Beginning with David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, the opening night gala film, and closing 10 days and 18 galas later with David Anspaugh’s Rudy, the 18th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival of Festivals looks again to go down as the best yet.

Playback’s special report on the Sept. 9-18 screenathon includes a look at past editions of the Toronto festival, as recalled by a festiphile rummaging through old journals. Once again we put a spotlight on Canadian films – those with gala screenings and feature-length films and documentaries in the Perspective Canada program – in a series of film diaries. The business of film is further explored in a summary of Symposium ’93’s two-day agenda.

And debuting this time around is Playback’s Guerilla Guide to the Festival, the ultimate industry bible of who’s who and where they hang out as well as practical information about screenings and events.

For all the self-congratulatory applause to be heard this week at screenings of Canadian films, what fear and trembling that currently grips the film and television industry will likely surface during Symposium ’93: Beyond the Screen?

The annual talk shop – held over two days on Sept. 11 and 12 – brings top industry players together to discuss the current state of film and tv production.

Take docudramas, the focus of a Saturday morning discussion panel, ‘Hot Docs: Real Life Dramas’. The threat of libel suits, court injunctions and aggrieved pressure groups facing broadcasters down has made documentary makers defensive.

Line blurred

Catherine Olsen, a CBC Newsworld broadcaster, argues the line between point-of-view documentaries and docudramas on the one hand, and traditional documentaries on the other, has blurred. And while she has not yet detected a chill effect among docudrama makers due to the Valour and the Horror furor in particular, fallout is inevitable.

‘In the real world, people are pitching pov films, and broadcasters are encouraging them to do so. But how many get financed and made during the coming year remains to be seen,’ Olsen says.

All the filmmakers on the Saturday morning panel – including Brian McKenna, John Smith and Bernie Zukerman – have used pov techniques and/or dramatizations in their work. Some even consider themselves more dramatists than documentary makers.

Olsen, who will moderate the workshop, says she has not yet ruled out inviting former soldiers upset with the recent Valour and the Horror program to address the panel discussion.

Spirited debate is also expected Sunday afternoon when the thorny issue of women in film comes up during ‘She Says. He Says. Who Decides?’, a panel discussion sponsored by Toronto Women in Film and Television, the National Film Board and Norstar Entertainment.

Alternative films

Recent box office hits like Fried Green Tomatoes and Like Water For Chocolate – considered by many as ‘women’s films’ – have some forecasting a wave of new, alternative films in the future that portray women characters as subjects, not objects, and even headline women directors.

Or possibly not, warns Lili Fournier, head of Zolar Entertainment. Fournier, who will moderate the panel, expects new ideas will emerge on how to capitalize on recent ‘breakaway’ successes, like ensuring more films appeal to men and women alike.

For one thing, Fournier discounts attempts by Hollywood to highlight the contribution of women in filmmaking, as at the recent Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles. ‘Never have there been fewer women in lead roles, and fewer women behind the camera as directors,’ she says.

She adds panel members will want to explore whether the success of Thelma and Louise has possibly fueled a backlash in Hollywood by way of psycho-killer female characters appearing in recent feature releases.

Martha Fusca, president of twift, adds: ‘We want not only to recognize the achievements of women directors in film, but ensure that there is more opportunity for women throughout the industry.’

Women in film

The women in film discussion is expected to run the gamut of filmmaking, from pitching and packaging to financing and marketing, in search of new ways to propel women’s pictures into mainstream cinemas.

Those on the panel – including the nfb’s Joan Pennefather, Christina Jennings (Camilla) and Gabriella Martinelli (M. Butterfly) – will be joined via satellite by a number of well-known women directors and producers including Martha Coolidge (Rambling Rose), Peggy Rajski (The Grifters) and Denise DiNovi (Batman).

The big coup here is Fournier and l.a.-based producer Allison Emilio also captured on video an interview with actress Sharon Stone, who will address the gathering with her views on women in film.

Is the Canadian feature film an endangered species? That question will be uppermost Saturday morning when the future of feature film in Canada comes under the gavel.

Underfunded

Allan King, chair of the Directors Guild of Canada, insists the industry has been ‘dithering’ for five years. ‘Most Canadian films are underfunded,’ he says, ‘and are pushed to the fringe market, or face problems of distribution and distribution policy coming from Ottawa.’

King, who will lead among others directors David Cronenberg and Rock Demers and Telefilm Canada czar Pierre DesRoches in debate, sees the Canadian industry increasingly polarized between doing big-budget Hollywood-style features and fringe productions for film house audiences.

Centre-stage productions, as a consequence, often fall by the wayside.

On the question of distribution policy, the battle lines will likely be drawn between those believing films need to be fed into a distribution monster driven by market forces and those believing it is still possible to make artistic films for sophisticated audiences.

With the deadline for specialty licence applications to the crtc having past last week, bidders can at last reveal what programming they plan, and how much Canadian fare they intend to buy.

Some may even take the opportunity offered by ‘Brave New World: the Specialty Channel Applicants’ to reveal how much they will pay for homegrown programming.

Trina McQueen, vice-president of the Discovery Network, and Kevin Shea of Prime Time, ytv’s seniors application, will appear at the Saturday afternoon session, as will Michael MacMillan of Atlantis Films and Sylvia Sweeney of the Producers Access Network.

Securing coproduction financing always features strongly in Symposium debates. This year, interprovincial coproductions come under the spotlight.

Canadian filmmakers have long been adept at co-producing with foreign partners, but provincial regulations often bar the way to co-producing with peers in other provinces.

Sandra MacDonald, president of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, will put heads of provincial funding agencies on the hot seat late Sunday morning.

Paul Gratton of the Ontario Film Development Corporation, Gerri Cook of Saskfilm and Roman Bittman of the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, among others, will explore how to harmonize a film production that takes advantage of provincial incentives – without treading on too many bureaucratic toes.

‘We want to show how to maximize opportunities while still allowing provincial funding agencies to meet their objectives,’ MacDonald says.

For example, Alberta and Quebec have a protocol that allows filmmakers to secure funds from funding agencies in both provinces.

Interprovincial coprods

Interprovincial coproductions have until now mostly been forged on an ad-hoc basis. MacDonald hopes that will change, with panel members walking away on Sunday with new ideas on how to formalize the process.

Another battleground will be coproductions with u.s. producers, long a fixture on the Symposium agenda. This time round, Jay Firestone of Alliance, the king of pitches to the Americans, will moderate. Key issues he anticipates include debate on financial net ownership, distribution rights and creative control and authority over the final product.

For Firestone, panel members will want to ask how Canadian producers might ensure that u.s. audiences are targeted while the foreign attractiveness of the final product is maintained.

Latin America

Further south still, below the Rio Grande, Latin America has its own burgeoning film production sector. On Sunday morning, ‘Land of Ice/Land of Fire – Latin American Producers’ will focus on exploring how producers from North and South America can co-operate on working coproductions.

Then, the main session early Sunday morning will consider coproductions with Europe. Here new distribution technologies are blurring physical and cultural differences among varying markets, and coproduction/coventures between partners on both sides of the Atlantic are increasing in number.

Among the schmoozing in the Rogers Communications Symposium Lounge at the Sutton Place Kempinski Hotel will be delegates wondering just how first-time directors scrimped and scraped to get their films produced.

Answers are certain to come when possible bust-out directors are led in discussion on Saturday afternoon by Catherine Tait, executive director of the Independent Feature Project in New York City, as part of ‘New Directors/New Directions’.

Canadian-born Tait argues that there is currently a ‘renaissance’ in interest among Hollywood studio chiefs in the u.s. independent film sector.

Again, the success of smaller, breakthrough films like The Crying Game and Like Water For Chocolate is at work here. Studio heads see possible gold in artistic films that, bought cheaply, do reasonably well at the box office.

Besides, emerging videocassette and cable technologies mean new formats need to be fed.

Among the directors scheduled to speak on Saturday is Richard Linklater. The success of his earlier feature Slacker prompted Universal Studios to back his latest project, Dazed and Confused.

Compromises

Linklater can expect to explain whether he had to make compromises to make a bigger-budget film within the studio system.

Other directors showing up include Thomas Fucci (Don’t Call Me Frankie) and Arto Paragamian (Because Why).

Just how interested is Hollywood in independent productions? Tait says film entries to the Independent Feature Project gathering, scheduled for late September, are up 45% from last year’s levels. And preregistration by distributors and producers looking to do business together in New York City has also seen a significant jump.

Sales office

Interest in the Festival of Festivals sales office, which puts buyers in touch with filmmakers, is also up, according to organizer Christine Yankou. Most major and independent distributors bound for Toronto are American. These include Miramax Films, Samuel Goldwyn, Zeitgeist Films, Sony Classics, Warner Bros. and Fox.

Hollywood studio reps come with deep pockets, but rarely buy. Scouting new talent is enough. Other foreign buyers, especially those from embattled Eastern Europe, come, it seems, with holes in their pockets.

But deals are made. Yankou is tight-lipped about just how much business was done at the sales office last year. She says buyers rarely tell how much they paid for a film, and business is often concluded long after the festival ends and the terms are first discussed.

The big reasons buyers come to Toronto is the Venice Film Festival only duplicates what they can see on this side of the Atlantic, and distributors want to see how an English-speaking audience and media respond to films.

For producers, the big challenge is getting buyers interested in seeing their films, pushed as distributors are from every direction to consider hundreds of available movies.

For buyers who prefer schmoozing to public screenings, the sales office offers daily industry screenings of available films at the Backstage cinema in central Toronto.

The Symposium will also feature a screening of David Wellington’s I Love a Man in Uniform, followed by a case study discussion on the dark thriller.

Case studies

Alexandra Raffe, executive producer of Wellington’s film, says case study sessions are popular for hopefully teaching people tips on how they might make their own films.

She anticipates lively discussion on how funding for I Love a Man… was secured, how close co-operation from the start between Wellington, producer Paul Brown and Alliance Releasing, the distributor, was forged.

Raffe adds audience members will be keen to know what effect Wellington earning a 1/100 chance to have his film in the Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival affected later foreign sales of the work.