NFB Profiles
Browse
Annau Catherine
Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the 70s Generation
Catherine Annau, Director
For years, Catherine Annau has wanted to tell the story of her generation, the one that grew up under the towering figure of Pierre Trudeau.
As a teen in Toronto, she would head down the highway to Quebec every chance she got. It was a far more interesting and romantic place. Like so many Canadians her age, she also took part in a language exchange, going to Chicoutimi in 1987.
She did an MA in history at McGill University, but after graduating in 1992, she packed in a budding academic career for life as a film and television producer, writer and researcher in Toronto.
Annau has worked for CBC TV and Radio, TVOntario and a variety of independents. Her credits include producer on Newsworld's Sunday Morning Live, TVO's documentary The Power Refugees and Radio One's This Morning. She also produced and wrote the Christa Singer Productions documentary Wisdom of the Heart, on women and heart disease, which won several international awards.
The drive to make a Trudeau generation film hit her especially hard after the 1995 Quebec referendum. Had all the efforts made by Anglos like herself been for naught? What role did Trudeau's ideals continue to play in the lives of others her age?
She approached the NFB with the idea for Just Watch Me to help answer those questions. Annau says she wanted to make a film that could explain Canada's troubles to both Canadians and outsiders, a film that would show how deeply Trudeau had affected her generation. And, most of all, she wanted to make an NFB film that rocks.
