Fonds consists of film and sound recordings, textual records, graphic material, and artifacts created and collected by Roy Tash over the course of his career as a Canadian newsreel cameraman. Material has been broken down into the following series: Film Assignments, Associations and Organizations, Honours, Awards and Tributes, Photographs : Roy Tash; and Family and Personal Material.
Tash, Roy, 1898-1988 : Roy Tash, Canadian cinematographer, was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1898 and died in Toronto in 1988. He grew up in Chicago. At age 14, Tash began working at a neighbourhood theatre, becoming assistant projectionist at age 16. By 1918 he was working as a newsreel cameraman. In 1919 he moved to Toronto to work with Blaine Irish, a Canadian cameraman and projectionist. Irish and Tash started the Canadian Aero Film Company. The company specialized in taking motion pictures from airplanes and also shot news footage. In 1919 Irish and Tash expanded their activities, making tourist films, educational films and other productions under the company name Filmcraft Industries Limited. Tash photographed the Filmcraft feature film Satan's Paradise in Toronto in 1922. Filmcraft went out of business after a fire at the company's offices in 1923 and Irish's unrelated death that same year. Tash got a job taking still photographs for the Toronto News Mirror, a tabloid newspaper. In 1924 he was the official motion picture photographer for the federal government's Arctic expedition. By 1925 he was a cameraman for the Montreal film production company Associated Screen News (ASN). There he shot documentaries, industrial films and other productions, but he worked mostly on newsreel stories for the major newsreel companies based in the United States. Until 1940, Tash was based at ASN's Montreal headquarters but shot footage all over Canada and in other countries. In 1940 he transferred to ASN's Toronto office. ASN made him a film director in 1946. In 1954 ASN appointed Tash assistant manager of its Ontario division. Three years later he became head of its newsreel department and manager of the Toronto office. In 1957 Du Art Film Laboratories Inc. bought ASN and renamed it Associated Screen Industries Limited (ASI). Tash continued as newsreel manager for ASI, filming Canadian events for the MGM newsreel News of the Day until the end of 1967, when News of the Day went out of business. He then retired. In 1970, the Canadian Society of Cinematographers honoured Tash by naming its award for best spot news cinematography after him. Tash died in Toronto on 7 December 1988 at the age of 90 years. Rosemary Bergeron, Roy Tash, 1989-1988, in The Archivist, May-June 1989, Volume 16, Number 3, p. 11. Wilfred List, Liberty Profile: Roy Tash, in Liberty Magazine, February 16, 1946, pp. 18-19.
1979-0376 VSA
2000-0034 VSA
2009-0041 VSA
