Terence McCartney-Fillgate, pioneer of Cinema Verite Doc Maker, has died aged 97.

Terence McCartney-Filgate, a pioneering documentary filmmaker and filmmaker who helped develop the unscripted observational filmmaking style that prevails in today’s reality shows, has died. He was 97 years old.

McCartney-Fillgate died on July 11 in Toronto. The cause of death was unknown. During his 60-year career, he was a long-time employee of the National Film Board of Canada and made his first film for Community Film Director. Emergency rescue – T33 jet plane, in 1956. With documentaries such as The days before Christmas (1958), blood and fire (1958), policeman (1958) and base A blade that breaks your back (1959), developed a free-form documentary tradition that has become part of the greater true cinematic tradition in the United States.

“With the passing of Terence McCartney-Filgate, the NFB has lost a dear friend and passionate supporter of documentary. A key figure in the NFB’s legendary Unit B and its honest eye He helped revolutionize nonfiction storytelling,” Claude Joly-Coeur, president of the NFB, said in a statement Tuesday.

In all, McCartney-Filgate made 31 films for the NFB, the last being in three parts. Canada rememberIt was completed in 1995.

“Terry has continued to make historic contributions to the independent sector, both in Canada and the US, and as an educator at York University. Everything he did, he approached with immense talent and dedication. Our thoughts are with his family at this time,” added Jolie-Cour.

Born January 1, 1924, in England, McCartney-Filgate joined the Royal Air Force during World War II, which included flying training in Canada. After the war, after graduating from Oxford University, he returned to Canada to work with the NFB.

“They were a useful start. You learn the grammar of film,” McCartney-Filgate told POV Magazine in a 2011 profile. The development of the live film tradition has encouraged camera operators to be freer in the way they deal with people on sets.

“Most of the Film Council cameramen didn’t understand what we were doing. They wanted three lights just to get a close-up of someone answering the phone,” he recalls. After leaving the NFB in 1960, McCartney-Filgate joined Drew Associates, where he worked with pioneering creators of Dr. such as Richard Leacock, DA Pennebaker and Albert Maysles.

He worked as a cameraman on Primary (1960), which also inspired the emerging direct cinema movement in the United States. In 1962, McCartney-Filgate made a documentary about the poet Robert Frost. Robert Frost: A lover’s struggle with the world.

After the film was edited, the director she replaced, Shirley Clarke, insisted on accepting single directing credit, and McCartney-Filgate’s credit was reduced to “Fall Section Co-Director Terence McCartney (sic)-Filgate”.

So Clark took the trophy when Robert Frost’s film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1963. While directing films in New York in the 1960s, McCartney-Filgate won a Peabody Award for a 1964 documentary. A Changing World: A South African Essay.

He returned to the NFB in the late 1960s, having previously worked for the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster.