Donald Winkler
photo © Yves Renaud, 1999
Donald Winkler was born in Winnipeg in 1940, graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1961, and as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar, did graduate study at the Yale School of Drama. From 1967 to 1995 he was a film director and writer at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal, and since the 1980s, a translator of Quebec literature: in 1994 he won the Governor General’s Award for French to English translation, and has been a finalist for the prize on two other occasions.
Winkler’s films have dealt largely with the world of culture and the arts. His work has included short experimental films (Doodle Film and Travel Log); films on crafts and the graphic arts (In Praise of Hands and Bannerfilm); on theatre (Breaking a Leg – Robert Lepage and the Echo Project); on social history (The Summer of ’67); and, notably, a series of films on Canadian literary figures, collected under the overall title “Poets: A Sestet.” These documentaries provide a film record of six cultural pioneers who helped lay the foundations for modern Canadian writing. They include F.R. Scott: Rhyme and Reason; Poet: Irving Layton Observed; and films on Al Purdy, Earle Birney, Ralph Gustafson, and P.K. Page.
