Gisèle Gordon was born in London, England and lives in Toronto, Canada. She directed and produced the feature-length documentary, The Tunguska Project, which uses Cree theatre director Floyd Favel’s physical journey from Saskatchewan, Canada to the site of a mysterious explosion in Tunguska, Siberia as a metaphor for the mystery and struggle of creative process. The Tunguska Project premiered at Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival in 2005, was broadcast in Canada on Bravo! and IFC, and was awarded Best Feature Length Film at the Planet in Focus Film Festival, 2005.

In 1996, she formed the production company Urban Nation with Cree filmmaker and visual artist Kent Monkman. She co-directed, with Kent, Group of Seven Inches, a satire on the artistic colonisation of Canada’s First Peoples, which screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005, and Robin’s Hood, which was presented as part of the Miss Chief Trilogy installation in the Forum Expanded programme at the Berlin International Film Festival, 2008. A complete retrospective of all Urban Nation films was featured at the Terres en Vues Festival in 2008, where the Miss Chief Trilogy was awarded the festival’s grand prize, the Teueikan award. Other short works as director include Girls With Opinions (Images Festival 2002), a subtle critique of media influence on public opinion, shot at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, 2001 as part of the Blah Blah Blah: (re)Viewing Québec video artists’ collective. She produced and was key collaborator and story editor on three award-winning short films Kent directed, Blood River (CBC broadcast, 2004), A Nation is Coming, (Sundance Film Festival 1997) and Shooting Geronimo (Toronto International Film Festival 2007, Berlin International Film Festival 2008).

Since 2006 Gisèle has been a programmer of the Canadian section at Hot Docs, and has been a programmer for the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival since 2002. Independent curation includes a programme of Canadian films for the Salekhard Northern Nomadic Film Festival in Russia in 2005. She is currently Vice-Chair of the board of directors of imagineNATIVE and served on the board of directors for the Images Festival from 2003 to 2006.

Filmography

As Director

• Robin’s Hood, experimental drama, 6:00, 2007 (Co-director with Kent Monkman), also Director of Photography
• Group of Seven Inches, experimental drama, 7:00, 2005 (Co-director with Kent Monkman)
• The Tunguska Project, documentary, 82:32, 2005
• Girls with Opinions, documentary, 3:30, 2001
• Sugar, documentary, 10:00, 2001

As Producer/Creative Collaborator

• Dance to the Berdashe, five channel installation, 12:00, directed by Kent Monkman, 2008, also Super 8 photography
• Shooting Geronimo, drama, 11:00, directed by Kent Monkman, 2007, also Director of Photography
• Blood River, drama, 23:00, directed by Kent Monkman, 2000
• A Nation is Coming, experimental dance film, 22:00, directed by Kent Monkman, 1996