Amnon Buchbinder (June 17, 1958 - November 30, 2019) was an American-born Canadian screenwriter and film director,[1] most noted for his feature films The Fishing Trip[2] and Whole New Thing.[3]
Born in Missouri, he moved to Canada with his family in childhood, before studying film at the California Institute of the Arts.[1] He was based in Vancouver in the early 1980s, where he was a board member of the Pacific Cinematheque[4] and a programmer for the Vancouver International Film Festival.[5] He made a number of short films, most notably 1983's Oroboros, before studying directing at the Canadian Film Centre.[6] He joined the faculty of York University as a professor of screenwriting in the film department in 1995,[7] and eventually became chair of the department.[8]
The Fishing Trip, his first feature film as a director, was written by Michelle Lovretta, one of his students at York.[9] In 2005 he published the screenwriting text The Way of the Screenwriter,[1] and released Whole New Thing as his second feature film.[3]
Following Whole New Thing he worked on Mortal Coil, a television pilot.[8] Although it was never picked up to series, he published a novel based on it in 2014.[8] In 2015 he released the film Traveling Medicine Show, a compilation of three short docufiction films in which he and his own family had played fictionalized versions of themselves.[8] The following year he released his final film, the interactive documentary Biology of Story.[8]
Buchbinder died on November 30, 2019, of cancer.[8]