Montreal: A year after its launch, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media has become the most successful theatrically-released Canadian documentary of all time.

Coproduced by Montreal’s Necessary Illusions and the National Film Board, the film has been screened in 115 cities in six countries for worldwide box office revenues of $800,000.

Distributors have co-operated with the film’s producers by organizing city-by-city grassroots campaigns and opening-night benefits for local human rights and social issue groups.

The marketing has obviously been effective: theatrical receipts for the u.s. stand at $532,857; for Australia and Asia, $100,367; for English Canada, $132,180; and for Quebec, $34,954.

Mark Achbar, who codirected and coproduced along with veteran documentarian Peter Wintonick, says the film is becoming a cult classic in Germany and will soon be released in specialty theatres in the u.k. and France.

Montreal’s Films Transit has sold Manufacturing Consent to television in more than a dozen countries.

Invited to 48 festivals around the world, the film has won many prizes and recently was accepted as a finalist in competition at the prestigious Yamagata International Documentary Festival in Japan, Oct. 5-11.

At home, the producers are waiting to hear the verdict on a special two-hour version for the cbc documentary showcase Witness. The cbc originally asked that the 165-minute production be cut to one hour, but the producers refused.

An exploration of the political life and ideas of American linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent is the nfb’s top-selling video this year, says Achbar.

Despite its long running time and political subject matter, the production ‘will return more per dollar invested to institutional backers than the vast majority of fictional feature films produced in Canada,’ says Achbar. LRB