Giles Walker

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Giles Walker (January 17, 1946 - March 23, 2020) [1] was a Scottish-born Canadian film director.

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Biography

Giles Walker, born in 1946 in Dundee, Scotland, received a B.A. from the University of New Brunswick and an M.A. from Stanford University Film School in 1972. He joined the National Film Board of Canada soon after, directing documentaries, then switching to dramas in 1977. Bravery in the Field was nominated for a live-action short Oscar in 1979. The Masculine Mystique (directed with John N. Smith), the first of a trio of NFB movies dealing with issues of gender relations, showed Walker's experimental side, working with non-professional actors and the technique of improvisation. [2] The two other films in the series, however, moved closer to an easy, palatable Hollywood style – successfully in 90 Days but less so in The Last Straw. Perhaps Walker's most successful fictional work is Princes in Exile, a film about a summer camp for children with cancer, notable for delicate treatment of the subject and a moving lack of sentimentality. Walker died in March 2020.

Partial filmography

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Princes in Exile is a 1990 Canadian feature-length coming of age drama about a group of young people at a summer camp for kids with cancer, directed by Giles Walker, written by Joe Wiesenfeld, based on a novel of the same name by Mark Schreiber. The film follows a 17-year-old protagonist, Ryan, played by Zachary Ansley, and the friends he makes over the summer. The film title is derived from the joking term the film characters adopt to describe themselves. Other characters in the film include Robert, the camp's daredevil, who suffers from Lymphoid leukemia, as well as Holly, a girl who has lost part of her leg, who becomes emotionally involved with Ryan. Chuck Shamata plays the camp director. The 103-minute film was produced by John Dunning and was a co-production of Cinepix, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and National Film Board of Canada. It was released theatrically in the United States by Fries Entertainment.

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References

  1. "Giles WALKER". Legacy. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  2. Stukator, Angela (30 May 2013). "Pictures of age and ageing in Cynthia Scott's The Company of Strangers". In Eugene P. Walz (ed.). Canada's Best Features: Critical Essays on 15 Canadian Films. Rodopi. p. 239. ISBN   978-9042015982.

See also