François Girard is a French-Canadian director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 particularly noted for his innovative film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is an award-winning 1993 film about the piano prodigy Glenn Gould played by Colm Feore. The film's screenplay was written by François Girard and Don McKellar....

. Born in Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, Girard's career began on the Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 art video circuit. In 1990, he produced his first feature film, Cargo; he attained international recognition following his 1993 Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is an award-winning 1993 film about the piano prodigy Glenn Gould played by Colm Feore. The film's screenplay was written by François Girard and Don McKellar....

, a series of vignettes about the life of piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 prodigy Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould

Glenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach...

. In 1998, he wrote and directed The Red Violin

The Red Violin

The Red Violin is a 1998 Canadian drama film directed by François Girard. It spans three centuries and five countries as it tells the story of a mysterious violin and its many owners...

, which follows the ownership of a red violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

 over several centuries. The Red Violin won an Academy Award for Best Original Soundtrack, thirteen Genie Awards and nine Jutra Awards.

He has also directed various works for the stage, including Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms

Symphony of Psalms

The Symphony of Psalms by Igor Stravinsky was written in 1930 and was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This piece is a three-movement choral symphony and was composed during Stravinsky's neoclassical period. The symphony derives...

, Oedipus Rex and Novencento at the Edinburgh International Festival

Edinburgh International Festival

The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...

; Kafka's The Trial

The Trial

The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...

 at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa; the oratorio Lost Objects at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Siegfried

Siegfried (opera)

Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...

 in Toronto; and The Lindbergh Flight

The Flight across the Ocean

The Flight across the Ocean is a Lehrstück by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, inspired by We, Charles Lindbergh's 1927 account of his transatlantic flight...

 and The Seven Deadly Sins, first in Lyon and then in Edinburgh. Girard has also produced a residency show for Cirque du Soleil

Cirque du Soleil

Cirque du Soleil , is a Canadian entertainment company, self-described as a "dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment." Based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and located in the inner-city area of Saint-Michel, it was founded in Baie-Saint-Paul in 1984 by two former street performers, Guy...

, Zed, in Tokyo and Zarkana

Zarkana

Zarkana is a touring arena show produced by Cirque du Soleil that will play in both Radio City Music Hall in New York City as well as the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow. Zarkana will also tour in other cities, although it will be seasonal in New York City and Moscow. The show began previews on...

, which will open at Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...

 in New York in the summer of 2011.

His television credits include Le dortoir, Peter Gabriel's Secret World and The Sound of the Carceri, one of the six episodes of Yo Yo Ma Inspired by Bach.

Filmography

• Cargo (1990)
• Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
  Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
  Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is an award-winning 1993 film about the piano prodigy Glenn Gould played by Colm Feore. The film's screenplay was written by François Girard and Don McKellar....
  
   (1993)
• The Red Violin
  The Red Violin
  The Red Violin is a 1998 Canadian drama film directed by François Girard. It spans three centuries and five countries as it tells the story of a mysterious violin and its many owners...
  
   (1998)
• Silk (2007)

External links