Actuality: The Art and Life of Allan King

Directed and produced by John Haslett Cuff
Edited and co-produced by Nick Hector
Executive producer Sun-Kyung Yi
Aysha Productions
60 minutes • 2006
Also available on DVD

Actuality is a definitive portrait of a great filmmaker. In a career spanning 50 years, filmmaker Allan King has challenged the conventions of the documentary art form. From his groundbreaking Warrendale and A Married Couple to the more recent Dying at Grace, he has shaped the genre to his vision. At 75, King is still at work, and still challenging the viewer. The film looks back at pivotal moments in King's career, seamlessly weaving together interviews with King, images and passages from his major works (1956-2006), and a cinema-vérité look at his latest film, Memory for Max, Ida and Company.

"[An] elegantly structured and inspirational biography of one of Canada's most significant filmmakers. King's work has been central to the development of documentary film and direct cinema around the world, and he continues to make powerful films that confront and move us with the painful and beautiful understanding of what it is to be human."
– HotDocs Festival (Toronto)

Subject(s): Artists–Allan King, Film studies, Filmmaking