992) — Director
13. The Heavenly Bodies (1973) — Director
14. The Other Side of the Law (1994) — Director
15. Pudding chômeur (1996) — Director
16. The Rink (1963) — Director
17. The Great Chess Movie (1982) — Director
18. Skybolt (1986) — Director
19. The Big Swim (1964) — Director
20. The Machine Age (1978) — Director
21. The Big Swim (1963) — Director
22. One Sunday in Canada (1961) — Director
23. Un air de famille (1963) — Director
24. The Devil in America (1990) — Director
25. Solange in Our Countryside or Very Little for Me, the Sun (1964) — Director
26. Manger (1961) — Director
27. Percé on the Rocks (1964) — Director
28. 50 ans (1989) — Director
29. Moi j'me fais mon cinéma (1999) — Director
30. Cinéma, cinéma (1985) — Director
31. Épopée en Amérique (1997) — Director
32. The Crime of Ovide Plouffe (1984) — Director
33. Blood of the Hunter (1995) — Director
34. Three Women (1964) — Director

Also appeared in

1. Spécial cinéma (1974) — Self
2. Midi Première (1975) — Self
3. Moi j'me fais mon cinéma (1999) — Self
4. Cinéma, cinéma (1985) — Host - Self
5. Gilles Carle ou l'indomptable imaginaire (2005) — Self