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David was born in 1960 in Toronto. He made a lot of super 8 and 16mm films as a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Canada's biggest city. Despite the vast wasteland that was the Keele and Finch area of Downsview, David found inspiration and many of his films won awards at various festivals. It was this encouragement and the support of many kind people in the film industry in Toronto, which led to David taking a career as a film maker seriously.
At 17 years old he made a short animated film called The Only Game in Town. This was a plasticene animated film about a father and son relationship based around a poker game. He co-directed this film with the renowned documentary film maker Ron Mann, but this was before Ron was renowned. This film got a Canadian Academy Award nomination for best short film. David and Ron also collaborated on other short films and lots of record buying.
Just as he finished high school, he was offered the opportunity to take part in the National Film Board of Canada's student film program. So he moved to Montreal for three months and made three short films there. This visit proved to be a great inspiration as he got to work amongst some of the finest animators in the world, including Caroline Leaf, Janet Perlman, Derek Lamb, Sheldon Cohen, Co Hoedeman and many other talented artists.
After that, at the age of 19, he made a half hour documentary about a renowned Toronto viola maker by the name of Otto Erdesz and his then wife, the famous viola player Rivka Golani. This half hour film was produced as an independent production and was sold to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where it aired nationally in their Canadian Reflections series. The camera man on this documentary was a fellow by the name of Mark Irwin. Mark provided a beautiful look to this film and was kind to fit this job in between his work as D.O.P. on David Cronenberg features.
After that, David decided to go to film school in England at the prestigious National Film and Television school. There he made two half hour live action dramas. He also met fellow student Alison Snowden at the film school. They worked on each others films including Alison s short animation, Second Class Mail, which went on to win an Oscar nomination and led to their career together in film.
The story continues on the Alison and David page.