Mort Ransen (August 16, 1933 – September 4, 2021) was a Canadian film and television director, editor, screenwriter and producer, best known for his Genie Award-winning 1995 film Margaret's Museum.[1]
Ransen was born Moishe Socoransky to Ukrainian immigrants, the youngest of four children in the Yiddish-speaking household of Shimmel and Fanny (née Bordoff) Socoransky. He attended Baron Byng High School, where a teacher suggested that he pursue a career in acting. He left school after grade nine and went to New York, where he studied under the highly-regarded acting teacher Peggy Feury. He returned to Montreal, changed his name and began building an acting and directing career in theatre.[2]
In 1960, Ransen was hired by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Over the next 24 years, he would direct, write, edit and/or produce 21 films for the NFB. He was also teaching film studies classes at McGill University, where he gave his students cameras to create the celebrated 1968 film Christopher's Movie Matinee. He left the NFB in 1984 and directed film and TV projects for other producers. He would then create two additional films produced by the NFB: Ah... the Money, the Money, the Money: The Battle for Saltspring, and his most successful film, Margaret's Museum.[3]
Ransen was also credited for many years as director of the 1969 documentary film You Are on Indian Land.[4] As a professional filmmaker and NFB employee, he had assisted film student Mike Kanentakeron Mitchell in making the film, but NFB policy at that time led to Ransen being credited as the director rather than Mitchell.[4] Ransen always opposed that, saying that it was properly Mitchell's film, and the film's directorial credit was reassigned to Mitchell in 2017.[4]
In 1997, Ransen moved to Salt Spring Island, British Columbia to live as a (self-described) 'hippie'. He did some theatre work and formed his own company, Ranfilm Productions, through which he created three more films, including the critically-acclaimed My Father's Angel.
Ransen was married twice and had four children. He had been with his partner, theatre director Libby Mason, since 2000.
After developing dementia, Ransen spent the last year of his life in a care home and died in Saltspring Island’s Lady Minto/Gulf Islands Hospital on September 4, 2021.[5]
