There Are No Fakes

Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Art Fraud

“Ijust wanted to buy a painting,” says musician Kevin Hearn (Barenaked Ladies, Rheostatics) in the film There Are No Fakes. Little did he know when he purchased what he thought was a Norval Morrisseau original that he would find himself in the midst of an art fraud ring with its hub in Thunder Bay.

After learning his painting was a fake, Hearn sued the Toronto gallery that sold it to him. In the lengthy legal battle that ensued, he came to know the dark side of the art world. When he pitched his story as a documentary to friend and filmmaker Jamie Kastner, Kastner said yes immediately. “It’s such an incredible story,” says Kastner. “It’s hard to get your head around—there are so many tentacles to it when you first hear it.” As Kastner describes, the film starts out being about an art crime, but ends up providing a snapshot of Canada today. “It is an art fraud story, it is a crime story. I think it’s a story about colonialism, but latter-day colonialism in a way you can see it playing out in front of your eyes,” he says.

From the beginning, Kastner saw the story that Hearn and his lawyer shared with him as one side of the tale, so he set out to find the other. The film starts by introducing the viewer to an eclectic cast of characters that includes art dealers with purported and legitimate expertise in Morrisseau’s art, and art scholars. Just when you think the story could not get any more bizarre, it takes a sharp turn north and introduces the viewer to people directly involved in painting forgeries under oppressive and abusive conditions in Thunder Bay.

“I prefer to get primary source material, so that means conflicting points of view and meeting some people who I might personally find unsavoury or threatening, but it’s my job to take a deep breath and go there for the sake of getting to the truth,” says Kastner. To describe the stories he uncovers in Thunder Bay as incredible is an understatement. They are shocking and deeply disturbing in their commentary on greed, corruption, and abuse.

Kastner says that he always knew there were important elements of the fraud ring story in Thunder Bay, but “it was one thing to have heard about them second-hand—it was another thing when I started meeting these people and hearing their incredible testimony myself. I was floored by the people, by their stories, and by their real courage,” he says.

Almost a year after the film’s 2019 release, the Thunder Bay police opened an investigation into an art fraud ring involving the work of Norval Morrisseau. According to an Ontario Provincial Police spokesperson, the investigation remains underway and is being led by the OPP working in conjunction with city police.

There Are No Fakes earned six 2021 Canadian Screen Awards nominations and is available via TVO.org, the Knowledge Network, and Amazon Prime Video. The soundtrack by Kevin Hearn is available via iTunes and Spotify.