Gilles Carle, OC GOQ (July 31, 1928 – November 28, 2009) was a French Canadian director, screenwriter and painter. Gilles Carle, who was a key figure in the development of a commercial Quebec cinema, worked as a graphic artist and writer before he joined the National Film Board of Canada in 1960. His innovative debut feature, La Vie heureuse de Léopold Z., tracked the adventures of a snowplough operator during a madcap Christmas Eve. But after the NFB rejected several of his projects, he began working independently. In 1971 Carle joined forces with Pierre Lamy to form Les Productions Carle-Lamy, which produced Claude Jutra’s epic Kamouraska, Denys Arcand’s early features and all his early films. The quirkily paced, proto-feminist La Vraie Nature de Bernadette – widely regarded as his best film – and Le Mort d’un bûcheron eventually led to the more mainstream but graceful Les Plouffe and the epic love story Maria Chapdelaine, both classics of Quebec cinema. In 1972 Carle won the Canadian Film Award for best Director for his The True Nature of Bernadette.

In 1990, he was awarded the Government of Quebec’s Prix Albert-Tessier. In 1997, Carle received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts. In 1998, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2007, he was made a Grand Officer of the Ordre National du Quebec.

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