André Lamy

Who was André Lamy?

André Lamy was a Canadian film producer, who served as Canada's Government Film Commissioner from 1975 until 1979. In this position he was the Chairman of the National Film Board of Canada.

Lamy was born in Montreal, Quebec, and studied at two universities; the Université de Montréal and McGill University. During the 1960s he worked as a producer for the Montreal-based company Niagara Films, and then later with Onyx Films, a company which was owned by his brother, Pierre Lamy. In this period he worked on several important films, including Claude Fournier's Deux femmes en or. Released in 1970, this held the record for the most profitable film made in Quebec for the following sixteen years.

In 1970 Lamy was recruited to become the Assistant Film Commissioner of the NFB, making him Sydney Newman's deputy in the running of the organisation. As Newman spoke only English, Lamy took a leading role in the NFB's French language output; Québécois filmmakers dealt almost entirely with him. It was in this capacity that Lamy drew Newman's attention to potential problems with several politically sensitive French Canadian productions made around the time of the October Crisis, including Denys Arcand's On est au coton, which Newman banned from distribution. When Lamy succeeded Newman as Government Film Commissioner in 1975 he authorised the release of several of these same productions, feeling that enough time had elapsed since the October Crisis for their distribution to be a less sensitive matter.