The National Film Board has released its 1994/95 production slate, and with it, a three-year action plan designed to help it cope with continuing money problems. The plan arose out of cutbacks that will take the board from its present fiscal budget of $81.1 million to $74.8 million in 1997/98. Projected revenues are approximately 10% of the total budget for this fiscal year. Already, 13.7% of the nfb’s permanent work force has opted for early retirement packages, and office closures continue with Saskatoon and Saint John’s the latest to go.

Eighty-eight nfb films and coproductions – 51 English, 37 French – are expected out this fiscal year. Of the total, more than 60% are documentaries, 10% are dramas and 25% are animation. Total production budgets for both English and French departments (which includes marketing monies and production salaries) are $40.1 million.

Up and coming are Oscar-winner Richard Condie’s new animated short currently in production in Winnipeg; Bey Weyman’s Hi-8 documentary on Toronto’s Regent Park area; and Ishu Patel’s two-part coproduction with Japan’s nhk, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is being cut for tv in Canada after tallying 18 million viewers in Japan.

Top on the action plan is an internment program that will bring three to four new filmmakers on three-year contracts to the board’s English department each year. The $1 million annual program anticipates that each intern will direct at least one documentary film.

Initially, the program will be installed at the nfb’s Montreal headquarters, although English Program director general Barbara Janes says the board will recruit from across the country. ‘We are looking for people who have maybe made one film or one video,’ says Janes. First call for applications will go out in mid-May.

Metazimuts, the French equivalent of the internment program, is set up to produce 30-minute films directed by approximately four new filmmakers. It has an annual allotment of $500,000.

The board will raise its focus on children’s and youth programming, in both French and English, to 25% or $5 million for both departments annually. While English Program is already averaging 20% young people’s programming this year, French Program only has about 12% of its production budget aimed at the younger market.

Reputed as a grassroots distributor, the nfb is putting a fair bit of techno-talk on the table that’s meant to signal it’s getting ready for the info highway.

The board’s $4.2 million laserdisc title access system, CineRobotheque in Montreal, leads the way with promises that all nfb titles will be available on laser disc by 1997. The board also says the latest in home-video distribution technology is a priority, starting with a commission to develop a black box in conjunction with Montreal-based high-tech company Miranda – at apparently no cost to the nfb.

Michelle d’Auray, nfb director of communications and corporate affairs, says television, direct-to-home video, laser disc and cd-rom access are replacing the old church-basement-style of marketing.

D’Auray also says computer technology is finding its way into animation at the nfb, with animators John Weldon and Condie trying it on for size for the first time.

Other plans include raising the budget of Studio 1 – the aboriginal studio – from $250,000 to $350,000, and increasing multiracial representation in the board’s output to ensure that each production serves employment equity.

Also, the five-year New Initiatives in Film Program established in 1991 will be expanded from its Studio d base with a continued annual budget of $250,000 for a variety of professional development programs and a resource bank.