In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 1924
- Died
- 2013
- Birthplace
- Not independently established
- Country
- Canada
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Crac!, The Man Who Planted Trees and a long creative career at Radio-Canada
Why this life matters
His films make drawing a sustained way of imagining relationships between human work, place and the natural world.
Timeline
Key moments
Move to Montréal
Began a Canadian career that included teaching.
Radio-Canada
Joined the broadcaster’s visual-production work.
The Man Who Planted Trees
The Giono adaptation reached audiences before its 1988 Oscar.
Death
Died in 2013.
A broad visual practice before animated films
Frédéric Back was born in 1924 and moved to Montréal in 1948. Teaching at the city’s art schools preceded his long association with Radio-Canada, which began in 1952. He made illustrations, sets, models and visual effects for television rather than entering an institution devoted only to animated shorts. That range helps explain a career in which drawing did not remain confined to the cinema screen. Public stained glass, murals, posters and illustration belonged to the same working life. The later films grew out of a broad visual practice and an established production environment, not from an isolated discovery that environmental concerns could be animated.
Sources for this section: [1]
The individual artist within a broadcasting studio
Back’s short-film work included Crac!, The Man Who Planted Trees and The Mighty River. The Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards profile identifies producer Hubert Tison as a long-term collaborator and records Back’s own acknowledgement of associates at Radio-Canada. These relationships matter because a distinctive surface can make an animated film appear to have only one maker. Its soundtrack, production organisation and broadcast setting also shape how that surface becomes a film. Back’s achievement was not diminished by these contributions. They enabled a personal drawing practice to reach audiences while retaining a clear concern for place, human activity and the living environment.
Environmental imagination and a later public legacy
The Man Who Planted Trees brought Jean Giono’s story into animation and won an Oscar at the 1988 ceremony. Crac!had received the corresponding honour in 1982, and The Mighty River followed in 1993. Back also participated directly in environmental and animal-protection organisations, and continued planting trees. His life ended in 2013. Reading the activism beside the films clarifies a connection without reducing every visual decision to a slogan. Animation offered him a scale of time and transformation through which sustained care could become imaginable. The public honours and preserved works document that continuing reception, but the clearest starting point remains the particular images, stories and production relationships of the films themselves.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Frédéric Back
- Did Frédéric Back work for the National Film Board?
- The career described here centres on Radio-Canada, a separate institution from the NFB.
- When did The Man Who Planted Trees win its Oscar?
- At the 1988 Academy Awards, which honoured 1987 films.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Norman McLaren
Compare different Canadian animation practices without treating Radio-Canada and the NFB as the same studio.
- René Jodoin
Compare a Radio-Canada artist’s career with the NFB’s institutional and experimental-animation history.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
- 1. Ordre deMontréalFrédéric Back
Montréal’s biography places the Trees Oscar in 1987; the Academy ceremony and Governor General’s profile establish 1988. The festival catalogue’s 1985 label is not adopted as the release year.
- 2. Governor General’s Performing Arts AwardsFrédéric Back:Lifetime Artistic Achievement
- 3. Frédéric Back,caring togetherThe Man Who Planted Trees:Background
- 4. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesThe60thAcademy Awards
- 5. FilmfestDCThe Man Who Planted Trees:1988catalogue