Elizabeth Klinck Receives Academy Board Tribute for Achievements in Archival Research

Janice Tufford and Elizabeth Klinck at the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Awards in March.

Archive researcher and producer Elizabeth Klinck received an Academy Board of Directors Tribute at the 2019 Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Awards at the end of March.

“Elizabeth Klinck is the filmmaker’s secret weapon",” said producer Janice Tufford in her introduction at the awards ceremony. “In her role as Archive Producer, she’s worked on hundreds of films. She’s renowned for her ability to forage in the far corners of the world to find just the perfect image or piece of music. The directors and producers who come calling for her services -- everyone from Sarah Polley to Werner Herzog -- attest that their films are incomplete without her presence.”

Some of notable projects Klinck has worked on over her thirty year career include Werner Herzog's Into the Inferno; Thorsten Schütte's Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words; Barry Arvich's Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story; Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell; Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir's Innsaei; and Neil Diamond's Reel Injun.

Klinck has has contributed to Emmy, Peabody and Academy Award-winning films and has herself been nominated for an Emmy Award in the craft of research. She has won the 2014, 2015 and 2017 Barbara Sears Award for Best Visual Research from the Canadian Screen Awards. In 2015 she won a Prix Gemeaux for her work on Apocalypse World One and in 2010 she won a Gemini for Best Visual Research for her work on Reel Injun. She has also won a Yorkton Golden Sheaf, been nominated on three occasions for Best Visual Researcher at the FOCAL Awards in the United Kingdom and was honored with the FOCAL International Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. She is also the founding chairperson of the Visual Researchers' Society of Canada.

“Elizabeth is one of the unsung heroes of Canada’s screen industry,” said Tufford. “Because of her tireless work, her legendary skills and her courtesies to all, she is respected and adored by countless colleagues in this country and throughout the world. She’s a stellar human being and quite simply ‘a national treasure’.”