Biography
Mark Blandford was a British-born Canadian director, producer and writer who worked extensively in both English- and French-language television and film. Born in Wimbledon in 1942, he studied at Columbia University’s film school before settling in Montreal, where he began his career at the CBC and later moved to Radio-Canada.
He produced the controversial 1975 docudrama The October Crisis and directed the popular 1978 miniseries Duplessis. Blandford collaborated on the screenplay for Denys Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire (1986) and produced the 1988 miniseries Chasing Rainbows. He served as head of drama at Radio-Canada, co-founded the Institut national de l’image et du son (INIS) film school, and received multiple awards including four Prix Gémeaux and the title of Great Montrealer in 1983. He died in Montreal in 2015.
