Julian Biggs
Julian Biggs (1920 in Port Perry, Ontario – 1972 in Montreal) was a director, producer and administrator with the National Film Board of Canada for 20 years responsible for two Academy Award nominees, "Herring Hunt" (1953, as director) and "Paddle to the Sea" (1966, as producer). Career. A graduate of University of Toronto who served in the Canadian army and navy during World War II, Julian Biggs joined the National Film Board as production assistant and writer in 1951. He became the director of English production at the Board in 1966, then returned to active directing in 1968. He  was responsible for several of the early NFB dramas, the "Perspective" series, "23 Skidoo" and "The Little Fellow from Gambo". He directed the Academy Award-nominated "Herring Hunt" and oversaw the production of nearly 200 films, including Don Owen's "High Steel" and "Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail", and Bill Mason's "Paddle to the Sea", the popular Oscar-nominated live-action short. In 1970, his profile of Newfoundland Prime Minister Joey Smallwood, "A Little Fellow from Gambo", earned him a best director award at the Canadian Film Awards. Section::::"Perspective" series. A National Film Board series of  30-minute dramas produced by Biggs (paralleled by a similar series in French known as "Passe-partout") from 1956 to 1958. The emphasis was on documentary dramas in which social themes such as alcoholism, drug addition, adolescence, the elderly, racial problems etc. predominated. One such film, "Monkey on the Back", directed by Biggs, was a bleak, tragic story of man's struggle to free himself, unsuccessfully, from drug addiction. Similar to Robert Anderson's "Drug Addict" (1948), which had been banned in the U.S., it was the type of film that caused the Board to reconsider its role in producing  socially relevant films. There was an unwritten policy and priority to shift away from social realism to the "art" of film. In his authoritative "Film Companion", Canadian film historian Peter Morris wrote this about the series that contained elements, which later become common in direct cinema. "Perhaps the most original aspect of the films was their method of production: a light, quiet-running Auricon camera mounted on a chest harness, used on location and combined with double-system sound recording using the Sprocketape recorder. This technology sharply reduced production costs and shooting time. The style that resulted is apparent in  most of the films, mostly clearly in "Joe and Roxy" (1957) and "Night Children" (1956), and clearly anticipates the later application of direct cinema to fiction. The series initially attracted a large audience, but the didactic tone of many of the film and the problems inherent in condensing high-intensity dramas into 30 minutes drove viewers away. The series was cancelled in the spring of 1958. The "Candid Eye" series was developed at least partially in reaction to the dramatic format of "Perspective", an approach the NFB believed had lost touch with the real world."