Filmmaker Alan King, whose documentaries include Warrendale, Who Has Seen the Wind, A Married Couple and EMPz 4 Life, died last week. Canadian filmmakers recalled his influence on the world of film in tributes Monday. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Luminaries including Atom Egoyan, Sarah Polley and Gordon Pinsent paid tribute Monday to director Allan King, a groundbreaking filmmaker known for his willingness to delve deeply into dark and painful human stories.

Among two dozen speakers who took the podium at a Toronto auditorium was Fred Parker, a filmmaker who decided to follow in King's footsteps after meeting him as a 13-year-old boy at Warrendale, a Toronto institution for troubled children that formed the backdrop for King's shocking 1967 film of the same name.

"I never once saw him directing in an obvious way, it was almost as if he used telepathy to communicate with the crew," Parker recalled of the remarkable shoot, which helped pioneer the technique that came to be known as cinema verité.

"I watched this patrician figure, I actually studied this man — Allan King — and it didn't take long before I decided I really liked what I saw and I actually wanted to be Allan King. I'm sure if Allan had been a hockey player, I would have gladly worn his jersey complete with name and number and I would have slept in it. Take that, Freud," he said to laughter from the crowd.

'I'm sure if Allan had been a hockey player, I would have gladly worn his jersey complete with name and number and I would have slept in it.' —Fred Parker, filmmaker

At age 15, Parker said he wrote King a letter, telling his hero that he'd like to make films, too. King immediately invited Parker to work for him.

Others who worked and lived with King spoke of the man's unflagging curiosity about the world, a fanatical passion for classical music, and a tender love for his family.

They included Pinsent, who appeared in King's 1977 feature film, Who Has Seen the Wind, and family members including King's youngest son, August Murphy-King.

Murphy-King said his father taught him to never be afraid of something new and to never give up.

"It will always be his simple kindness and gentle nature that I will remember — preparing a tea and a hot chocolate on mornings for my mother and I, surprising me with pancakes on Saturday morning," Murphy-King told more than 400 people in the audience. "That was my dad."

Steve Gravestock, a programmer with the Toronto International Film Festival, spoke of "a groundbreaking artist who not only helped forge the way we view the world [but] helped break the foundation for an industry which, I think, wouldn't have existed without his efforts."

"He was a true pioneer, a man who every filmmaker in Canada owes an enormous debt to," said Gravestock, the sparse stage behind him adorned simply with a bouquet of white flowers and a large black and white photo of King — peering into the viewer of film camera — projected onto a screen.

'He was a true pioneer, a man who every filmmaker in Canada owes an enormous debt to.'—Steve Gravestock, TIFF

King passed away last week at the age of 79. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumour earlier this year.

His 1967 documentary Warrendale was a monumental work that took viewers on a harrowing journey into a home for troubled children, while his 1969 film, A Married Couple, laid bare the ugliest truths of a crumbling marriage.

In both films, King pioneered a film technique known as cinema verité, or "cinema of truth," a realistic style of filmmaking that shied away from interviews, music, narration or sound effects.

King referred to his technique as "actuality drama," and immersed himself in the lives of his subjects in a way little seen before."

Polley said after the memorial that she knew King when she was a child actress while working on the TV series, Road to Avonlea, which King directed in the early '90s.

"It was later in my early 20s that I discovered his work as a documentary filmmaker," said Polley, who went on to direct the Oscar-nominated feature, Away From Her, in 2006.

"He's the only filmmaker that I've seen, I think, all of his films. I'm not actually a cinephile but in the case of Allan King I am. I think there's so many of his films that have really changed the way I look at the world in a really permanent way."

King's later documentaries include 2003's Dying at Grace, 2005's Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company and 2006's EMPz 4 Life.

Egoyan noted after the memorial that King signed his application into the Director's Guild of Canada in the mid-'80s. Egoyan called King an "inspiring figure."

"He was an incredible filmmaker, he was incredibly curious, a genuine patrician, he was full of humanity, he was able to express that at all times and I will sorely miss him like everyone else here."