Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail

Notes for a Film About Donna & Gail is a Canadian drama film, directed by Don Owen and released in 1966.[1] The film centres on Donna (Michèle Chicoine) and Gail (Jackie Burroughs), two young women who work together at a dress factory and live together as roommates, tracing the evolution and decline of their friendship in a documentary-style format.[1] The film makes use of the then-novel device of an unreliable narrator,[1] ultimately revealing that the film is much more about the narrator's skewed perceptions of the women's relationship than it is about the women themselves.[2] It was inspired in part by the contemporaneous films of Jean-Luc Godard.[1]

The characters of Donna and Gail recurred in Owen's 1967 feature film The Ernie Game.[3] Prior to the release of The Ernie Game, in which Donna and Gail were involved in a love triangle with Alexis Kanner's Ernie, some critics who had seen only Notes perceived Donna and Gail as being in a quasi-lesbian relationship; however, Owen demurred on this perception by saying "I really don't know, because, well, what is a lesbian relationship?"[4]

The film won a Canadian Film Award in the General Information category at the 19th Canadian Film Awards in 1967.[5]