News

British-Canadian documentarian and direct cinema pioneer Terence Macartney-Filgate has died in Toronto.

The filmmaker died on July 11 from complications resulting from Parkinson’s disease. He was 97.

A long-time collaborator with the National Film Board of Canada, he wrote, directed, produced and edited more than 100 documentaries across an illustrious career that began in 1956, with a series of post-war educational films.

A key figure in the cinema vérité movement of the 1960s, Terry Filgate – as he was known to most – worked with contemporaries including Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock and Al Maysles under the umbrella of American collective Robert Drew Associates, which produced seminal documentaries of the era, including “X-Pilot” (1961) and “Primary” (1960).

Filgate served as principal photographer on the latter film, which chronicled then-senator John F. Kennedy’s primary campaign against Hubert Humphrey.

American work aside, he will be remembered for his remarkable filmography with the Nfb, with which he made 31 documentaries across a 40-year period.

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Terence Macartney-Filgate, a pioneering documentary maker and cinematographer who helped develop an unscripted, observational style of filmmaking common in reality TV today, has died. He was 97.

Macartney-Filgate died Monday in Toronto. No cause of death was available.

Over a 60-year career, he was a longtime collaborator with the National Film Board of Canada and directed his first film for the public filmmaker, Emergency Rescue — T33 Jet Aircraft, in 1956. With documentaries like The Days Before Christmas (1958), Blood and Fire (1958), Police (1958) and the ground-breaking The Back-breaking Leaf (1959), he developed the free-form, fly-on-the-wall documentary tradition that became part of the wider cinema verite tradition in the U.S.

“With the passing of Terence Macartney-Filgate, the Nfb has lost a dear friend and passionate champion of documentary cinema. A key figure in the Nfb’s legendary Unit B and its Candid Eye series, he helped to revolutionize non-fiction storytelling,...

Had D.A. Pennebaker never done anything but hop a flight to London, 16mm camera in tow, and follow around a scrawny young singer who jousted with journalists, was worshipped as a frizzy-haired god and entertained himself with entourage-fueled shenanigans, he would still have secured himself a place in rock history and film history. The best-known picture of the documentarian, known as “Penny” to friends and colleagues, finds the then-39-year-old wearing a top hat, jauntily tilted to one side. A camera is hoisted on his shoulder, covering one half of his face.

"Richard 'Ricky' Leacock, the London-born filmmaker whose work with Robert Drew and D.A/ Pennebaker would revolutionize and come to define a generation's view of documentary film, has died in Paris at the age of 89." So begins Aj Schnack's excellent entry, drawing on Leacock's own recollections posted at his "exceptional" site and including a couple of clips. "Reports of Leacock's death began to circulate on Twitter several hours ago and the French film site Allocine.com confirmed Leacock's passing. The Paris-based documentary festival Cinéma du Réel, which opens today, is planning to dedicate a portion of the festival to Leacock."

"As cinematographer, producer, director, and editor, Richard Leacock has been an important contributor to the development of the documentary film, specifically in cinéma verité, now often called direct cinema," Lillian Schiff has written for Film Reference, noting that "the lightweight 16-millimeter camera, handheld and synced to a quiet recorder, allows...