Montreal: A member of Montreal Mayor Pierre Bourque’s office has been mandated to find fresh funds for the city’s location promotion budget, but time is running out, says Montreal film commissioner Andre Lafond.

An across-the-board cut to all city promotion budgets by the Bourque administration earlier this year reduced Montreal’s film location promotion budget to zero, down from $200,000 in 1994.

Lafond and Initiative Quebec, an industry umbrella group, have been lobbying City Hall for new funds and hope to have positive results by June.

‘We’ve already lost about half a year, but we still have time to have resources in place before June,’ says Lafond. ‘We have to be seen and perceived to be active in Los Angeles, and we have to bring people here to Montreal.’

Lafond says the location business is brutally competitive.

‘If we are not there even to just say hello we lose out.’

At $200,000 a year, Montreal’s promotion budget is already modest compared to other prime Canadian shooting locations: about half the b.c. budget, and a third of the combined resources of the City of Toronto and Ontario.

Montreal uses its promotion budget to sponsor ‘familiarity tours,’ usually slated for June and September when top u.s. and foreign production executives are brought in, for promotional efforts at the Montreal World Film Festival, and for head-to-head talks between Quebec and u.s. producers, typically held in New York and l.a. in the early and late fall.

The timing for the cuts is certainly counterproductive.

Lafond says in 1991 when the promo budget was reduced to zero, the impact was devastating and no foreign location shoots were recorded the following year.

And the cut comes at a time when the industry in Quebec, more than ever, has its act together.

Initiative Quebec is expected to expand its membership to 40 in the year ahead, and includes a powerful sweep of industry interests – actra, the apftq, AstralTech, the Quebec Film Office (Quebec City), JPL Video, Locations Michel Trudel, Montage Metaphore, PMT Video, the stcvq, Studio Marko, various regional tourist boards and the City of Montreal.

In 1994, Montreal, and Quebec in general, had their best year ever, attracting $75 million in foreign location production. Using a conservative multiplier/benefit factor (new money spent on food, hotels and indirect levies), Lafond says the 1994 activity represented a $150 million injection in the local economy.

Initiative Quebec president Jean-Claude Tremblay rallied the press in early April, unveiling a new $40,000 video promoting Quebec locations and production services, and a 216-page Quebec Film-Television Production Guide.

Lafond expects ’95 Quebec location activity to hold its own, with a possible 15% overall increase over ’94. Indie film production in Quebec for 1994 is pegged at $300 million.