Cinema & Media Arts
Barbara Evans
ProductionAssociate Professor
bevans@yorku.ca
Biography
Barbara Evans has worked extensively as a film director, producer, writer, researcher and editor. A graduate of the University of British Columbia and the National Film and Television School (UK) in film direction, she has worked in the UK for educational television, the BBC, ITV and on films sponsored by the British Film Institute. She was a founding member of the London Women’s Film Group and the British Newsreel Collective. In Canada, she has worked as editor for the National Film Board on such documentaries as Wonderland and Bitter Medicine, and on the feature films Latitude 55 and Walls.
Professor Evans’ own films have won a number of awards such as the Yorkton Golden Sheaf (Prairie Women and In Her Chosen Field) and the MediaWatch Television and Public Affairs Award (In Her Chosen Field) as well as awards at the American Film and Video Festival and the Columbus International Film and Television Festival. Her productions include Now That We Are Persons, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Persons Case, Jessie’s Albums, the story of a farm woman who documented her life through photographs in the early years of the 20th century, and A Heaven on Earth, a feature-length documentary on the CCF, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.
Professor Evans has written and presented papers widely at many international conferences on women and documentary film. She is currently completing a book, Invisible Griersonians, on early women documentary filmmakers as well as a documentary film, Bee Queens, on women artists and the environment. She is the co-chair of the Standing Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for CILECT, the international association of film schools and has served as both Chair and Graduate Programme Director in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts. She has supervised and acted as reader for over 40 graduate students in our programme, not only in production, but also in screenwriting and cinema studies.