Now Playing

There Are No Fakes

Thu & Fri, Aug 15 & 16 / 7 pm
Sat, Aug 17 / 2:30 pm & 7 pm
Sun, Aug 18 / 7 pm
Directed by Jamie Kastner
2019, Canada, 114 min

Born in 1931, Norval Morrisseau was the first Indigenous Canadian artist to be taken seriously by the European art world. By the turn of the 21st Century his work commanded tens of thousands of dollars. So when Barenaked Ladies keyboardist, and part-time art collector, Kevin Hearn learned that his own prized Morrisseau painting was probably a forgery, he decided to sue the gallery that sold it to him. As Jamie Kastner’s jaw-dropping doc reveals, there was a cottage industry in fake Morrisseaus, an industry that flourished unchecked for years. In the course of the film we learn a lot about Morrisseau’s art, but more about the power of money, exploitation, and racism. The art market is exposed as, at best, a fractionally more refined variation on the drug trade.

Reviews

A mesmerizing art-world exposé. There Are No Fakes can be seen as a nuts-and-bolts investigation of what one gallery owner calls “a massive art scam,” but there’s something else boiling underneath – an understanding of, and revulsion at, the way Canada’s white power structure consumes and perverts the work of Indigenous artists, even after they’re gone.
- Norm Wilner, Now Weekly
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ABOUT US

The Winnipeg Film Group is an artist-run education, production, exhibition and distribution centre committed to promoting the art of cinema.
our location

We’re located in the heart of Winnipeg's historic Exchange District in the Artspace building. We are across the street from Old Market Square at the corner of Arthur Street and Bannatyne - one block west of Main.

The Winnipeg Film Group is located on Treaty 1 Territory and on the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene Peoples and in the homeland of the Métis Nation. We offer our respect and gratitude to the traditional caretakers of this land.

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