Word: egoyan
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While majoring in international relations and classical guitar at the University of Toronto, he began making short films. Egoyan went on to direct several episodes of "The Twilight Zone" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," before releasing his first feature, "Next...
...Egoyan and his 1986 film, "Family Viewing," gained international media attention when director Wim Wenders declined his award for "Wings of Desire" at the 1987 Montreal Film Festival saying, "This is a great honour, but I ask you to give the award to my Canadian colleague, Atom Egoyan." Since then, Egoyan has become a regular at every major international festival, a member of the jury at the 1995 Sundance Festival, and a darling of both critics and audiences for films such as "Speaking Parts" (1989), "The Adjuster" (1991) and "Calendar" (1993). Egoyan is currently working on Elsewhereness, an opera...
...Egoyan, who has written the scripts for all his films, finds that the biggest challenge of film-making is "trying to preserve the energy that goes into the writing process; trying to keep the process of making the film as organic as its writing." Too often, Egoyan finds this energy missing from films which are "just executed" by the director, "as opposed to trying to maintain the ongoing process of creativity. The only way I can do that is by creating a structure where I am not quite sure what the chemistry is going to result...
...Egoyan credits his training in music with the complex structure of his stories, whose plots usually interweave different characters and times. "I'm really attracted to counterpoint," he explains, "and the idea of developing several strands at the same time, having those elements all work off of each other. For me it's a very satisfying way of structuring a narrative...
...Egoyan says that a theme throughout his work is "people who are missing, and the impact of the loss of those people on the characters," which he describes as "confused, in a state of flux." In "Exotica," several characters attempt to restructure their lives after the loss of loved ones. Zoe, the club's owner, tries to free herself from the dead mother by grounding herself through pregnancy. Francis, the central character, develops strange obsessions as a means of resolving tragic losses in his past...