John Greyson facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Greyson
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Greyson in 2014
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John Greyson
March 13, 1960 Nelson, British Columbia, Canada
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| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | Film director, film producer, screenwriter, video artist |
| Years active | 1984–present |
| Partner(s) | Stephen Andrews |
John Greyson (born March 13, 1960) is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
Greyson has won accolades and achieved critical success with his films—most notably Zero Patience (1993) and Lilies (1996). His outspoken persona, activism, and public image have also attracted international press and controversy.
Greyson is also a professor at York University's film school, where he teaches film and video theory, film production, and editing.
Early life
Greyson was born in Nelson, British Columbia, the son of Dorothy F. (née Auterson) and Richard I. Greyson. He was raised in London, Ontario, before moving to Toronto in 1980, where he became a writer for The Body Politic and other local arts and culture magazines, as well as a video and performance artist.
Career
He directed several short films, including The Perils of Pedagogy, Kipling Meets the Cowboy and Moscow Does Not Believe in Queers, before releasing his first feature film, Pissoir, in 1988.
Greyson is best known for the feature-length films Zero Patience and Lilies. His other films include Un©ut (1997), The Law of Enclosures (1999), and Proteus (2003). He has also directed for television, including episodes of Queer as Folk, Made in Canada, and Paradise Falls.
In 2003, Greyson and composer David Wall created Fig Trees, a video opera for gallery installation, about the struggles of South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat. In 2009, a film version of Fig Trees was released. This film, a feature-length documentary opera, premiered at the Berlinale as part of its Panorama section, where it won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary.
In 2007, Greyson was the recipient of the Bell Award in Video Art. The award committee stated: "John Greyson is perhaps best known to a general public as a feature film director. He shoots his 'film' projects on video with trademark video post-production techniques, thus colonizing the space of cinema with the aesthetics of video. An incisive social and political critic, Mr. Greyson is in fact one of the leaders in the AIDS activist video movement, among others. Mr. Greyson has supported the practice in many ways and he influences many emerging artists."
In 2013, Greyson released Murder in Passing, a murder mystery series which aired as 30-second episodes on Pattison Outdoor Advertising's video screens in the Toronto Transit Commission subway system and as a web series.
The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson was published in 2013. The book includes some of his writing as well as scholarly essays about his work from across his career. One essay quotes scholar Wyndham Wise saying that Greyson's work displays a ‘‘unique combination of wit and didacticism.’’
In 2020, he released the short film Prurient as part of the Greetings from Isolation project. In 2021, his experimental short International Dawn Chorus Day had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award for best LGBTQ-themed short film.
Personal life
Greyson is openly gay. His partner is Canadian visual artist Stephen Andrews, who he has lived with since the 1990s. They have been referred to as a "power couple" in Canada's art scene. The Art Gallery of Ontario recently installed a retrospective of Andrews' work exploring AIDS, surveillance, war, memory and chaos theory.
