Source : Montreal Gazette

Group set to air grievances about change in Telefilm Canada's funding policy

Several of Quebec's top film producers - including Les Invasions barbares' Denise Robert and La Grande seduction's Roger Frappier - are meeting the press this morning to air their grievances against federal film funding agency Telefilm Canada. They are unhappy with a recent Telefilm decision to change the formula it uses to reward producers whose films have had success at the box office.

Telefilm's performance program doles out money to producers based on their previous success at the box office and the formula had Telefilm giving French-language producers 50 cents for each dollar earned at the box office. Now Telefilm is reducing that to 34 cents for each dollar, which will significantly reduce the money available to producers.

It will remain at 86 cents for English-Canadian producers. The Quebec producers feel they are being punished for their recent success.

Last year was a record one for homegrown cinema in la belle province, with local films grabbing 20 per cent of the total box-office action. Just five or six years ago, Quebec film accounted for roughly 5 per cent of ticket sales here.

In short, the boffo ticket sales mean Telefilm would have had to increase the money in its performance program. To avoid that, it has reduced the rate for French-language producers.

Telefilm Canada is under increasing fire in Quebec for its policy of trying to support more commercial films, but Telefilm executive director Richard Stursberg said yesterday he's not too concerned that many in the industry here are upset.

Stursberg said the real test for the initiative is the public reaction to the films and he notes with some pride that Quebecois movies are selling tickets like never before.

Many of Quebec's top directors wrote an open letter to Telefilm in December complaining that the policy ignored auteur cinema and boosted formulaic, mainstream films. Now it's the province's producers who are also dissatisfied with the federal agency.

Stursberg said Telefilm has to strike a balance between two types of Telefilm funding - the performance side, which automatically gives cash to successful producers on an annual basis, and the selective side, which rewards producers on the merit of the submitted project.

"It's about finding a balance to keep going what has really been a fantastic experience," Stursberg said. "What's surprising to me is that we have this level of controversy after the best year in history. Everybody is out there talking about how they'd like to have it some other way.

"Despite the fact that everything is going extremely well. And it's gone well not just in terms of the box-office numbers, but also in terms of the artistic success of the films. At the end of the day, the measure of our success is not, 'Are we making the directors and producers happy?' The measure of our success is, 'Are we making the public happy? Are we making films the public wants to see?' "

The controversy first arose in December when the film milieu learned that 75 per cent of Telefilm's feature-film cash was going to be handed out as part of the performance program, going to producers purely based on their previous films ' box-office sales.

Late last month, Telefilm announced that it was taking $4 million from its last-year revenues in order to add cash to the selective side. This was an attempt to respond to the concerns of the directors who feared for the future of auteur filmmaking.

But that decision met with criticism from several Quebec producers who felt those revenues should be returned to them.

Stursberg also underlined that the producers who receive money from the performance program are also eligible to apply for funds from the selective program.

It is also an oversimplification to say the performance side produces commercial flicks and the selective is for art films, Stursberg added.

He pointed out that the two Quebec hits of the past year, Les Invasions barbares and La Grande seduction, both straddle the line between auteur and more commercial filmmaking.

© The Gazette