Production
Community Rating
5.8
TMDB estimate
Born
February 24, 1920
Died
December 4, 1972 (age 52)
Born in
Port Perry, Ontario, Canada
Julian Biggs (1920–1972) was a director and producer with the National Film Board of Canada and its first Director of English Production. Over the course of his 20-year career, he created 146 films, two of which (Herring Hunt (1953) and Paddle to the Sea (1966)) were nominated for Academy Awards. His film 23 Skidoo (1964) received two BAFTA nominations, including the BAFTA United Nations award. Biggs was born and raised in Port Perry, in southern Ontario. When World War II broke out in 1939, he joined the Canadian Army and then transferred to the Canadian Navy, where he spent the rest of the war serving on mine-sweepers. He then attended the University of Toronto and, in 1951, was hired as a production assistant by the National Film Board of Canada. He directed his first film, The Son, a year later. From 1956 to 1958, Biggs produced the Perspective series (paralleled by the similar series in French Passe-partout), which was 35 30-minute dramas with an emphasis on social themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, adolescence, the elderly, racial problems etc. One such film, Monkey on the Back, directed by Biggs, was a bleak, tragic story of man's unsuccessful struggle to free himself 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 NFB 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.

A Little Fellow from Gambo: The Joey Smallwood Story
as Producer, Writer, Director
1970

Paddle to the Sea
as Producer
1966

Notes for a Film About Donna & Gail
as Producer
1966
Each Day That Comes
as Producer
1966

Buster Keaton Rides Again
as Producer
1965

The Railrodder
as Producer
1965

High Steel
as Producer
1965

23 Skidoo
as Director, Producer, Editor
1964

Phoebe
as Producer
1964

Three Grandmothers
as Director
1963
Portrait of the Artist
as Director
1963

Alexander Galt: The Stubborn Idealist
as Director, Producer
1962

Georges-Étienne Cartier - The Lion of Québec
as Producer
1962
Robert Baldwin: A Matter Of Principle
as Producer
1961
Louis-Joseph Papineau: The Demi-God
as Producer
1961

Joseph Howe: The Tribune of Nova Scotia
as Director, Producer
1961
Lord Durham
as Producer
1961
Lord Elgin: Voice of the People
as Director
1959

Family of Ghana
as Director
1958

Crossroads
as Producer
1957