Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail
| Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Don Owen |
| Written by | Don Owen Gerald Taaffe |
| Produced by | Julian Biggs |
| Starring | Jackie Burroughs Michèle Chicoine |
| Cinematography | Jean-Claude Labrecque |
| Edited by | Barrie Howells John Knight (sound) |
| Music by | Malca Gillson (editing) |
Production company | |
Release date |
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Running time | 48 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail is a 1966 Canadian drama film, directed by Don Owen for the National Film Board of Canada.[1][2]
The film centres on Donna (Michèle Chicoine) and Gail (Jackie Burroughs), two young women who work together at a dress factory and live together as roommates, tracing the evolution and decline of their friendship in a documentary-style format.[1] It shows the currents that brought them together and the facets of their natures that first made them seem compatible but eventually drove them apart. Their story reflects, to a degree, the situation of anyone who has ever shared the life of another person.
The film makes use of the then-novel device of an unreliable narrator,[1] ultimately revealing that the film is much more about the narrator's skewed perceptions of the women's relationship than it is about the women themselves.[3] It was inspired in part by the contemporaneous films of Jean-Luc Godard.[1]
The characters of Donna and Gail recurred in Owen's 1967 feature film The Ernie Game.[4] Prior to the release of The Ernie Game, in which Donna and Gail were involved in a love triangle with Alexis Kanner's Ernie, some critics who had seen only Notes perceived Donna and Gail as being in a quasi-lesbian relationship; however, Owen demurred on this perception by saying "I really don't know, because, well, what is a lesbian relationship?"[5]
Awards
[edit]- Montreal International Film Festival, Montreal: First Prize, Medium Length, 1966[6]
- 19th Canadian Film Awards, Montreal: Genie Award for Best Film, General Information, 1967[7]
- Melbourne Film Festival, Melbourne: Diploma of Merit, 1967
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d Steve Gravestock, Don Owen: Notes on a Filmmaker and His Culture. Indiana University Press, 2005. ISBN 9780968913246.
- ^ "Notes for a Film About Donna & Gail". nfb.ca. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
- ^ James Leach (1980). "Don Owen's Obliterated Environments" (PDF). The Dalhousie Review.
- ^ Martin Knelman, "Donna and Gail shows what we ought to be doing in film". Toronto Star, August 17, 1968.
- ^ Roy Shields, "Festival's fiction and MPs' fictions". Toronto Star, November 2, 1967.
- ^ Geoffrey James, "Festival Awards Go Begging". Montreal Star, August 5, 1966.
- ^ Maria Topalovich, And the Genie Goes To...: Celebrating 50 Years of the Canadian Film Awards. Stoddart Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-7737-3238-1. pp. 77-79.