{"id":2139,"date":"2014-07-08T10:16:33","date_gmt":"2014-07-08T14:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/?page_id=2139"},"modified":"2025-04-21T10:22:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T14:22:17","slug":"peter-harcourt","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/peter-harcourt\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Harcourt, 1931-2014"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Peter Harcourt, 1931-2014\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n
\"Peter<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In honour of Professor Peter Harcourt, who passed away on July 3, 2014, Carleton\u2019s Film Studies faculty, staff and students would like to pay tribute to his career as a pioneer of the study of film in Canada and acknowledge his contribution to our program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter came to Carleton in 1978 barely two years after the program was established. He brought with him the experience he acquired while working at the education department of the British Film Institute in London (England) from 1962 to 1965 and creating the first Film Studies program in Canada at Queen\u2019s University in 1967. In addition to developing an undergraduate and a graduate level course in Canadian and Quebec cinema, Peter was instrumental in expanding the curriculum and consolidating the program\u2019s position both inside and outside the University. He played an important role in bringing directors like Peter Watkins to Carleton and before his retirement in 1996, he facilitated the donation of a vast collection of 16 mm prints from the National Film of Canada to the University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a commentator and film critic he actively intervened in debates about Canadian and Quebec filmmaking practices and as a founding member of the Film Studies Association of Canada, he promoted the cultural and educational value of cinema. But first and foremost, Peter was an avid and attentive moviegoer, teacher and advocate for film. He expressed his curiosity and love for cinema by encouraging students to discover the pleasures and intellectual rewards of watching and talking about film, and endorsing the work of individual directors through his writing and programming activities, including the retrospective of Jean Pierre Lefebvre\u2019s work held in Ottawa under the auspices of the Canadian Film Institute, as well as the special programs on Max Ophuls and Jean-Luc Godard at the Toronto International Film Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of his publications, Peter\u2019s bibliography consists of numerous articles, reviews and chapters on Canadian, Quebec and international that appeared in Queen’s Quarterly<\/em>, The Canadian Forum<\/em>, Film Comment<\/em>, Cinema Canada<\/em>, CineAction<\/em>, 24 Images<\/em>, Canadian Journal of Film Studies<\/em> and Take One<\/em> and in several anthologies on Canadian film.<\/em> Moreover, he is the author of Film Making in Schools and Colleges<\/em> (1966; with Peter Theobald, BFI), Six European Directors: Speculations on the Meaning of Film Style<\/em> (1974; essays on Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buuel, Frederico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Renoir, and Sergei Eisenstein), Movies and Mythologies: Towards a National Cinema<\/em> (1977; compiled from an 8-part CBC Radio series), Jean Pierre Lefebvre (1981), Cinema Qu\u00e9bec: A Distinctly Cultural Voice<\/em> (1983), the autobiographical A Canadian Journey: Conversations with Time<\/em> (1994), and Jean Pierre Lefebvre Vid\u00e9aste<\/em> (2001).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter\u2019s accomplishments and influence were recognized in a festschrift (a collection of essays by former students and colleagues written in his honour) entitled Responses: In Honour of Peter Harcourt<\/em> published in 1992 and the awarding of the Order of Canada in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His keen insights, cogent rhetoric and robust opinions about Canadian film and cinema in general will be sorely missed not only by his colleagues at Carleton but by everyone who cares about cinema in this country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honour of Professor Peter Harcourt, who passed away on July 3, 2014, Carleton\u2019s Film Studies faculty, staff and students would like to pay tribute to his career as a pioneer of the study of film in Canada and acknowledge his contribution to our program. Peter came to Carleton in 1978 barely two years after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cu_dining_location_slug":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_page_type":[37],"class_list":["post-2139","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","cu_page_type-general"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2142,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2139\/revisions\/2142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_page_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/filmstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_page_type?post=2139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}