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Paul Almond

Paul Almond

Directing

Biography

Paul Almond OC RCA (April 26, 1931 – April 9, 2015) was a Canadian television and motion picture screenwriter, director, producer, and novelist. He is most known for being the director of the first film in the Up series. Paul Almond was born to Rene Almond and Eric Almond. He attended Bishop's College School, McGill University and Balliol College, Oxford University, where he read Philosophy, Politics, Economics; edited the University magazine, Isis; played for the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club; and served as president of the university Poetry Society. At the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, he worked primarily as a director and producer, and also wrote several scripts. He did similar work in England for the BBC, ABC Weekend TV, and Granada TV, where he created the ground-breaking documentary Seven Up!, before embarking on a career as a feature-length film-maker. In the late 1960s, he attempted to establish a high quality Canadian art cinema with his understated and highly interiorized films Isabel (1968), The Act of the Heart (1970) and Journey (1972), featuring his wife at the time, actress Geneviève Bujold. These films met some critical resistance in Canada, but the trilogy was Almond's most ambitious work and a distinctive contribution to Canadian film. After an absence from filmmaking of almost a decade, Almond directed three more films: Ups and Downs (1983); Captive Hearts (1987); and The Dance Goes On (1991), featuring Bujold and their son Matthew Almond. In addition to his television and film work, Almond also produced and directed several plays for television by such authors as Henrik Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, Harold Pinter, William Shakespeare, as well as creating his own adaptations of works by Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Henry James, Somerset Maugham, among others. In later years, Almond authored eight novels in the Alford Saga. The final novel is titled The Inheritor, a stand-alone autobiographical roman à clef about the remarkable life, loves, agonies, achievements and awards of a prestigious Canadian movie producer, director, and author. It was published in April 2015 by Red Deer Press. Almond was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2001, and given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Directors Guild of Canada in 2007. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Almond was first married to National Ballet of Canada leading dancer Angela Leigh, then to Geneviève Bujold from 1967 to 1974. Their son, Matthew James Almond, was born in 1968. In 1976 he married photographer Joan Harwood Elkins. Almond maintained a home in Malibu, California, in addition to the Almond hereditary family farm in Shigawake, Quebec. Almond died on April 9, 2015, in Beverly Hills, California, of cardiac problems from which he had suffered for several years.

Known For

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5.9

No description available.

Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre

1963
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
7.8

A television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock featuring dramas, thrillers, and mysteries.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

1955
Armchair Theatre
6.0

Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968.

Armchair Theatre

1956
Wojeck
9.0

A coroner searches for truth and justice with the help of his friends, while trying to hold his family together. (inspired by the headlines of Dr. Morton Shulman, chief coroner in Toronto) In the 1960s, Canadian TV underwent a shift led by "Wojeck" and "This Hour Has Seven Days." "Wojeck," influenced by Dr. Morton Shulman's work, explored safety standards through naturalistic filmmaking by Ronald Weyman and Grahame Woods. John Vernon's portrayal of Wojeck, a Polish Catholic confronting moral dilemmas, tackled societal issues like abortion and drug addiction. Guided by Weyman and David Peddie, the show bravely addressed topics like homosexuality and elderly neglect, gaining acclaim and international recognition.

Wojeck

1966
The Up Series
N/A

A series of documentaries that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old.

The Up Series

1964
Doppelganger
4.9

After being implicated in a murder, a young woman flees New York City and moves to Los Angeles, where she rents a room from a writer. They begin an affair, but it seems she's been followed by a homicidal duplicate of herself.

Doppelganger

1993
Seven Up!
7.2

A group of British children aged 7 from widely ranging backgrounds are interviewed about a range of subjects. The filmmakers plan to re-interview them at 7 year intervals to track how their lives and attitudes change as they age.

Seven Up!

1964
The Forest Rangers
7.3

The Forest Rangers was a Canadian television series that ran from 1963 to 1965. It was a co-production between CBC Television and ITC Entertainment and was Canada's first television show produced in colour. Executive producer Maxine Samuels founded the show. The series ran for three seasons, a total of 104 30-minute colour episodes. Early episodes of the series were broadcast in serialized form as part of a CBC children's series entitled Razzle Dazzle, hosted by Alan Hamel and Michelle Finney. This was the first appearance in a major series by Gordon Pinsent. He left the series in 1965 to star in Quentin Durgens, M.P. In June 2004, there was a reunion for ex-cast and fans just south of Kleinburg, where the show was originally filmed. Six of the ex-junior rangers appeared and Peter Tully flew in from his home in Ireland. Another reunion occurred June 15, 2013 at the actual studios where the show was filmed. This time nine junior rangers and Gordon Pinsent were in attendance. The show's first season was released on DVD by Imavision in early 2007.

The Forest Rangers

1963
Backfire!
5.0

Arson is the way out for a failing cosmetics company.

Backfire!

1962
Captive Hearts
7.0

December 1944. As their bomber is shot down during a mission over Japan, Sergeant McManus and Robert, a young lieutenant, have no other choice but make a parachute jump. They are captured by local villagers and are saved from execution by Fukushima, the village elder. McManus never accepts his lot unlike Robert, who soon takes an interest in Japanese customs and rites. More, he falls in love with pretty Miyoko, Fukushima's widowed daughter-in-law.

Captive Hearts

1987
Macbeth
4.8

This is a very theatrical version, full of sound & fury, histrionics and big arm movements. Cynical audiences might not buy into it, but if you were to go back to the early 1600s this is probably the way you'd see it. The plot of Macbeth, if you were snoozing during high school English class, is about an 11th century Scottish warrior who hatches a dubious plan to steal the throne. Spurred on by his wife Lady Macbeth, who wears the pants in the household, he finds himself swiftly slipping down the path of evil.

Macbeth

1961
Final Assignment
5.5

An intrepid television journalist sent to cover the Canadian prime minister's visit to the Soviet Union has trouble sticking to her assignment when she unearths a horrific experimental drug trial involving children. Determined to prepare a video that will show the world exactly what's been going on, she dodges the long arm of the KGB and falls into bed with a Communist bureaucrat.

Final Assignment

1980
Isabel
5.2

A woman believes she is beginning to lose her mind when she begins seeing ghosts and spirits.

Isabel

1968
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N/A

The Robinson's like to see themselves as liberals. So when their new black neighbours the Kingsbury's move into their apartment block they are invited for drinks but things don't quite go as they imagined it would.

Neighbours

1966
Act of the Heart
4.5

A woman's peculiar religious convictions lead her on a self-destructive path.

Act of the Heart

1970
Journey
9.0

A woman with a troubled past is saved from drowning in a river and brought to a strange community hidden in the woods.

Journey

1972
Ups & Downs
9.0

Set in the well-off confines of a British Columbia boarding school, this affectionate film follows the trials and tribulations of a group of students as they cope with sex, death, rebellion and loneliness.

Ups & Downs

1981
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7.0

Crazy Los Angeles. Work is an hour away, down a crammed six-lane freeway. It is always sunny, but the sun looks like a sickly blemish on the smog. Everyone's out to look beautiful and make money. And a kid named Rick fits right in. The Gaspé coast. Work is five minutes away on a tractor seat. When the sun shines, the ocean is set ablaze, and the scent of pine fills the crisp country air. People here just try to make ends meet, but they know how to laugh from the gut and to show each other they care. This is were Rick's father James grew up, but Rick has never been here. When Rick learns that he has inherited the ancestral farm, and that his father wants him to go to Gaspé to bury the uncle who left Rick this legacy, an extraordinary odyssey begins. Father and son start out as different from each other as Gaspé and Los Angeles, but in the process, Rick discovers manhood and James discovers fatherhood.

The Dance Goes On

1992
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N/A

Two assassins wait for their victim, but they are unsettled by a dumb waiter.

The Dumb Waiter

1961