Rene Malo, the Quebec film pioneer best known for producing Denys Arcand’s Oscar-nominated The Decline of the American Empire and Micheline Lanctôt’s Sonatine, a winner at the Venice International Film Festival, has died. He was 84.
Malo died Sunday at Montreal University Hospital Center of complications from a hip fracture, his rep told The Hollywood Reporter. He struggled with Parkinson’s disease in recent years.
Born on March 7, 1942, in Joliette, Quebec, Malo started out as a music producer for such 1960s artists as Sol, Robert Charlebois, Yvon Deschamps, Diane Dufresne, Claude Dubois and Offenbach. He segued to films as a producer and distributor and in 1973 founded Malofilm Distribution, a major video distributor with output deals with Paramount and Republic Pictures, among others.
In 1976, Malo made his debut as a feature producer, and his credits would include Jean-Claude Lord’s Panique (1977); Christian Duguay’s Scanners 2: The New Order (1991), co-written by David Cronenberg; Gabriella Cristiani’s Ladies Room (1999), starring Molly Parker and Lorraine Bracco; and Chloe Robichaud’s Sarah Prefers to Run (2013), starring Sophie Desmarais.
Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire (1986), revolving around a group of college intellectuals talking about their sexual affairs, was nominated for best foreign language film at the Oscars as the first Canadian film to be so honored.
Earlier, writer-director Lanctôt won two prizes at Venice in 1984 for her first feature, Sonatine, about two teenage girls contemplating suicide.
During his career, Malo received a host of awards, including the Air Canada Award from the Canadian Academy of Film and Television in 1994 and a lifetime achievement Jutra prize in 2011 for his contributions to the Quebec film industry.
From 1975-96, he served as president of the Quebec Distributors Association and then the Canadian Distributors Association.
He created the Rene Malo Foundation in 1996 to support his philanthropy, and in 2006, the Rene Malo Chair in Cinema and Cultural and Media Production Strategies at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal was established.
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