Francois Girard
Auteur et metteur en scène
François Girard is primarily known as a film director and screenwriter. His professional career began on the Montreal art video circuit in the 1980s, writing and directing short experimental films, architecture and dance films, music videos and video installations.
In 1990 he produced his first feature film, Cargo. The same year, he directed a television adaptation of the theatrical spectacle Le Dortoir by Gilles Maheu, founder of the dance/theatre/multimedia troupe Carbone 14 (Quebec), for which he was awarded an International Emmy, a Gold FIPA (France) and a Prix Gémeau (Quebec). His other television credits include Peter Gabriel’s Secret World for which he won a Grammy Award (USA), and The Sound of the Carceri, one of the six episodes of Yo Yo Ma Inspired by Bach.
François Girard attained international recognition following his 1993 feature-length biopic Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. His third feature, The Red Violin (1998) was a huge success, winning eight Genies in Canada (including Best Picture and Best Director) nine Jutras in Quebec and an Academy Award for Best Original Soundtrack. His most recent feature film is the 2007 release Silk, which was partly shot in Japan.
Extending his work to the stage, he made his debut as an opera director at Canadian Opera Company with Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and Oedipus Rex by Jean Cocteau, which went on to win eight Dora Mavor Moore Awards in Canada. He also directed Alessandro Baricco’s play Novecento, presented in Canada and again in Edinburgh, Kafka's The Trial at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in Montreal and The National Arts Center in Ottawa, the oratorio Lost Objects at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Siegfried in Toronto and Lyon and The Lindbergh Flight and The Seven Deadly Sins, first in Lyon, France, then in Edinburgh, Scotland and Wellington, New Zealand.
“For the most part, what I do is tell stories,” says François Girard. “But I don’t see circus as a linear narrative form and with this show, I think the link to the audience is based on the characters rather than the plot. At the same time, the characters are going to evolve, and each of them has the potential to develop his or her own story against a backdrop of the world of the Tarot.”