
Directing
Paul Almond
Born 1931-04-26 · Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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.
Acting credits
Behind the camera
7.2A 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
7.2A 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
4.8This 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
4.8This 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
4.8This 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
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
5.5An 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
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
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
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
7.0December 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
4.5A woman's peculiar religious convictions lead her on a self-destructive path.
Act of the Heart
1970
4.5A woman's peculiar religious convictions lead her on a self-destructive path.
Act of the Heart
1970
4.5A woman's peculiar religious convictions lead her on a self-destructive path.
Act of the Heart
1970
5.0Arson is the way out for a failing cosmetics company.
Backfire!
1962
9.0A woman with a troubled past is saved from drowning in a river and brought to a strange community hidden in the woods.
Journey
1972
9.0A woman with a troubled past is saved from drowning in a river and brought to a strange community hidden in the woods.
Journey
1972
9.0Set 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
9.0Set 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
9.0Set 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
5.2A woman believes she is beginning to lose her mind when she begins seeing ghosts and spirits.
Isabel
1968
5.2A woman believes she is beginning to lose her mind when she begins seeing ghosts and spirits.
Isabel
1968
5.2A woman believes she is beginning to lose her mind when she begins seeing ghosts and spirits.
Isabel
1968
Two assassins wait for their victim, but they are unsettled by a dumb waiter.
The Dumb Waiter
1961
