A Few Recollections 
Frank Taylor

Hi Don,

I feel like a bit of an interloper on this site. While we worked together at a distance by e-mail and over the phone on The Eggs and Faireez, I think we have only met briefly, that being at one of the early Ottawa International Animation Festivals (probably 1976, which was the first Ottawa festival).  While I later went on to direct the festival in 1988 and 1990, I was working on the periphery in 1976, being employed by the Canadian Film Institute in its programming division.  CFI was also the organizer of the festival and it was through the much loved but sadly now departed Kelly O’Brien, who was working on the festival, that I first heard your name.

Kelly, as you may remember, was a very enthusiastic person, but she was especially enthusiastic about you.  As the first festival approached, she would speak excitedly about all of the wonderful people who were coming to town.  Your name was always high on her list.

While I was then primarily involved in live-action, I realized when she spoke about you that I knew and loved some of the films with which you’d been involved at the NFB up until that time.  One was Hot Stuff and another was Who Are We?

In the spring of 1975, as I was thinking seriously about trying to get into the film industry, David Poole (who now heads up the Canada Council’s film and video program) invited me and a handful of other people over to his place one night to watch an evening of short 16mm films projected onto a sheet in his basement (oh, for those heady days of youth again!).  Hot Stuff and Who Are We? were among them.   I consider that night one of the pivotal moments in my making the decision to do what I’ve now been doing for 30 years.

Another film you worked on, A Propaganda Message, is still one of my favourite Canadian animated shorts.  For several years I guest lectured on Canadian Cinema at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh.  A Propaganda Message was always a popular part of my classes there.  Now, many years later, my new company (Title Entertainment Inc.) is embarking on an ambitious
documentary series called Canada’s Wilderness Icons.  It’s about those natural icons that define us as a country – the loon, the white pine, the moose, the beaver, etc.  One of the icons, of course, is snow.   We’re planning to include the footage from A Propaganda Message in which every so often this big wallop of snow drops from the heavens, blankets the country and everything
momentarily goes quiet until, across the map, things start poking up out of the snow and things begin to come to life again.

When I first met Gill Carr at MIP TV or MIPCOM (can’t remember which) several years ago and we began to talk about co-producing Faireez and The Eggs and she informed me that you were her UK partner and were involved with both projects, it was a very good feeling indeed. 

I can remember an embarrassing moment in the early months of putting those series together when we had misplaced your Canadian citizenship affidavit – it may have been for a second time - and I had to call you to have you send it to us yet again.  Your kindness was disarming and very much appreciated. 

You have made a great contribution to animation in this country, both through the Film Board and through the more recent television series.  Some of the earlier films form part of those created works that define Canada; the later series have been important in establishing a co-production relationship (through Gill) with Australia that is having an enormous impact here.

Your many friends in Canada are grateful for the things you have done and are thinking about you.

Cheers,

Frank Taylor