Veteran Canadian Film Producer Harry Gulkin Dies at 90

Harry Gulkin, best known for producing classic Canadian films like Lies My Father Told Me and Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, has died. He was 90.

Gulkin, who was also revealed to be the father of Hollywood actress and director Sarah Polley in a 2012 documentary, died Monday in Montreal after a bout of pneumonia.

“We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Harry Gulkin. We will always remember him for his outstanding vision and undeniable contribution to the film community. May he rest in peace,” the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television said Tuesday on Twitter.

Born on Nov. 14, 1927, in Montreal, Gulkin started producing films in 1975 with director Jan Kadar’s Lies My Father Told Me. That feature earned screenwriter Ted Allan an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.

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Gulkin followed that up in 1978 with another two features, Lionel Chetwynd’s Two Solitudes, which starred Stacy Keach and Jean-Pierre Aumont, and Theodore Flicker’s Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, based on a Mordecai Richler novel.

Gulkin also produced Mort Ransen’s 1985 feature Bayo. In 1987, he became a project manager at SODEC, the Quebec film funding agency, and also served as president and chairman of the Canadian Film Institute, whose fortunes he turned around.

“It is fair to say that without Harry, the organization would not have survived. His hard work, unerring good judgment, high ethical standards, and ability to find the humor in the direst of situations were central as a small team worked to rebuild the CFI,” Frank Taylor, the organization’s current board chair, said in a statement on news of Gulkin’s death.

In her 2012 documentary Stories We Tell, Polley revealed Gulkin to be her biological father through an earlier affair with her married mother, Diane Elizabeth Polley.