Paul Tana

Paul Tana (born January 8, 1947) is an Italian-Canadian film director and screenwriter.[1] He is most noted for his 1992 film The Saracen Woman (La Sarrasine), which received ten Genie Award nominations at the 13th Genie Awards in 1992 including a nomination for Tana in the Best Original Screenplay category.[2]

Born in Ancona, Marche, Italy, Tana emigrated to Canada with his family in childhood.[3] He studied literature at the Université du Québec à Montréal before joining the Association Coopérative des Productions Audio-Visuelles,[4] for whom he made a number of short films before releasing his debut feature film, Day by Day (Les grands enfants), in 1980.

His 1985 documentary film Caffè Italia, Montréal won the Prix L.-E.-Ouimet-Molson from the Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma.[5] He followed up with the narrative feature films La Sarrasine in 1992,[6] and Mr. Aiello (La Déroute) in 1998.[7]

Since Mr. Aiello, Tana has concentrated primarily on documentary films, most notably the Ricordato di noi project to recover lost footage of Montreal's Italian community newsmagazine television series Teledomenica.[8] He has released two films in the Ricordato di noi series to date, Souviens-toi de nous in 2008 and Marguerita in 2015.

  1. ^ Paul De Léan, "Montreal director Tana rolls the dice with latest effort, La Sarrasine". Montreal Gazette, February 18, 1992.
  2. ^ H. J. Kirchhoff, "French-Canadian films steal Genie show: Cronenberg's Naked Lunch leads the pack with 11 nominations". The Globe and Mail, October 14, 1992.
  3. ^ Janis L. Pallister, The Cinema of Québec: Masters in Their Own House. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995. ISBN 9780838635629. p. 419.
  4. ^ Fuad Alnirabie and Michael Vesia, "Paul Tana and the Italian immigrant experience in Canada". Offscreen, Volume 5, Issue 1 / January 2001.
  5. ^ Bruce Bailey, "Film made in Montreal takes prize". Montreal Gazette, January 29, 1986.
  6. ^ "La Sarrasine shows that cultural clashes are not something new". Montreal Gazette, February 16, 1992.
  7. ^ "Sweet 16: The 16th Rendez-vous de Cinema Quebecois embraces the province's multicultural character for the first time". Montreal Gazette, February 20, 1998.
  8. ^ Carole Gagliardi, "Teledomenica's memories". Montreal Gazette, July 3, 2005.