In this special report, Playback steps back to look at both the Montreal World Film Festival and the issues surrounding production in Quebec. Included are interviews with producers, distributors, funding agency managers and service providers on a range of topics including the benefits and trends of production in Quebec, the simmering conflict between domestic and location interests, developments in deal-making, acquisitions and coproductions with European partners, and the lay of the land at WFF. Stories by Leo Rice-Barker.

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Andre Picard, chairman of the apftq and president/ general manager of SDA Productions, says Montreal producers bring solid assets to the table, and that is why independent film and tv production in Quebec has doubled in the past five years.

Picard says the Quebec tax credit ‘may be the most generous tax incentive in the world’ (15% to 20.5% from Quebec in addition to the federal film or video credit, worth 5% or 6% of the Canadian budget, averaged out).

Picard says if productions shot here ‘can qualify [as] Canadian, and with the [obligatory] Canadian licence fee that is attached to the tax credits,’ the Montreal producer brings a fifth to a quarter of the budget to the table. ‘It can go up to a third on smaller productions like magazines and documentaries,’ he adds.

Andre Lafond, commissioner of the Montreal Film and TV Office, is projecting close to $600 million in indie production in Quebec in ’98 – $180 million to $200 million in u.s. location activity.

Other important economic factors include ‘the attractive Canadian dollar [for buyers]’ and the experience, expertise and enthusiasm of producers, crews and other service providers, says Picard.

‘Licence fees per capita are probably among the highest in North America, and sometimes the [tv] acquisition price is higher in Quebec than English Canada,’ he says.

Furthermore, Quebec announced a competitive production service tax-credit program this spring.

New partnerships

While foreign contacts were historically restricted to France, Picard says Quebec producers increasingly work with production partners, broadcasters and distributors in the u.k., Germany, France, the u.s. and English Canada, in the Atlantic provinces, Toronto and the West.

Cinar Films, Galafilm, Productions sda and Cite-Amerique are just a few of the Quebec companies with English-Canadian partners this year, while Prisma Productions, Telescene Film Group and Productions La Fete have been doing international and u.s. productions, according to Picard.

‘It’s both of out necessity and out of interest,’ he says. ‘Montreal is a bilingual city. This business is based on sound and image, not necessarily just language. To run a healthy business and respond to the international marketplace you have to start working in English.’

Domestic production trends

On domestic production trends, La Fete president and ceo Rock Demers says there is life between the big-budget and small ‘artisanal’ extremes. However, to succeed producers require some form of alternate financing – from a publicly traded company, a public funding agency or from a u.s. coventure and/or prelicensing partner.

The other important industry trend here, he says, is ongoing concentration and mergers.

Drama categories on Quebec tv run the gamut from low-budget teleromans, many produced in-house by broadcasters, to teleroman-plus style shoots like Diva (Sovimage) and Avanti Cine Video’s Radio, budgeted in the $450,000 an episode range, to bigger-budget, digital Betacam series such as L’Ombre de l’Epervier (Verseau International), budgeted in the $850,000 an hour range. The top-line, but diminishing, category is ‘la fiction lourde,’ filmed drama budgeted at $900,000 to over $1 million an hour, including series such as Reseaux (Emergence) and Omerta (sda).

According to Demers, the diversity of production in Quebec illustrates the creativity and adaptability of independent producers.

The same kind of flexibility can be used to produce smaller-budget tv movies, he says.

And because of public money from the ctcpf, Telefilm Canada and sodec (which recently had its selective annual film and tv envelope increased to $20 million from $10 million a year) and ‘outside money,’ Demers says tv production in Quebec ‘is difficult, but the mood is good.’

Features languishing

Trend-wise, Picard says French-track film-originated drama series are being gradually phased out by teleroman-style video production, and French-language features continue their decade-long decline.

‘As for feature films, that’s where the real problem is,’ says Demers.

If the industry is to survive with a Canadian identity and make inroads abroad, he says the federal government will have to make ‘a massive’ investment in feature film production and distribution as early as this fall.

‘In the past 10 years,’ he says, ‘we’ve devoted all kinds of resources to help television production, but we have neglected feature films.’

According to Demers, a nation’s production is known abroad through its feature films.

More format deals

Another interesting development, says Picard, is the success in formatting certain Quebec tv series such as Avanti Cine Video’s sketch comedy Un Gars, Une Fille, sold to 11 markets by The Multimedia Group of Canada. An even earlier success is Pram Productions’ Surprise sur prise, sold in Europe by Rozon Distribution.

Formatting is important, Picard says, because of problematic language questions. One of the rare major recent Quebec drama sales – sda’s Omerta – ‘had to be post-synched completely’ for broadcast in France, he says.

Features and animation, a few tv series (The Worst Witch, La Voix en Or) and documentaries dominate Montreal coproductions with Europe.

In the digital domain, Picard says Montreal is ‘catching up to Toronto’ because of r&d initiatives from companies such as Discreet Logic and Softimage, now part of Avid Technology.

As for international coproductions, Demers says they are essential to the industry here and are very much based on content suitability.

In the present situation, however, he says feature coproductions are especially difficult ‘because you have to find a partner before knowing if you will receive any Telefilm money. You sign with your partner, you get an agreement, then Telefilm says no and you look like a fool. That’s the real catch-22 that has to be addressed,’ he says.

Demers says it would also help if there was an expanded feature film fund where decisions are made other than ‘on a case-by-case basis as it is at the moment. Then we could really develop partnerships [for features] with foreign coproducers.’

Picard says the new 10/90 financing split formula announced at Cannes makes big-budget feature film coproduction more feasible.

Project selection is another major issue for Quebec producers.

‘The quick `no’ is always better than the endless maybe,’ says Picard.

He says it’s frustrating for producers when an agency like Telefilm asks them to improve their deals (a process called `comparables’), and in the large majority of cases, still refuses to invest.

‘That is not an acceptable process,’ he says, because it undermines confidence in the Canadian partner.

‘Whether it’s feature film or television, the apftq believes in a mixed system of automatic support which recognizes success and experience… and selected aid, as well as a place for first works,’ says Picard.

More precise roles for the different levels of funding agencies makes sense, he says. ‘fund and sodec give money for screenwriting. I don’t think Telefilm should do it.’

A former Telefilm executive, Picard says ‘Telefilm should continue and prosper, but I think it has to evolve its selection criteria and come back a little bit to its origins where there was discretion for managers to make decisions and to live with them. Now there are sometimes just too many committees.’

Telefilm investments

In ’97/98, for the 12-month period ending March 31, Telefilm invested $5.9 million from its Feature Film Fund in the production of 10 French-language features with cumulative budgets of $37.9 million. Another $533,000 was invested in 19 development projects.

The agency’s Feature Film Fund investments in French-track projects have declined from $11.3 million in ’95/96 to $7.5 million in ’96/97 to $6.4 million last year. The French project investment represented 39.5% of all of the Telefilm production/development investments made last year.

(In addition to the Feature Film Fund investment, a small portion, $15 million, of the $200 million in all French and English eip investment in ’97/98 was set aside for features.)

In French-language tv, Telefilm invested (through the ctcpf eip envelope) $33.9 million in the production of 68 projects with combined budgets of $139 million. Another $1.5 million was invested in the development of 61 projects, with production funding on the French side representing 37% of all the agency’s production funding last year.

In strictly eip investment terms, in ’97/98 Telefilm invested $33.7 million in Montreal productions, $32.5 million in Toronto projects and $25.1 million in production outside of Montreal and Toronto, including $4.3 million in Nova Scotia and $11.7 million in productions from British Columbia.

In distribution in ’97/98, Telefilm advanced a total of $12.4 million from its Feature Film Distribution Fund, $11.4 million from the Principal Fund and $991,00 from the Auxiliary Fund.

Beneficiaries include Alliance Releasing ($3 million), Behaviour Distribution ($2.3 million), Lions Gate Films ($1.7 million), Motion International ($1.6 million), Film Tonic International ($1.1 million), Norstar Releasing ($851,000), Compagnie France Film ($747,000) and Cineplex Odeon Films ($662,000).

Other beneficiaries are Allegro Films Distribution, Cinema Esperanca International, Prima Film Video and Societe de Distribution Cinema Libre.