''There Are No Fakes'' is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Jamie Kastner and released in 2019. Starting with musician Kevin Hearn's lawsuit against the Maslak McLeod Gallery after being informed that a

Norval Morrisseau Norval Morrisseau (March 14, 1932 – December 4, 2007), also known as Copper Thunderbird, was an Indigenous Canadian artist from the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation. Known as the "Picasso of the North", Morrisseau created works depi ...

painting he had purchased appeared to be a

forgery Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbidd ...

, the film expands into an exposé of a significant art fraud ring that has produced many fake Morrisseau paintings through the use of forced

child labour Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such e ...

sweatshop A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...

s, in which some of Morrisseau's own surviving family members are complicit; by some estimates, there may be up to 10 times as much fake Morrisseau art on the market as real work. At the time of the film's release, Hearn's lawsuit had been dismissed by the courts on the grounds that he could not definitively prove that the painting was fake; in September 2019, the decision was overturned by the

Ontario Court of Appeal The Court of Appeal for Ontario (frequently referred to as the Ontario Court of Appeal or ONCA) is the appellate court for the province of Ontario, Canada. The seat of the court is Osgoode Hall in downtown Toronto, also the seat of the Law Societ ...

, which awarded Hearn $60,000 on the grounds that the legal onus was actually on the gallery owner to prove that the painting was real, which he also could not do. The film premiered at the

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June ...

in 2019. It received selected other theatrical screenings through 2019, including at the

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Bev ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, the

Glenbow Museum The Glenbow Museum is an art and history regional museum in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The museum focuses on Western Canadian history and culture, including Indigenous perspectives. The Glenbow was established as a private non-profi ...

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

and the

Thunder Bay Art Gallery The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is Northern Ontario's largest art gallery specializing in the work of contemporary Indigenous artists. It is located on the campus of Confederation College in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is ...

Thunder Bay Thunder Bay is a city in and the seat of Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada. It is the most populous municipality in Northwestern Ontario and the second most populous (after Greater Sudbury) municipality in Northern Ontario; its population ...

. It had its television premiere on

TVOntario TVO Media Education Group (often abbreviated as TVO and stylized on-air as tvo) is a publicly funded English-language educational television network and media organization serving the Canadian province of Ontario. It is operated by the Ontario ...

on February 1, 2020.

Reception

''There Are No Fakes'' was released on April 29, 2019 at the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival. Critical reception to the film was varied. The Winnipeg Free Press says that despite being "overly long" at points, it is "is a stunning picture of colonial exploitation and stolen Indigenous patrimony". The Globe and Mail described ''There Are No Fakes'' as "a shocking tale of counterfeit art, sexual abuse and colonialist exploitation." L.A Hawbaker offered in their review for ''

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, fi ...

'' that Kastner uses ''There Are No Fakes'' to emphasize the fact that those benefitting from Morriseau's work were white men. They then go on to say that "the crimes that took place at the Bingwi reserve are just a small sampling of the societal harm done to indigenous populations in Canada". In 2023, the Ontario Provincial Police filed for a court order demanding that Kastner turn over all of the film's raw footage in order to assist in their investigation.Jamie Kastner
"In the Morrisseau art fraud case, police should let documentary filmmakers do our jobs – and that includes protecting footage"
''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'', March 9, 2023.

Awards

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 8674506 2019 films 2019 documentary films Canadian documentary films Documentary films about organized crime Documentary films about First Nations Films about art forgery Films directed by Jamie Kastner 2010s English-language films 2010s Canadian films