‘They have a definite edge, a contemporary urgency, and they’re original,’ says Wayne Clarkson, executive director of the Canadian Film Centre.

‘They’re personal visions told with panache and style and a lot of passion,’ says National Film Board producer Gerry Flahive.

Both the cfc and the nfb have a lot to crow about at the Genie Awards this year.

There’s a cfc connection in 17 of 19 categories, either a picture from the Feature Film Project (Holly Dale’s Blood & Donuts and Laurie Lynd’s House) or from a cfc graduate (including John Greyson, Peter Wellington, David Wellington, Colleen Murphy, Elizabeth Yake, Sandra Kybartas and Christina Jennings). The other two categories are documentary.

And then there’s Peter Wellington, this year’s winner of the Claude Jutra Award for his feature directorial debut, Joe’s So Mean to Josephine, and a cfc director resident from 1992.

The nfb had a hand in three of the four nominees for best feature-length documentary (Power was a coproduction), and both of the nominated short docs. Sylvie Groulx is eligible for the Claude Jutra Award for her feature directorial debut on the nfb’s J’aime J’aime Pas, a holdover from the recent past, before the nfb all but pulled out from drama production all together. J’aime J’aime Pas also produced a best supporting actress nod for Manon Miclette.

If the Genie Awards do indeed reflect the landscape of Canadian cinema, it’s safe to say that both agencies are leaving deep footprints.

In the year of its tenth anniversary, the cfc has gone beyond the boundaries of a training center into the realm of a successful production entity. ‘We’re well represented,’ says Clarkson, ‘and that’s a reflection of the maturation of the center. You can measure it by the talent and work of our grads, and it’s evident in our representation in this country’s most prestigious film event.’

Clarkson says that at a time when less than 10% of the 1,000 or so independent films produced annually in the u.s. get distribution, the success of the products from the center’s Feature Film Project is undeniable. All four – House, Blood & Donuts, Clement Virgo’s Rude and Colleen Murphy’s Shoemaker – have indigenous distribution.

‘They have been invited to major festivals and screened around the world, and that’s a reflection of their quality and appeal,’ says Clarkson. ‘These are not provincial movies. This is well-crafted cinema rooted in this country, but the characters and themes speak to the world.’

For the film board, producer Jacques Menard says this year’s nominations (while they lag at least a year behind in terms of what’s been happening structurally at the nfb) could not have come at a better time. ‘It puts to rest, at least for now, the question `Oh, are you guys still there? I thought you’d been cut.’ To come out with such force at the Genies is wonderful.’

There is significance in the diversity of this year’s nfb nominations, a range which includes a classic process film like Magnus Isacsson’s Power and Peter Lynch’s Project Grizzly, a less traditional, subjective doc in which the filmmaker’s vision is deeply entrenched in the final product.

While the board’s nominations don’t stray too far from a social-issues mandate, the treatment is not necessarily a ‘house style.’ For example, both Une Vie Comme Riviere and the short doc Maman et Eve chronicle the lives of women; Riviere is an artistic portrait of an intellectual and Maman et Eve features lesbian moms and grandmoms from Sudbury on a getaway to the Caribbean.

‘We’ve always been more open to eclectic styles than perhaps we’ve been given credit for,’ says Flahive, ‘and some people still talk about a film board `house style.’ But I think it’s a testament to the creative strength within the film board when a film like Power and a film like Project Grizzly can coexist and both become successful.’

The definition of what constitutes a ‘successful’ nfb film has changed in recent years, and while there’s an increased mandate to make the films accessible and marketable, Flahive isn’t comfortable with saying they have had to become more ‘entertaining.’

‘Entertainment is one of those words that somehow ends up being equated to pandering. I’d prefer to use the term engaging. It’s possible to make a film that has a serious intent without being dry and earnest about it. There will still be films – or more appropriately audio/visual productions, because there are videos and cd-roms – made by the board for `educational’ use, but all the producers I know in the English Program certainly want to have their films seen by large audiences.’

Other than theatrical release at home and abroad (Grizzly, according to Flahive, is ‘very close’ to signing a theatrical deal in the u.s.) that large audience has increasingly been met through tv.

‘When I joined the board 15 years ago,’ says Flahive, ‘if we got a film on the cbc it was a big event. Now Canadians can see virtually any nfb film on tv at some time or another, and the specialties have been a big part of that.’

Unfortunately, says Menard, his films – produced, for the most part, in French – have not been as lucky. ‘It’s unfortunate but it’s true that I can sell more of them to (CBC Newsworld’s) Rough Cuts and The Passionate Eye than to French networks. There isn’t a love for the work at Radio-Canada like there is at cbc and tvo. Thank God there’s tfo.’

While the nfb continues attempting to gain a wide audience for its product – projects produced with a ‘back-to-basics’ approach focusing on docs and some animation while leaving the drama to others – the cfc is continuing efforts to hone Canadian dramatic talent, whether it’s in the form of directors, screenwriters or producers.

‘Our commitment,’ says Clarkson, ‘is to develop the best talent in the country, to build the best storytellers.’

Those skills have been effectively sharpened, says Clarkson, through the production of shorts.

‘It’s no accident that the excellent, quality shorts produced here – like Holly Dale’s Dead Meat – have led into the production of excellent films. There is a clear line drawn from the work grads do here at the center to their feature projects. The intense demands placed on them here prepare them to make features. It’s a natural progression.’

And while the work which springs from Windfields can be said to have similar intended audiences (‘they are speaking to their age group, but they’re not confined to it’), Clarkson says the projects can’t be pigeonholed.

‘Blood & Donuts is, in Dale’s words, `a genre film with attitude’ and House is based on a stage play, so there’s a very different range,’ says Clarkson. ‘You can’t say we’re strictly a center for the production of art films or for the production of commercial films.’

What ties both the cfc and the nfb together, they say, is their importance as entry points for new and emerging filmmakers.

‘What needs to be stressed is that first-time, low-budget films are the most precarious films to make,’ says Clarkson. ‘They’re a risk and it’s the Feature Film Project’s job to take on those films at a reasonable cost. We’ve been able to bring four films in on time and on budget and all four have domestic distributors. The ffp takes the risk of financing without a distributor, giving greater creative control, and, as anyone in the industry knows, if they ain’t any good, distributors ain’t going to buy them.’

‘Like the cfc, we’re important in bringing the new crowd in,’ says the nfb’s Menard. ‘It’s key to open up the form and say we’re willing to play with it and play with the style. We need to draw new blood into documentaries, and that’s what our role can be.’