This column explores releasing strategies. Anyone out there with an interesting theatrical, video or cd-rom release campaign coming up, please give Playback a shout. maddever@brunico.com

Independent filmmaker Annette Mangaard (Let Me Wrap My Arms Around You) has made a dozen films in as many years and therefore ably managed to make her first feature in 35mm (without the support of the ofdc or Telefilm) on a budget well under $500,000. And when the film’s theatrical release was determined a non-starter for financial reasons by its distributor Film Tonic, Mangaard, literally by the seat of her bicycle, added orchestrating the theatrical debut of Fish Tale Soup to her credits which already included writer, coproducer and director of the film.

The Three Blonds and Actuality Films feature is a coproduction with the nfb. The congenial film about sex and fertility in the ’90s was produced by Pamela Davenport; Silva Basmajian is the nfb producer. Kathleen Laskey and John Jarvis play a childless couple who compound the usual ’90s stress load with desperate attempts to conceive. Remy Girard stars as the amiable-but-mysterious refugee (who turns out to be an angel with nebulous amphibious connections) who follows the woman home from an aquarium and insinuates himself into the household.

Philip Earnshaw (Traders) is dop, Boyd Bonitzke (Sam and Me) edited and production design is by Bill Layton (Paris France). David Bradstreet composed the music.

In the initial search for a distributor, Mangaard contacted pretty well all of them in 1993 at the script stage. Alliance’s Charlotte Mickie was interested, but then the ofdc (which, along with fund, had assisted development of the script nurtured at the Canadian Film Centre) and Telefilm did not support the film. ‘Ultimately I think that’s what killed it at Alliance,’ says Mangaard. The nfb was always in – Basmajian supported it since the first draft (January ’92) – and the film was shot in May ’95, funded by the nfb and a presale to Citytv, as well as assistance from cpf and Rogers Telefund. The City offer was ‘we’ll take all English-language Canadian tv rights’ which Mangaard said she was in no position to bargain over.

Davenport brought distributor Pierre Latour of Film Tonic on board during production. ‘And there was never talk of doing anything other than a theatrical run,’ says Mangaard. But fates again conspired against the film which went through an overly long post due to the nfb lab closure – Mangaard says that as a coprod it was last in order of priority.

It was also not a priority on the film festival programmers’ agendas. Mangaard believes that the genre – romantic comedy – worked against it, and was a contributing factor to the film not getting into the summer/fall festival circuit.

‘It’s not the dark, edgy typical Perspective Canada fare,’ says Mangaard, adding that ironically one of the Toronto festival programmers said it would do fine as a commercial film.

Not being able to pick up the free publicity momentum generated by festival press in tandem with the City deal (since tv is where most Canadian films make money) put a damper on enthusiasm. ‘The fact that I’d sold the back end meant that there was no incentive. It came down to money.’ Mangaard says Latour explained, ‘ `Why throw $50,000 out the window on a release?’ In order to turn out an audience for a Canadian film, you would have to spend more than our budget.’

Undaunted, Mangaard said ‘just get me a theatre.’ Latour lined up a screen at Toronto art house Carlton Cinemas and kicked in $2,000 for promotion. Mangaard requested (and got) Nov. 1, reasoning that it’s ahead of the Christmas rush and long enough after the festival that people are going to movies and that the weather is cold enough to entice people into the theatre.

‘It’s a warm film.’

Beyond the hoped-for fruits of a press screening which Mangaard is organizing, her grass roots promo campaign entails piggyback mailings of black and white flyers via Women in Film and Television – Toronto and Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto to reach a likely female audience. ‘It’s definitely a woman’s film and it’s a grownup film, aimed at women over 30.’ She’s also personally handing out and mailing post cards. At a cast and crew screening scheduled on the Monday prior to the release, the audience will be given postcards to distribute and enlisted to each deliver 10 people to the theatre. Mangaard’s bicycle enters the promo plans as the delivery vehicle for color one-sheets destined for shops and restaurants, and for the glueing-campaign of a large blueprint version of the poster. There’s also a phone campaign.

When asked what is anticipated at the box office, Mangaard has no answer, except that she must get people into the theatre over the weekend to secure a second week for the film. As to a Montreal release, given Girard’s popularity, ‘we’ll see how it does in Toronto.’

For life after theatrical, the only home video hope is Mangaard making tapes and taking them to individual Canadian-film-friendly video stores. The broadcast window is slated for early winter.

Despite the disillusioning experience, Mangaard is not critical of the distributors’ role, she’s just disturbed by the prospects for Canadian film. ‘What is selling American films is the dollars going into the marketing. I think that we should almost do the same thing that we do with tv (a minimum Canadian screen time), I think we should have access to our own theatres.’