Bonnie Sherr Klein

Early life and education

Bonnie Sherr Klein came into the world in 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the child of working-class Jewish parents. Her early schooling took place in public institutions, but for high school she attended Akiba Hebrew Academy. She went on to Barnard College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in American studies and deepened her involvement in the Civil Rights and anti-nuclear movements. After spending a year teaching high school, she entered Stanford University's MA program in theatre.

A presentation there by Claude Jutra and Marcel Carrière from the National Film Board of Canada inspired her to shift her focus from theatre to film. Her thesis film, For All My Students, was completed under the supervision of visiting professor George C. Stoney and received funding from the US Department of Education.

Following graduation, she moved to New York to assist with Stoney's film projects and built experience as a freelance editor. In 1967, she and her husband Michael Klein relocated to Montreal as resisters to the Vietnam War, and she soon began working with the NFB. Her father died in 1969.

Career

John Kemeny brought Klein into the NFB's Challenge For Change program. When Kemeny resigned a year later, she recommended her mentor George C. Stoney, who then led the program until 1970. Within Challenge for Change, Klein co-directed Organizing for Power: The Alinsky Approach, a five-part film series centered on community organizer Saul Alinsky. Together with Dorothy Todd Hénaut, she launched the first citizens' community video project, VTR St-Jacques, which supplied equipment and training to residents of one of Montreal's poorest neighborhoods to encourage community dialogue and organizing.

A short documentary also came from Klein and Hénaut's collaboration. Additional projects under Challenge for Change included Citizen's Medicine and Little Burgundy. In 1970, Klein moved to Rochester, New York, and founded Portable Channel, a community-access media and documentary centre tied to the guerilla television movement and supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. In 1975, Kathleen Shannon invited her to join the newly formed Studio D, the women's unit of the NFB.

As one of the first film directors assigned to the studio, Klein spent considerable time organizing training programs, developing film series, and pushing for feminist film productions. In 1981, she created Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography, which went on to become one of the NFB's most popular and commercially successful films.

Honours

Klein received a lifetime achievement award from Women in Film and Television Toronto and a Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case. The YWCA named her a Woman of Distinction in 1996. In 2012, she was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada, with the Governor General stating she used her talents to shed light on social issues and give voice to the voiceless. Honorary Doctor of Law degrees were awarded to her by Ryerson University in 2003 and the University of British Columbia in 2014.