by MARC APOLLONIO

A crowd of nearly 70 independent filmmakers and enthusiasts gathered at the Cinémathèque’s Bistro-SAQ last Saturday, Feb. 25, to sip coffee, foreign beer and fine wines while giving an ear to speakers who discussed the state of film in Quebec. Le Grand Rendez-vous des indépendents, as the forum was called, was part of the 24th Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, a 10-day festival of film de chez nous. The Cinema Coalition, an organization that brings together independent filmmakers, put the discussion forum together to address obstacles within the trade.

These obstacles, which mostly revolve around funding, vary among the different categories of film. For makers of feature-length fiction, for example, there are performance envelopes. These envelopes guarantee funding from Telefilm Canada, the main federal cultural development body, for filmmakers with high box office profits. By 2005, 75 per cent of Telefilm’s funding for French-language projects was being distributed through this competition. Though a portion of the profits from envelope-funded films are reinvested in less commercially successful productions, Philippe Falardeau, a representative of l’Association des réalisateurs et réalisatrices du Québec, (ARRQ), said this is not enough.

“We don’t give a gold medal winner of an Olympic sprint the right to start out 10 metres ahead at the next race, yet that’s exactly what’s happening in cinema,” he said.

In the cutting room

Speaking at le Grand Rendez-vous, Falardeau said that low-budget yet critically acclaimed films like Gaz Bar Blues can’t compete for envelopes against films like The Rocket, the story of Maurice Richard. Alliance Atlantis, The Rocket’s distributor, spent $1.9-million in promotions for the movie, he says.

Denys Desjardins, a filmmaker and Coalition member, also critiques the concentration of funds in big-budget productions.

“We want more money to go to a greater number of films, not an enormous amount of money going to few films,” he says.

As part of the Coalition, Desjardins is also directing criticism at what he perceives as a lack of transparency on the part of the NFB.

In November 2004, Liza Frulla, then-Canadian Heritage Minister, announced a five per cent cut to the major Canadian film and TV agencies. The NFB, Quebec culture funders SODEC and Telefilm had to engage in a housekeeping rite as routine as spring-cleaning: rearrange spending to absorb cuts.

In March 2005, the NFB announced its plan for dealing with their reduced budget. Alongside significant administrative changes, 28 positions would be cut over the next few years.

Desjardins says that in April 2005, he and other filmmakers spoke with NFB chair Jacques Bensimon about funding budgets. “He didn’t want to tell us. He said that he didn’t have us to answer to,” Desjardins says.

The Cinema Coalition, feeling that filmmakers were left in the dark about the changes, filed an Access to Information request with the film board last May. Among items specifically motivating the request are concerns about the budgets of the NFB’s two principal funding programs for emerging filmmakers, the Aide au cinéma indépendant Canada(ACIC) and the Filmmakers Assistance Program (FAP). Though they remain separate in function, the NFB merged the ACIC and FAP administrations to adapt to the cuts. The Coalition wants to know if their budgets were reduced in the process.

“If they’re changing the way they help emerging filmmakers, the filmmakers should be consulted,” says Matthew Hodgins, the Coalition member who filed the request.

The request is currently on hold as the group figures out how they’ll get the necessary money to fund it to completion.

Success stories still coming

In an e-mail interview with the Mirror, NFB senior publicist Karen Marginson says the ACIC and FAP budgets were not reduced.

“Administrative changes and cost-savings did not reduce the funding available to filmmakers,” she writes. She added that ACIC and FAP will provide $1.2-million to filmmakers in Quebec this year.

“The NFB remains committed to auteur-driven, social-issue filmmaking,” she writes, illustrating her point with the examples of Hardwood and Smudge, two recent films created by emerging filmmakers with help from the NFB. Hardwood, by first-time director Hubert Davis, was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Documentary Short category last year. Gail Maurice’s Smudge, another short doc, played at the Sundance film festival this year.