Both a pioneer and an innovator of local film production, Werner Nold died Wednesday evening at the age of 90 following pneumonia.
An important figure at the NFB, editor Werner Nold brought Quebec cinema into modernity. Alternating between documentary, fiction and animation, he is the architect of around a hundred films during a career that looks more like a vocation.
Of Swiss origin, Nold arrived in Canada to work at the NFB in the early 1960s. He collaborated with the greatest directors here, including Gilles Carle, Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, Claude Jutra and Pierre Perrault, in the heyday of direct cinema.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE NFB
Editor and director Werner Nold died on February 28.
Passionate, Nold then multiplied fruitful collaborations, including that with Jean-Claude Labrecque, director of the official film on the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. “The scale of the filming – 32 teams – elevates editing to the rank of an Olympic discipline! », we write on the NFB website. He has also directed three feature films, including Cinema, cinemaco-directed with Gilles Carle.
“If Nold chose editing rather than directing, it is because he admits preferring to be a great soloist rather than a small, obscure conductor,” wrote the critic Michel Coulombe in his Dictionary of Quebec cinema. “The quality of his work and the love he devotes to his profession make him one of the most respected creators of Canadian cinema,” was said of Nold, when the editor was decorated with the Order of Canada in 1985.