McGill Library
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Julian Samuel fonds
Fonds
2.1 m of textual records
1 DVD movie (1 hr., 20 min., 34 sec.)
Julian Samuel is a documentary filmmaker, writer, and painter. Major works include Passage to Lahore (novel, 1995), Save and Burn, (documentary film, 2004), and Atheism (documentary film, 2006). His work features his experiences as a visible minority and immigrant in the UK and Canada. Samuel was born on May 7, 1952 in Lahore, Pakistan. After living in the United Kingdom as a teenager, he immigrated to Canada in 1966. After graduating from Trent University with a degree in literature, he established himself in Montreal from 1982 onwards. Samuel was awarded an MFA in Film Studies from Concordia University, where he subsequently taught at the graduate level, focusing on revolutionary aesthetics in documentary filmmaking.
The fonds was transferred in three accessions from Julian Samuel to McGill University Rare Books and Special Collections. The first three containers were donated around 1996, the fourth and fifth in approximately 2001, and the sixth and seventh approximately 2004, accepted by Richard Virr, Curator of Manuscripts at McGill.
The fonds consists of 7 boxes of primarily typewritten documents created between 1976 and 2004 which reflect Julian Samuel’s creative work and related endeavours. They contain drafts of screenplays and novels, correspondence, book reviews, CVs, and ideas or doodles. They also contain newspaper clippings and collected research dealing with Samuel’s areas of interest, including unrest in the Middle East, immigration, and discrimination on the basis of race or language. These records were created and consulted in Montreal, Quebec. Although the work is often Samuel’s alone, correspondence and edited drafts appear regularly.
The fonds is arranged into the following series: 1) Drafts, 2) Research materials 3) Personal and professional records.
Most of the records are organized in folders by subject, though there are also unordered papers and groupings tied together with string.
A few documents are in French or Arabic
No other formats available
May include personal information
File-level listing available
Finding aid prepared by Roxann Fournier-Hoyt, Emeline Vidal, and Nicole Wiebe as part of McGill’s School of Information Studies course GLIS 641 in November 2019. Edited by archivist Anna Dysert, January 2020.