TheMan of a Thousand Songs

As he approaches his seventieth birthday this May, William D. MacGillivray is still a busy and visionary writer, producer and director. A recipient of multiple awards and retrospectives, MacGillivray has little to prove to anyone. Being the subject of doctorates and representing Canada abroad at prestigious film festivals like Berlin, he is a motion picture artist who could easily just rest on his laurels.

Instead, however, he’s continually upending expectations, as in the extraordinary The Panther Next Door and the moving Hard Drive, all the while still intent on locating the soul of the East Coast. And while that might always be something of a moving target, so is Bill himself – always shifting, always changing, always re-adjusting his vision.

It’s a vision that has brought the Atlantic Cinema into a very sharp focus indeed.