Scott, Cynthia, 1939- : Cynthia Scott was born in 1939 in Winnipeg. After graduating from the University of Manitoba in 1959, she worked for ten years in CBC television, starting in its Winnipeg studios as a script assistant. She gained theatrical experience while employed at the Manitoba Theatre Centre as assistant director to John Hirsch, 1961-1963. She then moved to the CBC offices in London, England, where she co-ordinated research for various programmes, including 'This Hour Has Seven Days'. On her return to Canada, she produced and directed the national public affairs programme 'Take Thirty', with host Adrienne Clarkson, 1965-1971, and also directed documentaries for 'Telescope' and 'Man Alive'. She returned to work on a CBC project in 1984, when she directed a film on the artist David Hockney for the CBC special, 'Visions of Five'.
In 1972, Scott began a career at the National Film Board. Her first film was 'The Ungrateful Land', an impressionistic picture of an isolated Quebec village seen through the eyes of the Quebec writer Roch Carrier. She then worked as associate producer and director on a series for television called 'West' and as a researcher, producer and director on two films about Atlantic Canada, 'Scoggie' and 'Hector'. After marrying fellow filmmaker John N. Smith and having a child, she took some time off filmmaking, but returned in the 1980s to make three films reflecting her interest in dance: 'For the Love of Dance' (1981), 'Gala' (1982), and 'Flamenco at 5:15' (1984). She made her first dramatic film, 'Jack of Hearts', in 1986, followed in 1990 by her feature film, 'The Company of Strangers', which portrayed the Quebec journalist Constance Garneau, the writer and painter Mary Meigs, a Catholic nun, a Mohawk grandmother, and three other elderly women in a fictional scenario.
Cynthia Scott's films have won critical acclaim and have been nominated for many awards, including two Canadian Film Awards for 'The Ungrateful Land', an Academy Award for 'Flamenco at 5:15', and several international film festival prizes for 'The Company of Strangers'. She has been invited to sit on film juries in Finland, Brazil and France, and is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Scott retired from the National Film Board in 1998 to work as an independent filmmaker, directing 'A Lover's Lament' for television and working on a film adaptation of Carol Shield's 'The Stone Diaries'.
