The doc year in perspective

Rudy Buttignol is commissioning editor, documentaries, at tvontario. Buttignol was the founding chairperson of the cifc, and first elected to the board of directors of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television in 1985, where he continues to represent theatrical shorts and documentaries. His most recent documentary production, Soviet Space: The Secret Designer, premiers on a&e in April ’94.

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This year, independent documentaries took their rightful place in the Canadian film and television industry as critical and commercial successes. The quality of the 1993 Genie Award nominees for best feature-length documentary underscores the point: Forbidden Love – The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives, Stepping Razor – Red X, Une Enfance a Natashquan, Twist and Titanica.

With an impressive lineup like this, it’s hard to believe that, as late as 1985, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, sponsor of the Genies (and Geminis), was handing out just one documentary award. Today there are two, for best short as well as best feature-length documentary. About the same time, documentaries also weren’t eligible for Telefilm Canada’s then new Broadcast Fund. That’s when a handful of Toronto filmmakers formed the Canadian Independent Film Caucus to lobby for changes in the legislation governing the fund.

The effort to bolster the documentary’s status has paid off.

Never before have documentaries been so commercially viable. The scene was probably set last year with the success of such films as Wisecracks, Deadly Currents, The Famine Within and Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. According to associate producer Francis Miquet, the film will gross over $1 million theatrically by the end of 1993.

This year’s Genie nominees continue the trend. Stephen Low’s feature-length documentary Titanica is the top-grossing film in the country. According to Imax vice-president of production and distribution, Jonathan Barker, the large-format film has grossed over $3.5 million to date in its Canadian release. Forbidden Love by Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, and Nicholas Campbell’s Stepping Razor – Red X continue to generate box office worldwide, even though both manage to look at serious social-political issues.

Remember how few broadcast windows there were not so long ago? The cbc was the only game in town. The commercial networks were considered a lost cause. How times have changed! More and different kinds of documentaries are finding homes on television schedules this year than ever before.

cbc’s primetime series, Witness, run by Mark Starowicz with Marie Natansan as the commissioning editor, seems to favor current affairs-oriented documentaries. CBC Newsworld has a new strand on cable for journalist-driven documentaries with quick turnarounds. Executive producer Jerry Macintosh has an annual budget of $1.25 million to spend on independents for development and production, and is open to new technology such as Hi-8.

tvontario’s ceo and chair Peter Herrndorf decided to reposition his network in primetime with the help of independent Canadian documentaries. The result is The View From Here, a new filmmaker-driven strand of point-of-view documentaries. tvo has committed $3 million over the next three years to commission up to 39 hour-long films. These are documentaries where the filmmaker has an emotional stake in the issue being examined.

This past summer tvo’s Christa Singer premiered low-budget, personal documentaries in the From The Heart series. One of the few original programming venues to be found in the doldrums of summer, it gave primetime access to such films as Jacques Hollender’s Voodoo, Anne Pick’s Getting Out, Jim Hanley’s Last House On The Street, Zoe Dirse’s Baltic Fires, and Geoff Bowie’s Zero Tolerance.

The time has passed when funding agencies could say that the main problem with funding independent documentaries was the few slots available on primetime schedules. The phenomenal increase in cable channels has changed all that.

a&e came streaming across the borders in full force this year with Canadian documentary programming, including several of the performance documentaries from the Rhombus Media group. And the new specialty channel hopefuls who filed their submissions to the crtc in September are promising Canadian-produced documentaries and other non-fiction programming as a critical part of their offerings. The long list of specialty applicants includes Trina McQueen’s JLL Discovery Canada, YOU Channel with Atlantis, Quest/ Telescope with Rob Burton and Peter Mortimer, and the Performing Arts Channel with Pat Ferns.

Documentaries continued to make headlines in 1993. The producers of The Valour and the Horror were served a $500 million class action lawsuit. The nfb’s Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, by Alanis Obomsawin, walked away with $25,000 for ‘Best Canadian Film’ at Toronto’s International Festival of Festivals. Both the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Sun featured front-page photos of then prime minister Kim Campbell twisting and shaking at the launch party for Ron Mann’s Twist.

The cifc published its first book. Written by Michael Posner, Canadian Dreams consists of 10 case studies of theatrically released Canadian films, including three documentaries – Deadly Currents, Comic Book Confidential and A Rustling of Leaves. The book gives names and numbers and provides an insightful if sobering look at the perils of development, financing, production and distribution in this country.

The cifc also announced the creation of the Canadian Documentary Awards this fall. The event will premier in February 1994. After three days of screenings and workshops, 10 awards will be handed out.

In June, at the Banff Television Festival, Andy Thomson and Bill Nemtin announced the formation of their Canadian International Documentary Consortium and started offering advances on international distribution.

As broadcasters, cablecasters and the funding agencies jockey for position in the new multichannel environment, one thing is evident – the independent producer is the key partner who must ultimately determine the vitality of the documentary form. In the end, it’s the producer that has to deliver the goods.

As the year draws to a close, celebrate the industry’s achievements by tuning in to the Genie Awards on Dec. 12. When the names of the nominees for ‘Best Documentary’ are announced, chances are very good that audiences at home have heard of the films, read about them, maybe even seen them. If they haven’t, they can check them out at the local cinema or video store. The big winner in 1993 is Canadian documentary filmmaking.