A record 277 short films were submitted to the 1998 Perspective Canada program, a marked increase over last year’s 203 total.

According to Perspective Canada programmer Helen Du Tois, along with the increased number of short submissions is a new level of storytelling and technical expertise. The high quality of the entries led to an expansion of the shorts lineup to 42 films, up from 31 last year.

Of the 1998 crop of shorts, the majority hail from Ontario, which has 20 films in the program, followed by Quebec (eight), British Columbia and Alberta (three each), Manitoba and Newfoundland (two apiece), and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (one each), as well as a film from a Canadian director living in the u.s.

In addition to arts councils, which provide much of the financial support for short films, the funding programs set up specifically to nurture new talent through short filmmaking efforts are widely represented in Perspective Canada.

They include Manitoba Film and Sound’s Prairie Waves program, which sponsors one half-hour film per year; the National Screen Institute’s Drama Prize program, awarded annually to six projects from across Canada; the Canadian Film Centre, which produces up to six shorts per year; and Bravo!Fact, which has awarded 158 grants worth $2.5 million since its launch in 1996.

Other funding sources include KickStart, the Ontario Film Development Corporation’s Calling Card Program, sodec and the National Film Board’s Filmmakers Assistance Program.

Broadcasters such as cbc, Knowledge Network, Bravo! and wtn have licensed most of the projects in this year’s lineup.

An interesting trend in the ’98 program is the many films from directors with long track records in the short format – Mike Hoolboom, Daniel MacIvor, Gary Yates and Ann Marie Fleming – as well as feature filmmakers – Bruce McDonald, Judith Doyle and Michael McNamara, for example, returning to their roots in short films.

Here some of the directors with shorts in this year’s program discuss their reasons for sticking with the format (and in the case of feature filmmakers, why they returned to shorts), where shorts and features fit into their career path, and how the two mediums are playing out in their upcoming projects.

– Nathan Garfinkle – Sploosh

Sploosh is the second short film for b.c. director Nathan Garfinkle. His first, This Way Up, has screened at more than 20 international film festivals and won numerous awards including best alternative film at The Breckenridge Festival of Film and The Jury Award for best short drama at Film Fest New Haven.

The film has been sold to the Knowledge Network and pbs stations in Seattle and San Francisco.

This Way Up, an $80,000 15-minute film, was financed with a $10,000 KickStart prize, the Canada Council and the B.C. Cultural Association, whereas Sploosh, a three-and-a-half-minute 35mm film, was produced for $45,000 and financed entirely out of Garfinkle’s own pocket.

Sploosh is an ironic account of five tourists who think they have seen the infamous lake monster Ogopogo, only to discover it has seen them first and gobbles all but one up for dinner. The tourist who manages to escape and get a photo of the creature is then abducted by aliens.

The film was written by Kellie Benz, director of The Second Coming, a short film which garnered notoriety on the festival circuit a year ago for its portayal of a drunken girl’s seduction of Jesus Christ.

So far, Sploosh has been sold to cbc’s Reflections series. Its 1998 festival screenings include the Atlantic Film Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Beach Blanket Film Festival in Penticton, b.c., Cinefest in Sudbury, Ont., One Reel Film Festival at Bumbershoot and the Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival.

Garfinkle is developing a third short, Mad Dog, a humorous eight minutes based on his encounters with vicious canines while delivering newspapers as a kid.

Once this film is wrapped, Garfinkle says he will have enough experience under his belt to scout around for a script to make his feature directorial debut.

‘A feature is a large undertaking, and if you are going to do it right you have to hone your skills,’ says Garfinkle. ‘You have to prove yourself a worthy filmmaker by making a number of short films in different styles before anyone – particularly funding agencies – will trust your ability to make a feature.’

– Gary Yates – Harlan and Fiona

Gary Yates has made over 12 short films during his career as a stage actor and director/producer of tv documentaries and variety shows.

In 1994, Yates’ short film Without Rockets was shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination and was in the running for a Genie Award. His latest effort, the half-hour drama Harlan and Fiona, is actually a trailer for what will be his first feature, Seven Times Lucky, to be coproduced with Ian Hanford.

Recognizing the difficulty of getting a low-budget feature off the ground, Winnipeg-based Yates decided the best strategy was to produce a 21-minute trailer to shop the project.

The film was shot for $120,000 with the financial help of Manitoba Film and Sound’s Prairie Wave program, the nfb’s faps program, training dollars from the Manitoba Motion Picture Industries Association and a cbc presale.

Yates anticipates going back to these agencies for help in financing the feature.

The trailer was screened for Telefilm and Yates has picked up development money to write the first draft of the script.

He describes the film as ‘an anti-Christmas, race-track heist movie’ about an unlikely pair of con artists – a middle-aged man and a young girl, ‘a 17-year-old sweetheart with the heart of a peach pit.’ The pair concoct an elaborate scheme to con another group of swindlers.

The Harlan and Fiona trailer has already started the film off on a strong footing. It picked up the best short drama award at Yorkton and has been purchased by wtn and Knowledge Network.

– Daniel MacIvor – Until I Hear From You

Daniel MacIvor’s first short film, Permission, screened in the 1997 edition of Perspective Canada, traveled the Canadian and u.s. festival circuit, and has sold to cbc, Bravo! and Showcase.

MacIvor intended his follow-up project, Until I Hear From You, to be his first feature script, but when he realized the story didn’t have feature-length potential, he adapted it into a 42-minute film. The $75,000 budget was put together with money from the Canada, Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils and private investment.

In his second film, MacIvor took the opportunity to experiment with a more active camera and says he is now ready to make a feature, although he plans to continue in the short format as well.

With a background in live theater, MacIvor says it has been difficult to make the leap into filmmaking, adding the short films have provided him with much needed credibility.

‘I feel that now I am in a good position to make a feature film – I have shown I can do it,’ he says.

– Chris Deacon – Moving Day

Chris Deacon’s follow-up to festival hit Twisted Sheets is Moving Day, where a couple’s moving-day stresses are intensified by anxieties over the future of their relationship. The film is produced by Tina Goldlist.

Deacon wrote the script as a potential half-hour segment for the Behind the Scenes program on The Comedy Network but when this fell through she applied to the Ontario Film Development Program which awards $30,000 and a first window on Showcase Television to short film projects.

The exposure of Twisted Sheets has opened up some promising doors for Deacon, who plans to embark on a feature film as her next project.

Twisted Sheets, produced for Global’s New Producers Series, has sold to Channel 4 in the u.k. and won 11 festival awards.

Hearing of the film, a rep at October Films called to see Deacon’s work. Now the challenge is finding a script. She’s scouting for ‘funny urban dramas and comedies.’

– Julie Trimingham – Beauty Crowds Me

Julie Trimingham of Alberta is screening her third short film at tiff, Beauty Crowds Me, a response to and journey through three Emily Dickinson poems using music and imagery without a traditional dramatic narrative.

‘Shorts are a great medium for exploration as well as training,’ she says. ‘There’s a lot of freedom in short filmmaking.’

The $50,000 film was produced with a $20,000 Bravo!Fact grant as well as assistance from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Calgary Region Arts Foundation and the nfb’s faps program.

‘I do not believe features are any more legitimate than short films,’ says Trimingham, whose previous shorts Claire and Gravity’s Angel have traveled the festival circuit.

Trimingham is currently writing her first feature, a drama revolving around a 13-year-old girl, her mother and the mother’s boyfriend. In the meantime, this winter she will shoot another short drama about a ‘crazy opera diva in decline,’ sponsored by Canada Council.

– Mike Hoolboom – In The Future

Two-time nfb John Spotton Award winner Mike Hoolboom returns to tiff with In The Future, an experimental meditation on the world of moving images.

When Hoolboom was offered a residency at Charles Street Video, he began the film as a means to experiment in the video realm and make use of the extensive stock footage library at the company.

The film asks whether seeing thousands of people die in film and tv has prepared us for our own end, and if so, how. The project was produced for a record low cost of $35 for videotapes plus $300 to transfer onto film.

According to Hoolboom, short films are a valuable tool to explore the filmmaking craft. ‘There’s never enough money to make a feature,’ he says, ‘so you shoot in this brief, frantic period of time and then spend the rest of the time carrying around big fat file folders begging for money, which doesn’t teach you anything about making a film.’

– Michael McNamara John Scott – Art and Justice

Michael McNamara began work on his ‘pet project,’ the short film John Scott – Art and Justice, over six years ago while he was working on his feature The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati.

Whenever he had some spare time and extra film he would visit Toronto painter John Scott and work on his portrait of the renegade artist. Last January, the Art Gallery of Windsor decided to hold a retrospective of Scott’s work and asked McNamara to pull his footage together into a film.

With financial support from the Ontario Arts Council, faps and the art gallery, he put together the $20,000 budget.

McNamara believes feature filmmakers turn to the short format as a way to ‘return to their roots,’ enjoying complete control over their work, unhampered by the many commercial and market demands of features.

Making short films is becoming more difficult, says McNamara, particularly in Toronto where he resides.

‘In the past it was easier to get good deals from labs and suppliers,’ he says. ‘But a lot of their free resources are being exhausted by the Canadian Film Centre and now the Calling Card program. These programs are great, but low-budget independent short filmmaking has become institutionalized.’

McNamara is currently cowriting his next feature, Sleepy Head, with Noele Baker, who scripted Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo. McNamara is seeking an executive producer for the film, which he describes as a ‘metaphysical romantic comedy thriller.’ The $4.5-million film is slated to shoot next spring.

– Paul Carriere – Sway

Paul Carriere has made a name for himself in the documentary genre. A previous film, Mum’s The Word, was awarded a Gemini. Still, he found it difficult to cross over into drama because of his lack of experience working with actors and the difference in narrative structure.

To ‘gain a stamp of credibility,’ Carriere enrolled in the Canadian Film Centre where he directed his first drama, Sway, which explores a family’s attempt to deal with moving their grandmother into a nursing home.

Carriere is now in development with Triptych Media on a feature called Peachland, being written by Katherine Schlemmer.

– Gary Popovich – Faultlines

Gary Popovich began shooting his experimental piece Faultines when he landed a free ticket on a Caribbean cruise and continued during a cross-country trek where he was showing his work in art galleries.

The short format allowed Popovich to experiment with an innovative process – multiple image rolls where images shot on 16mm, Super 8 and video are composited together to create different layers of visuals. Ontario Arts Council money helped fund the project.

Popovich’s next film will be in the 90-minute range and is an examination of the events which have transpired in former Yugoslavia over the past 10 years. The film explores issues of culture, propaganda and identity. Popovich, who is based in Toronto, began shooting last year with the aid of arts council money.

– Judith Doyle – The Last Split Second

Adapted from a performance piece recounting the perception-altering experience of a Toronto visual artist who breaks his back in a car accident, The Last Split Second is Judith Doyle’s third experimental short. She also produced the feature Wasaga, which premiered in Toronto in 1994.

In this short film, Doyle explored new technologies and methods which would have been far too expensive to try out in a feature-length format. The Last Split Second combines classic film techniques, new digital effects technology, computer-generated animation, and the convergence of digital, video and film.

‘Short films are a way to expose yourself to new tools,’ says Doyle, who is currently developing a feature-length script. And ‘just as a short story isn’t a precursor to a novel,’ she plans to continue exploring both short and feature-length filmmaking.