In 1955, he joined the National Film Board as a screenwriter trainee and would always have a love of writing. His finely crafted texts and carefully chosen visual images would be a powerful combination in his films throughout his career. With FIELDS OF SACRIFICE (1963), his first major film, he made his name as a director. During his early years at the NFB, Brittain directed some of his most memorable films, including BETHUNE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... MR. LEONARD COHEN, NEVER A BACKWARD STEP and, one of his most notable films of all time, MEMORANDUM, a stirring reminder of Nazi death camps.
In 1968, he was invited to Japan to produce the multimedia project "Tiger Child" for Expo 70 in Osaka. On his return, he began working as a freelancer, although most of his films would be NFB/CBC co-productions. Between 1968 and 1976, he directed 15 films, including HENRY FORD'S AMERICA, PAPERLAND: THE BUREAUCRAT OBSERVED, THE DIONNE QUINTUPLETS and SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE. His major achievement was VOLCANO: AN INQUIRY INTO THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MALCOLM LOWRY, which was nominated for an Oscar and swept the 1976 Canadian Film Awards (known as the Genies since 1980) with six Etrogs.
The latter years of his career were very productive. Brittain branched out from documentary into docu-drama with CANADA'S SWEETHEART: THE SAGE OF HAL C. BANKS (1985). In 1986, he completed THE CHAMPIONS, his trilogy of films tracing the historic rivalry between René Lévesque and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. That same year, he also made EARTHWATCH, a revolutionary 70mm film for the Canadian Pavilion at Expo 86 in Vancouver. His most ambitious project was THE KING CHRONICLE, a 1987-88 television series about the remarkable career of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
Brittain's production was varied and eclectic in its choice of subject matter, but each film was stamped with his unique talent and characteristic humanism. He made the common person great, the famous person common. His journalistic flair for general-interest subjects and skill in fitting all the pieces together stimulated a documentary "new wave". He drew light, lively portraits, that were full of surprises and never boring, of such diverse celebrities as Grierson, Leonard Cohen, Dr. Norman Bethune, Henry Ford II and Malcolm Lowry. Occasionally, his profiles transcended the individual to present a political, social or historical portrait of Canada.
Brittain's films have been the subject of major retrospectives at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles Museum and Harvard University as well as in Frankfurt, Germany. They have been screened at all of the world's major film festivals, picking up a total of 70 international awards. Three films written and directed by him were nominated for an Oscar.
In 1987, he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from York University in Toronto. In presenting it, the Principal said, "Brittain, like Mozart, has never sought to do things differently from his predecessors, only better. Above all else, Donald Brittain is a Canadian filmmaker who has shown us how to position the events of our past, how to understand them, and how to remember them, with that blend of human compassion and ironic detachment which is so uniquely Canadian." In 1989, he was presented the John Grierson International Gold Medal Award by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) for "his many achievements as director, producer and writer of some of the most prominent documentary films produced in Canada." In 1990, he was posthumously appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition of "his masterful visual records of our social and cultural past". He was chosen best documentary writer-director nine times and twice chosen as Canada's top TV drama director and writer.
The National Film Board has produced both a book and a film about Brittain: the collective commemorative work "Donald Brittain - Never the Ordinary Way", and BRITTAIN ON BRITTAIN, a 13-part video compilation of some of Brittain's best documentaries intercut with interviews with the director, directed by Ray Harper (1992).
Nominated for Documentary (Features) 1976: VOLCANO: AN INQUIRY INTO THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MALCOLM LOWRY - Producer (w. Robert Duncan)
1 nomination