March 28, 2005

LuAnn LaSalle

MONTREAL -- Canadian filmmaker Robin Spry, known for his portrayal of the 1970 October Crisis, touched the spectrum of his industry as a documentary maker, director, writer and producer in film and television.

Spry, 65, died in a car accident early Monday on a Montreal street.

He was born in Toronto and was a graduate of Oxford and the London School of Economics.

He started his career in 1964 at the National Film Board. He has been described as one of the most important documentary filmmakers at the NFB in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In his early career he touched on such subjects as abortion and youth rebellion.

Action: The October Crisis of 1970 was made while he was at the NFB. The film follows the events when the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) terrorists kidnapped British diplomat James Cross and Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte.

"He was there with his camera, his crew," said his sister, Lib Spry, adding she didn't know what he personally felt about that period in Canadian-Quebec history.

The Canadian-based Film Reference Library's website says Spry didn't question the political motivations involved.

"Made when the events were still reasonably fresh, the film was generally admired in English Canada as a 'balanced' recreation of the crisis," the website says. "Francophone Quebecois (and a few critics in English Canada) found the film decidedly biased, offering little but the rhetoric of politicians to aid understanding."

Film columnist Michel Coulombe said Spry gave award-winning Quebec producer Denise Robert one of her first opportunities and he also once worked in his early days with Oscar-winner Denys Arcand on a documentary.

"He was one of those rare anglophones who was really integrated into film production in Quebec," Coulombe told Radio-Canada's all-news channel, RDI.

Other movies included Drying Up the Streets in 1976 and he co-wrote and directed Suzanne in 1980.

Spry has won numerous Canadian cinema and television awards, including 10 Genie Awards and three Gemini Awards. He also won a British Academy Award.

His career over five decades also included producing movies and television movies, miniseries and TV programs. He produced the movies Student Seduction (2003) and the Myth of the Male Orgasm (1993). His television credits include the series The Lost World and Student Bodies.

In the 1980s and '90s, Spry was president of Telescene, a major Montreal production house.

Spry's award-winning 1995 miniseries Hiroshima followed the story of how the first atomic bomb was developed and starred Canadian Kenneth Walsh as U.S. President Harry Truman.

Lib Spry said she remembers her brother most as being a Canadian filmmaker who did "everything in his power to get work for the people in his community."

"He was an amazing man, he was a genius, he was very giving," she said, adding the family had few details of the accident.

Fellow producer Robert Wertheimer of Toronto-based Jonsworth Productions said he and Spry co-produced the new sci-fi series Charlie Jade, debuting on Space: The Imagination Station on April 16.

Wertheimer said Spry was the only person in the industry who didn't care who you were, that he would give you a chance based on what you knew and what you had to say if you had a good idea.

"He was one of the few institutions here who got things done, who was respected in the community."

Spry also leaves his son Jeremy, daughter Zoe, ex-wife Carmel Dumas and his brother Richard.

Funeral arrangements weren't immediately clear.