BIO

Deco Dawson is an international award winning filmmaker: writer, director, producer and editor from Winnipeg, Canada. His 20 innovative films remain at times unclassifiable, continually blurring the lines between dramatic, documentary, animation and experimental film, often creating fantastical worlds with miniatures, archival footage, meticulous set design, in-camera effects and grainy, textured filmstock.

Dawson’s twenty innovative short films remain at times unclassifiable, continually crossing form and genre. His debut feature DIASPORA has been described as “a cross between Lynch and Jarmusch if raised on shish-kababs” — a visual and tonal tour-de-force whose bold, assertive style announced the arrival of a new cinematic poet on the scene.

He is a two-time winner of the Best Short Film Award at the Toronto International Film Festival for Keep A Modest Head and FILM(dzama), totalling seven world premieres at TIFF. Dawson has been the subject of solo retrospectives in France, Spain, the USA and Canada. Recipient of numerous festival awards and is a Canadian Screen Award (Canadian Academy Award) nominee.

His filmography includes work on the Black Dahlia murder, the last Surrealist Jean Benoît, and pop artist Marcel Dzama. Dawson has worked extensively with avant-garde cine-star Guy Maddin where their film Dracula: pages from a virgin’s diary won the International Emmy Award and their collaboration on The Heart of the World earned the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Experimental Film. Dawson has also collaborated with legendary director Jim Jarmusch with indie-cool rock bands Metric and Sparklehorse, mounted art installations overseas, and has worked regularly as a video projection designer for theatre across Canada and the United States — the New York Times describing his work on Broadway as “jaw-dropping.”

MAJOR FILM WORK

OTHER FILM WORK