Harold Lee Tichenor

Harold Tichenor (born January 17, 1946 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a Canadian multi-award winning film producer and writer and an adherent of the Baháʼí Faith. In the early 1960s, Harold Tichenor along with his brother Jim, developed an avid interest in filmmaking. Their grandfather Archie Tichenor had made films and audio visual programs for the US Baháʼí Faith community and their uncle Allen Tichenor worked as a camera technician in New York City.

Raised in Philadelphia, Harold was fourteen years old in 1960 when he and his older brother started making films. In the early 1960s, Tichenor held a number of jobs working as a land surveyor, piano technician, dairy herdsman, fish hatcheryman, draftsman and punch press operator. He attended the Walter Biddle Saul High School for Agricultural Sciences intending to pursue studies in the biological sciences in college. In 1963, while enrolled in the ecology program at the University of Alaska, he found his first paying film job as a projectionist. In 1965 he joined The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York City, returning to Alaska that spring to work as the State of Alaska film librarian. In 1966 he was employed as a cameraman for the University and its Geophysical Institute shooting documentary film material. During the same years he worked as the director of the University of Alaska Film Group programming a series of classic and foreign films.

Late in 1966 Tichenor immigrated to Canada to work in non-fiction production. Initially, he contracted as a freelance cameraman for CBUT Vancouver and in 1967 moved to Alberta and was employed as a technician in the media department of the newly formed University of Lethbridge. Over the next five years he made a variety of science and educational documentaries for the University. In 1970-1, he served as research assistant to John Grierson when the social documentarian was guest professor at the University. In 1972, Tichenor completed his bachelor's degree in Drama and Art specializing in Film History and in 1974, after a year working as a writer/producer in Ottawa for the Public Service Commission’s Bureau of Staff Development and Training, he moved back to Alberta to continue his film career in the private sector.

In 1969, Tichenor had established his own film production company, Cinetel Nine later incorporated as Cinetel Film Productions Ltd., and from then to 1982 he worked in various capacities on over 100 documentaries and educational films as a cameraman, editor, writer, producer or director. His one-hour documentary, Inupiatun: In the Manner of the Eskimo , won numerous awards, including a Rockie Award at the first Banff Television Festival and remains one of the definitive social studies of Inuit life and culture.

After 1982, Tichenor shifted from documentary to dramatic production, initially working as a production manager on half a dozen television movies, series and several feature films. In the mid 1980s, he began working as a dramatic television producer running the last two seasons of Danger Bay for CBC Television and the Disney Channel. In 1990 he and his partners, Gordon Mark, Jeff Cohen and Jayme Pfahl, formed Vancouver-based Crescent Entertainment and through that company produced programs and features for Viacom, ABC Television, Lifetime, CBC, CBS Television, Republic Pictures, Lionsgate Television and Warner Bros. In order to focus on his work as a writer, in 2003 Tichenor retired from active production and the management of Crescent Entertainment Ltd.

In addition to writing for film and television Tichenor wrote two non-fiction books on the Point blanket in the Fur Trade history, as well as numerous articles on film history and the business of film. He taught film production at the University of Lethbridge and the Vancouver Film School and guest lectured at the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and Capilano University. In 1973 he was one of the founding members of the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association, serving on its board of directors until 1979. In addition, from 1976 to 1979 he served on the board of the Lethbridge Public Library and in 1978-1979 he was vice president of the Alberta Library Trustees Association. During the 1980s, he served on several Canada Council juries, was chair of the BC District Council of the Directors Guild of Canada, served for two years on the national board of the DGC, several terms on the board of the British Columbia Motion Picture Association, and in the 1990s he served on the national board of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association and was a Canadian representative on trade delegations to the United States, China and Hong Kong. During the late 1990s he was lead Canadian negotiator representing the CFTPA in British Columbia’s industry-wide labour negotiations. From 2000-2004 Tichenor served on the board of directors of the Banff Television Festival and in 2008 completed the final year of his second term as a member of the board of governors of that festival.

Since 2006 Tichenor has been building and maintaining a private archive of studio production master tapes of primarily classical music. Drawing on its resources he has coproduced several rerelease compact discs of historic music recordings for the Alto and Parnassus labels.

Although several early films made by Tichenor are available through The Film-Makers' Cooperative the majority of his films were made during the past forty years in Canada. The masters of these films are archived at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, the Gatineau Preservation Centre of Archives Canada and the National Film Board of Canada.