Montreal: Two coproduced movies, Robert Lepage’s Le Confessionnal and Mort Ransen’s Margaret’s Museum completely dominated the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television’s Genie Awards, but the acct’s two tv shows received negative reviews.

The Academy introduced a new non-bilingual format for the Genies telecast this year, one that was optimistically billed as ‘more tv-friendly.’

The traditional live gala show was dropped in favor of separate shows on cbc and Radio-Canada, Sunday, Jan. 14. Straight-shooting comic Mary Walsh hosted the pretaped cbc show while culture sophisticate Rene Homier-Roy anchored the studio portion of a live Radio-Canada show, which featured double Genie nominee Pascale Bussieres interviewing winners at a post-show party at the Hotel Westin.

acct executive director Maria Topalovich says the new broadcast format was ‘an experiment’ and ‘a huge and brave step for the industry.’

But first, the awards.

Robert Lepage’s Le Confessionnal was voted best Canadian film of the year. The first-time director took best director honors as well the Claude Jutra Award, accompanied this year by a $250,000 contribution from Bell Canada.

Mort Ransen’s Margaret’s Museum garnered most of the other awards. Helena Bonham Carter won for best actress, and Kate Nelligan and Kenneth Welsh won in the best supporting role categories. Gerry Wexler and Ransen shared the screenwriting prize, and the film also won for best costume design and original music.

David La Haye was voted best actor for his gripping performance in L’Enfant d’eau, while the b.c. film Magic in the Water took technical honors in cinematography and overall sound. George Ungar’s National Film Board-funded film The Champagne Safari was voted best feature-length documentary.

The much nominated Rude and Eldorado were entirely shut out.

Despite uniformly bad press reviews for the shows in the consumer press, Topalovich says the acct will not abandon the new concept, but rather ‘we are refining the format.’

She says the Geminis and the Gemeaux tv award shows get a fair shake from the press, but the negative, ‘small-minded’ criticism of the Genies ‘reflects the ancient dilemma of Canadian feature film distribution.’

The reviews for the tv shows were indeed one-sided.

The Toronto Star called the cbc show ‘a lifeless affairŠdedicated to movies we hadn’t seen.’

In easy-to-understand Quebecois, La Presse called the Radio-Canada show ‘le flop des Genies,’ pointing to a myriad of technical glitches and ‘the party that never materialized.’

In a straight-up piece, the Globe and Mail deferred criticism to key on the winning and losing films, while the Montreal Gazette offered two stories, a great spread on Bonham Carter, and a second commentary article headed ‘Genie Awards show didn’t do justice to film industry.’

Combined audience for the $1 million Genie Awards shows was 881,000, up more than 50% over last year.