Showing 4 results

Authority record
Beissel, Henry
HB1 · Person · 1929 -

Henry Beissel is a poet, playwright, essayist, translator, editor and distinguished professor emeritus. Beissel immigrated from Cologne, Germany to Canada in 1951 and became Canadian citizen in 1956. He obtained his M.A. from the University of Toronto in 1960 and first taught English literature in Germany and the West Indies before joining the English department of Sir George Williams University in 1966 as Assistant Professor. He would help develop the Creative Writing program in the early 1970’s before getting his tenure and becoming Full Professor in 1979. His teaching centered mostly on medieval and modern periods literature. Beissel retired from Concordia University in 1995. He is the author of 18 volumes of poetry, 10 plays and numerous essays and translations.

  • From 1963 to 1969, Henry Beissel was the editor of the independent literary journal EDGE he founded in Edmonton.
  • Beissel is the author of ‘Inuk and the Sun’, a play that premiered in Stratford in 1973. Translated in many languages, it has been performed around the world. The play would eventually become the opera ‘Inook’ in 1986, with music composed by Music department Professor Wolfgang Rottenberg. Excerpts of the piece would later be performed at the Inukshuk: A Dialogue among Cultures event, held at Concordia in June 1999.
  • Beissel was the chair of the Irving Layton for Creative Writing awards committee in 1992.
  • Beissel edited ‘Raging Like a Fire’, a Vehicle Press ‘Festschrift’ publication celebrating Irving Layton’s 80th birthday, in 1993.
  • In 1994, Beissel was awarded a literary prize in the memory of Walter Bauer in recognition for his services to Bauer’s work and for his own literary oeuvre. The award was presented in Merseburg, Germany.
  • Beissel was awarded the First Prize in Poetry for ‘The Jade Canoe’ by the Surrey International Writer’s Conference, in 2006.
  • In 2008, he received the Naji Naaman Literary Prize for ‘Where Shall the Birds Fly?’. He also became an honorary member of the Maison Naaman pour la Culture in Beirut, Lebanon.
Isacsson, Magnus
MI1 · Person · 1948-2012

Magnus Isacsson, a Swedish-Canadian filmmaker, was born in Sweden in 1948 and moved to Canada in 1970. He studied political science at the University of Stockholm in Sweden and later in Montreal, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the Université de Montreal in 1973. He also studied history and cinema at McGill University and took classes at Concordia University in Montreal, though he did not receive a degree from either institution. He was married to Jocelyne Clarke, documentary filmmaker and founder of Productions Pléiades. They had two children, Anna and Béthièle.

Early during his career, Isacsson worked as a radio producer for the Swedish Broadcasting and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC). From 1980 to 1986 he was a producer for CBC’s English and French-language networks and worked as a producer for several programs, including Le Point, The Fifth State, and Contrechamps. Isacsson became an independent filmmaker in 1986.

With a documentary filmmaking career of over 25 years, Isacsson produced, wrote and directed several documentaries about critical social and political issues. During his career, he won several awards. Notably, he was the recipient of the Golden Sheaf Award for Uranium in 1991, and his film Power won best documentary at both the Paris International Environmental Film Festival in 1997 and at the Lausanne festival in 1999. Pressure Point (1999) received the Quebec Film Critics award for Best Documentary in 2000.

Magnus Isacsson was awarded the 2004 Prix Lumières from the Quebec Directors’ Association, and in 2012, Isacsson was named member Emeritus of the association. He was also a member of the Documentary Association of Canada, the Association des Réalisateurs et Réalisatrices du Québec (ARRQ), the Société des auteurs de radio, télévision et cinéma (Sartec), and was a former vice-president of the Observatoire du documentaire,

Isacsson was also an educator and throughout his career taught several courses and workshops about documentary film production. He taught at Concordia University in Montreal, Whitman College, the Quebec film school and at University of Montreal, among others. He also taught audiovisual production in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and collaborated in the production of teaching material Produire en Vidéo Légère volumes 1, 2 and 3.

His last film, Granny Power (2014), was completed and released posthumously by his wife Jocelyne Clarke.

Magnus Isacsson died in August 2012.

Szporer, Philip
PS1 · Person

Philip Szporer is a filmmaker, journalist and part-time instructor at the Department of Contemporary Dance and the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability. He was a contributor to the Concordia's Thursday Report in 1983-1984.

  • In 1999, Szporer was awarded the Pew Fellowship (National Dance/Media Project) at the University of California.
  • He served as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts from 2000 to 2016.
  • Szporer co-founded the Montreal-based award-winning media arts production company Mouvement Perpétuel in 2001.
  • In 2010, Szporer won the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, for his 30-year involvement in the dance community.
  • In 2018, he co-founded Dance + Words, a project aiming to facilitate conversations surrounding cultural discourse.
Thouin, Guy
GT2 · Person · 1940-

Guy Thouin is a musician and artist born on April 10, 1940, in Montreal. He studied percussion with a private tutor from 1959 to 1960, and during the early 60s, started playing drums at bars in Montreal. He graduated from l’École d’Optique du Québec in 1964 and worked as an optician for a year before he began his studies in fine arts at l‘École des Beaux-arts de Montréal. From 1969 to 1970, Thouin studied classic percussion at McGill University under Pierre Béluse. From 1971 to 1976 he studied Indian music in Pondicherry and Calcutta, India, specializing in Tabla.

In 1967, Guy Thouin, along with Yves Charbonneau, Jean Préfontaine, and Maurice C. Richard, became one of the founding members of Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec, originally known as Quatuor du nouveau jazz libre du Québec. The band played in several Montreal bars, colleges and Universities around Quebec, until they disbanded in 1974. In 1969, Thouin also joined L’Infonie, an avant-garde group where he played with Walter Boudreau and Raôul Duguay until 1971 when Thouin decided to leave both bands to study music in India. After returning to Montreal from India, Thouin rejoined the Montreal jazz scene and collaborated with several artists and musicians, including the band Mirage, which was a Montreal Jazz Festival finalist in 1985. In 1989, he founded the Heart Ensemble, a quintet of guest musicians that performed Guy Thouin’s compositions for over 20 years at cultural centres and bars in Montreal, Ottawa, Joliette, and several other cities around the province of Quebec. Many of these performances were recorded and broadcasted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). In 2012, along with Bryan Highbloom, Thouin founded the Nouveau Jazz Libre du Québec, playing several concerts, including one at the Suoni Pel II Popolo Festival.

Thouin composed Rien ô tout ou linéaire un, an immersive sound experience, while studying at McGill University. This sound environment was created for a work by visual artist Roland Poulin and was exhibited in 1971 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Since 2015, Guy Thouin continues to compose, play, and perform along with Félix-Antoine Hamel, in a new version of the Heart Ensemble called From the Basement, which invites musicians to play with them in their basement, and explore different avenues of the “free jazz” movement.