Introducing SBIFF’s Guest Director, Norman Jewison

What do a celebrated romantic comedy, a finely chiseled caper film, and a socially conscious exploration of racism in the South have in common? A veteran film director whose wide-ranging interests in a half-century in the medium have added up to a body of work with no easy description or pattern. In honor of Norman Jewison’s role as guest director at the film festival this year, there will be screenings plucked from his vast and varied filmography-Moonstruck, The Thomas Crown Affair (the original Steve McQueen model, not the Pierce Brosnan remake), and the acclaimed exploration of racial tension in the South, In the Heat of the Night, with Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger.

Part of what makes Jewison a distinguished American filmmaker is the fact that he isn’t an American. Born in Toronto in 1926 and having lived there for much of his life (splitting his time in Los Angeles), Jewison started out in theater and television before moving sideways, and skillfully, into the movies. To hear him tell it, Jewison always wanted to focus on making musicals-he managed to direct Fiddler on the Roof and Jesus Christ Superstar-but found it hard to get Hollywood interested in the form, and besides, was pulled in other directions.

The socio-political direction has come out in the last decade, with the acclaimed 1999 film Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington as wrongly-accused boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, and, in 2003, the film The Statement, about the hunt for a Nazi executioner.