Phillip Borsos

Phillip Borsos (May 5, 1953, Hobart, Australia - February 2, 1995, Vancouver B.C.) was a Canadian film director and film producer. His family moved to British Columbia from Australia in 1958. Borsos showed an early interest in film-making while attending high school in Maple Ridge, British Columbia.. He studied film at the Banff Centre School for Fine Arts and at the Vancouver School of Art, now the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. His early work included several shorts notable for their cinematography and pacing. In 1976 he incorporated his own company, Mercury Pictures, to produce commercials and sponsored films. Borsos established himself as a filmmaker to watch in the late 1970s with three assured short documentaris: Cooperage (1976), Spartree (1977) and Nails (1979). All three won Best Theatrical Short at the Canadian Film Awards, and Nails received a nomination for an Academy Award in the Documentary Short category. In 1983 he emerged as a major directing talent with his feature debut, The Grey Fox . It told the story of Bill Miner, Canada's first train robber and starred Richard Farnsworth as Miner, along with Jackie Burroughs as his mistress.This dramatic, authentic dissection of the Canadian West won seven Genie Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and is still regarded as one of the best films ever made in Canada. He followed that success with The Mean Season (1985) and One Magic Christmas (1985). Production problems dogged his biopic Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990), which starred Donald Sutherland as Dr. Norman Bethune, and took four excruciating years to make. His final film Far from Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog was produced in 1995. During the same time he was diagnosed with leukemia. He died February 2, 1995 at age 41.