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Jerry Ciccoritti BIO

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One of Canada’s most provocative and in-demand directors, Jerry Ciccoritti has directed feature films, television movies and mini-series, and garnered accolades in all mediums over the course of his career. His features have consistently been invited to film festivals throughout the world and, in television, he has been awarded a Gemini for Best Film, 7 Geminis for Best Director, 3 Directors Guild of Canada Awards and a Genie nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

A second-generation Italian-Canadian, Jerry has always made telling Canadian stories, particularly stories that reflect issues of the immigrant experience in Canada, a career priority. Jerry Ciccoritti has directed biographies of some of our most influential and inspiring citizens, including the critically acclaimed Trudeau mini-series. With Trudeau, Ciccoritti made exciting and dynamic television about a Canadian for Canadians, and changed the face of home-grown television in the process. In the recent past he directed the adaptation of the beloved novel Lives of the Saints, recounting the personal story of an Italian family that immigrated to Canada; the harrowing true story of a woman’s fight for justice in The Many Trials of One Jane Doe; a true account of the murder of Nancy Eaton; and coming to the CBC in October 2005, the emotional bio-pic Shania Twain: A Life in Eight Albums. This fall, Jerry will begin shooting a dramatic mini-series based in historical fact, about gang violence within the Chinese Canadian community, again focusing his lens on the displacement of the immigrant experience, and solidifying his place as Canada’s visual biographer.

Jerry first began working in film in his 20’s, writing and directing low-budget indie horror films including Psycho Girls and Graveyard Shift I and II establishing himself as a genre cult figure.

Jerry turned his hand to television in the early 90’s, where he quickly earned critical acclaim and awards working on projects including The Hitchhiker, La Femme Nikita, CatWalk, Due South, and the groundbreaking mini-series Straight Up I and II. It was his work on television movies, however, that brought him the greatest degree of recognition. Jerry was awarded Gemini Awards for Best Direction for Net Worth (1997), Chasing Cain I: Vows (2001), Trudeau (2002) and The Many Trials of One Jane Doe (2003).

While honing his distinctive style in television, Ciccoritti continued making feature films such as the controversial Paris, France (1993), a box-office hit and included in the collection “The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time”. His 1999 feature The Life Before This was selected for the Toronto and Berlin film festivals and earned Catherine O’Hara a Genie Award as Best Supporting Actress. Boy Meets Girl (1998), which also premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, was named Best Film at the Cologne Film Festival.

In 2004 Jerry brought a very personal film, Blood, adapted from the stage play of the same name, to the Toronto International Film Festival. A highly experimental work that challenges notions of singular perception and truth, Blood became a festival favourite, won him a Genie nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and, most recently won him a Directors Guild of Canada award nomination for Best Achievement in Direction for a feature film.

Alongside his nomination for Blood, Jerry has also been nominated by the Directors Guild for Best Achievement in Direction in the TV movie/mini-series category, for Lives of the Saints. It is the first time Ciccoritti has been nominated for television and feature film simultaneously; a very fitting acknowledgement for a man who has worked so fluidly in both mediums.

Recently completed projects include Shania: A Life in Eight Chapters which aired on CBC, and the television movie Murder in the Hamptons aired on CTV, a film which broadcast to record numbers in the US.

Additionally Jerry has completed a four hour mini-series for the CBC dramatizing the real life conflict of Asian gang violence in the streets of Vancouver. Dragon Boys features a cast of some of China and Canada’s most accomplished actors including Eric Tsang, Tzi Mah, Byron Mann and Jean Yoon and aired on CBC in January 2007.

He has recently completed shooting The Victor Davis Story, starring Mark Lutz (Angel) and Polly Shannon (Lie With Me, Trudeau) for CBC, and is currently adapting his award-winning mini-series Chasing Cain as a series. Mr Ciccoritti is presently in post production on The Terrorist Next Door, a Movie of the Week for CTV.

Jerry Ciccoritti