Magnus Isacsson (1948 – August 2, 2012) was a Canadian documentary filmmaker whose films investigated contemporary political issues and topics in social activism.
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Early life and television career
Isacsson was born in Sweden in 1948. His father founded and ran an art school and his mother taught children with learning disabilities. Isacsson first became involved with photography, with photographs exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm when he was 18 years old. He immigrated to Canada in 1970. He first worked as a radio producer for Sveriges Radio and the CBC, before moving into television to direct reports for the English– and French-language CBC television networks, for such programs as The Fifth Estate and Le Point.
Film career
Frustrated by the creative constraints of working for TV networks, Isacsson began a career as an independent filmmaker in 1986. His film Uranium, the story of radioactive contamination on Native land by Canada's uranium mines, won a Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton Film Festival in 1991; Power, a feature-length chronicle of the Cree's five-year struggle against the Great Whale Hydro Project in Northern Quebec, received the award for Best Documentary at the International Environmental Film Festival in Paris (1997), among other accolades and nominations. The Choir Boys (Enfants de chœur !), a film about the journey of a choir of homeless men in Montreal, won the award for Best Documentary at the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2000.