Filmmaker produced Lies My Father Told Me
Montreal-born filmmaker Harry Gulkin, best known for the 1975 movie, Lies My Father Told Me, is being remembered as a passionate, generous and funny man who was a great defender of the film industry.
Gulkin died Monday of pneumonia at the age of 90.
Johanne Larue of SODEC, a Quebec government arts funding agency, knew Gulkin for more than 30 years and said he was a very colourful character who loved life.
“He was a passionate, generous man, who took to heart all the projects that fell in his lap,” said Larue in an emotional interview.
She first met Gulkin when he taught her screenwriting while she attended a Montreal university in the 1980s.
“He knew how to understand and defend [projects],” Larue added. “He was a great orator, like a lawyer defending a cause.”
Gulkin joined SODEC in 1987 and spent 20 years there. He and Larue, 56, often worked together on film projects.
She said Gulkin was adamant about putting the reality of anglophone Quebecers on the screen.
“Usually many people, when they shoot in English, these films become Canadian or they become American look-alikes,” she said. “But Harry’s productions were truly about the experiences of anglophone Quebecers . . . [and] I think that’s the most important thing that he gave us.”
Larue teared up when she described Gulkin as “a unique and incredibly funny guy.”
Lies My Father Told Me, which follows a young boy’s close friendship with his Jewish grandfather in the 1920s, picked up a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Gulkin also received a special Genie award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television in 2008.
His daughter, Cathy Gulkin, 63, said in an email: “It’s said that every successful woman has a supportive and encouraging father behind her,” she wrote. “And my dad was both those things.”
She said he let her know she could be anything she wanted to be when she grew up.
When she announced at age seven she wanted to be an astronomer, he went out and bought her several books about the stars and planets.
“When I lost my way a little in my early 20s, he took me aside and read me the riot act,” she recalled.
“He demanded to know what career I was going to pursue, and I blurted out filmmaker,” which she became.