On Saturday, June 21, 2014, Carol Whiteman, President & CEO, Creative Women Workshops Association and Producer, The Women In The Director’s Chair program will moderate the Female Eye Film Festival’s Best In The Biz Tribute honouring Gail Harvey’s impressive career as a film and TV director.
4:00PM – 5:30PM
The Royal Cinema, 608 College Street
Tickets: free
GAIL HARVEY is an award-winning photographer and film director who has studied under Norman Jewison, Wim Wenders and Arthur Penn, and was the third woman ever hired as a staff photographer at United Press International wire service.
“A director is a visual fiction writer,” says Harvey. “It’s about telling the story, and connecting with the actors to make something truer than life.”
Harvey’s passion project, the feature film Looking is the Original Sin, inspired by the life of Diane Arbus, starring Katie Boland (The Master), and Maria del Mar (Devils Mile, 24) with a cameo role by Linda Hamilton (The Terminator) premiered at the Montreal Film Festival. It won Best International Feature at the New York International Film Festival, and will be screening at the Female Eye Film Festival in June.
Long Story, Short a webseries Harvey created with her talented daughter actress/writer Katie Boland, premiered at Mipcom in 2013, and has won Best Dramedy at the NYIFF in Los Angeles. It is airing on HULU in the U.S. and Katie won a Best Actress Canadian Screen Award for her role. Harvey’s film Some Things That Stay, was the winner of Best Feature Film at the Female Eye Film Festival, and was released by Alliance/Atlantis Odeon films. Her first short film Uphill in a Wheelchair premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in and later earned her acceptance as a director resident at Norman Jewison’s Film Centre. Her first feature film The Shower was nominated for three Genie Awards, her film Striking Poses, starring Shannen Doherty, premiered on Sky TV in Britain and aired in North America on HBO and TMN, and Cold Sweat, starring Ben Cross and Adam Baldwin, which was shown at the Montreal Film Festival, has since been seen around the world.
Gail Harvey is a multi-talented director, producer and photographer whose recent television directorial work includes The Republic of Doyle (CBC), Lost Girl (SyFy Nework and Showcase), Murdoch Mysteries (CITY & CBC), two seasons of the critically acclaimed pay TV series The Line, the finale episode of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (HBO Canada) and Regenesis, where she received a DGC nomination. Harvey directed two movies for the Lifetime Network – Four Extraordinary Women, starring Lindsay Wagner, and Home by Christmas, starring Linda Hamilton. Harvey also directed four episodes of the critically acclaimed CBC series This is Wonderland, including the finale, which earned her a Gemini Award nomination for Best Director.
Harvey has also directed several short films and various episodes of numerous television series for CBC, Global, BBC, Fox, Channel 4, Showcase, History Channel, YTV and HBO.
In 2005, she served as executive producer on Terry, the Gemini-nominated Terry Fox bio-pic for CTV, a special project for Harvey who, in 1980, when Terry Fox ran his Marathon of Hope, worked as a photojournalist for United Press and spent many days on the road beside him taking photos. One of her photos of Terry is featured on a special edition national coin. Harvey’s other producing credits include Looking is the Original Sin, Long Story, Short, The Shower and Manic Organic for HGTV.
Harvey has a 30-year history in the feature film industry, starting as a stills photographer on more than 100 films undertaken by all major studios in the United States and Canada. Before this she was the third female photojournalist ever hired by the news wire service United Press.
She won an international reputation by creating deep and insightful work that helped her transcend the traditional role of the on-set still photographer. Her appeal stems from an ability to capture, in a single frame, the enduring presence and complex personalities of her subjects. Among them are Shirley MacLaine, Diane Keaton, Clint Eastwood, Elizabeth Taylor, Faye Dunaway, Martin Sheen, Mel Gibson, Robert Mitchum and Tony Curtis. It was through her years of photographing actors, and understanding their creative processes, that she became fascinated with the moving image.
Harvey lives in Toronto, loves Paris and tries to get to her summer place in Prince Edward Country whenever she’s not working.
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