Partners Trust Santa Monica Susan Kastne

Twelve years on, Bouvier grapples with Clifton’s release back into society, as well as the prospect of him finally coming off the antipsychotic drugs that have controlled his episodes. NCR looks at the harrowing case of Sean Clifton, a man gripped by psychosis who, upon hearing a voice in his head telling him to go to a mall and attack the prettiest girl he saw, proceeded to stab a complete stranger six times, nearly killing then 22-year-old Julie Bouvier. Kastner reached his filmmaking apogee with 2013’s NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, the first instalment of a final trilogy of films, which also includes 2014’s Out of Mind, Out of Sight and 2016’s NCR: Wedding Stories. “You start with, ‘this is a monster and he should be wiped off the face of the Earth,’ and it becomes, ‘well, he is out, he has served his time according to the laws of the land, so what do we do now? Stone him to death?’” “Johnny managed to make you question your basic assumptions,” adds sister Susan Kastner, a journalist, producer and former Toronto Star columnist.

But he was very good at changing people’s minds on controversial topics.” “He knew that would not be easily accepted. He also received the Gemini Awards’ Academy Achievement prize in 2007, as well as its Donald Brittain Award for best social/political documentary. He was feted with a career retrospective at Hot Docs in 2012, before later winning the festival’s Best Canadian Feature prize in 2014. And because of that, he was able to get the trust of so many people who spoke to him about their lives and their difficulties.”īeyond his quartet of Emmys - for Four Women, Fighting Back, The Lifer and the Lady and Life With Murder - Kastner’s work won plaudits throughout his half-century career. “He wouldn’t call them characters, because he treated them all as such incredible human beings and understood how they got to where they got to, in order to tell their story. “He had such integrity and respect for the people who were in his films,” recalls Silva Basmajian, a long-serving former producer at the NFB’s Ontario Studio, who retired in 2013. Time and again, Kastner eschewed populist morality, challenging viewers instead to try and empathize with murderers, rapists, pedophiles and the mentally disturbed. “My feeling watching Life with Murder or Fighting Back … it’s like being grabbed by the throat and shaken, it just doesn’t let you go.” “He made films that were absolutely visceral and so emotional, and that at their strongest were almost unbearable,” reflects John’s nephew Jamie Kastner, who is also a documentarian. And in 2010’s Life With Murder, we meet an Ontario couple struggling to accept their son back into the family after murdering his own sister. 1997’s nuanced and challenging Hunting Bobby Oatway, meanwhile, questions whether a pedophile who molested his own children can ever truly be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society.Ģ006’s Monster in the Family follows notorious criminal Martin Ferrier’s complex relationship with his controversial mother. In 1984’s The Lifer and the Lady, we see imprisoned violent offender Ron Cooney’s life change before his eyes, as he falls in love with a prison volunteer. Staunch and steadfast in his approach and pursuit, but compassionate and patient with his onscreen subjects, he sought out and portrayed those who had fallen between the gaps of society. He leaves behind a career that saw him work with the CBC, TVO and the National Film Board (NFB) to produce a portfolio of brilliant and challenging non-fiction work centring on crime, punishment and redemption.įrom 1978’s Emmy-winning breast cancer investigation Four Women, made for the CBC’s current affairs unit The Fifth Estate, through to his final trilogy of groundbreaking mental-health films, Kastner produced a stunning repertoire of bold, thought-provoking documentaries. The 73-year-old passed away at his home in Toronto in the arms of his partner of 20 years, following a year-long battle with illness. 21 robbed Canada of one of its most gifted documentary filmmakers. A four-time Emmy Award-winner, his death on Nov.

Photo by Adam Benzineīut Nichols’ rebuff was to be Canada’s gain as, over the next five decades, Kastner instead went on to produce some of our country’s most important cinema and television. How different life might have been had John landed the role and pursued the path of a thespian. On the back of their success, John and Peter both travelled to Los Angeles to audition, unsuccessfully, for a key part in Nichols’ 1967 classic The Graduate.

Partners Trust Santa Monica Susan Kastne