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Robin Spry

Robin Spry

Directing

Biography

Robin Spry (October 25, 1939 – March 28, 2005) was a Canadian film director and television producer and screenwriter. Spry was perhaps best known for his documentary films Action: The October Crisis of 1970 and Reaction: A Portrait of a Society in Crisis about Quebec's October Crisis. Robin Spry was born in Toronto, Ontario to Canadian broadcast pioneer Graham Spry and economic historian Irene Spry. After studies at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, Spry began his filmmaking career in 1964 at the National Film Board in Montreal, earning a place on its payroll in 1965 and remaining there until stepping down in 1978. While at the NFB Spry built a reputation as a documentarist engaged with the issues of the day, with films on abortion, youth rebellion, and contemporary politics. His Prologue documented the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, weaving narrative with archival footage to become, in 1969, the first Canadian film to appear at the Venice Film Festival. His Canadian Film Award-winning documentary Action: The October Crisis of 1970 (1973) used a similar approach to tell the story of the kidnapping of British diplomat James Richard Cross and the murder of Pierre Laporte. Spry also tried his hand at other aspects of the film trade, acting as a producer, filmmaker, screenwriter, actor, cinematographer and film editor, and appearing in several colleagues' films, including Denys Arcand's Québec, Duplessis et après" (1972), reading out sections of the 1837 Durham Report. Spry starred in the 1981 hostage film Kings and Desperate Men. In the mid-1970s Spry left the NFB to focus on production work, founding Telescene and then, upon its bankruptcy in 2000, continuing to work with other production firms in Montreal. Among the films he produced were Léa Pool's À corps perdu (1988), André Forcier's Une histoire inventée (1990), and John Hamilton's The Myth of the Male Orgasm (1993); he was also responsible for a number of television series, such as The Lost World. Other notable works included the 1995 mini-series, Hiroshima, about the events leading up to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which won a Canadian Gemini Award and was nominated for an American Emmy, as well as earlier films One Man (1977), Drying Up the Streets (1978), and Suzanne (1980). Spry died in an early-morning road accident on March 28, 2005 in Montreal, Quebec, leaving behind a son, Jeremy, and a daughter, Zoé, whom he had fathered by journalist Carmel Dumas (from whom he was divorced at the time of his death). The first season of Charlie Jade was dedicated to his memory, as mentioned in the credits of the final episode, as was Air Crash Investigation's episode "Mistaken Identity". Source: Article "Robin Spry" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Known For

Charlie Jade
6.8

Charlie Jade is a science fiction television program filmed mainly in Cape Town, South Africa. It stars Jeffrey Pierce in the title role, as a detective from a parallel universe who finds himself trapped in our universe. This is a Canadian and South African co-production filmed in conjunction with CHUM Television and the South African Industrial Development Corporation. The special effects were produced by the Montreal-based company Cinegroupe led by Michel Lemire. The show started in 2004 and was aired on the Canadian Space Channel. It premiered on the Space Channel April 16, 2005 and aired in Eastern Europe, France, Italy, on SABC 3 in South Africa, on Fox Japan, and on AXN in Hong Kong. The show began airing in the United Kingdom in October 2007, on FX. The Sci Fi Channel in the United States premiered the show on June 6, 2008, but after 2 episodes on Friday prime-time, moved it to overnight Mon/Tue.

Charlie Jade

2005Series
An Imaginary Tale
4.3

In this tragicomedy, Toni is the director of a staged rendition of Othello in Montreal. It is a pet project of his, financed by his loving mafia uncle. Unbeknownst to him, the audiences are also rounded up (and paid) by the same uncle. Some of them have seen every performance of this tragic play, and are understandably bored, so when the backstage romantic shenanigans of the actors result in absurd situations onstage, the audience is delighted. There are a huge number of romantic situations going on in this film at the same time. One of them involves Gaston a somewhat world-weary jazz musician, and Florence, a glamorous middle-aged woman who has been pining for him for years. Another involves to members of the musician's jazz trio. Yet another involves the play's Desdemona, Soledad, the girlfriend of the man playing Othello, who can't keep his hands off his (female) dresser.

An Imaginary Tale

1991Movie