Low-budget feature film producers beware: if your film uses the current actra Canadian Independent Production Incentive Program, Motion International, one of Canada’s few remaining independent theatrical distributors, will not buy Canadian rights to your film.

The current cipip, struck in 1995 between actra, the cftpa and the apftq and set to expire Dec. 31, allows cavco-certified productions to use actra members at up to a 45% discount to union scale. But because the contract requires distributors to give actra members who worked on the production participation in between 6% to 13% of distribution gross revenues, distributors are loathe to pick up cipip films.

Taking an above-board stance, Motion has adopted an official in-house policy that prevents the acquisition of any projects that use cipip.

Dan Lyon, Motion vp distribution and marketing, says the agreement ignores the economic realities of distributors by forcing them to hand over a percentage of gross to the performers before the distributor can recoup any costs or fees.

‘The mechanism in this cipip agreement is not workable for us, so that’s why we’ve taken the stand that we have,’ says Lyon.

Justine Whyte, the executive in charge of production for the Canadian Film Centre’s Feature Film Project – perhaps the only producer whose features regularly use cipip – says the current agreement is acting more as a ‘disincentive’ than an impetus for low-budget features to use actra members.

Perhaps more important, Whyte also notes that in the few cases where distributors have picked up cipip features, distributors are nixing any gross revenue sharing before recouping sales fees, marketing, shipping and p&a costs, and leaving the burden of obliging the actra cipip agreement on the already-constrained producer.

For example, the ffp’s Cube, currently enjoying a release in Canadian theaters through Odeon Films, following a limited u.s. release by Trimark, used cipip. But Whyte says the ffp is expected to pay a percentage of the distribution gross revenues to actra members – not Trimark or Odeon.

‘We used our best effort to have both the domestic and international distributor of Cube assume those obligations and they refused several times, says Whyte. ‘So the onus of those obligations rests with the Feature Film Project.’

Odeon president Bryan Gliserman could not be reached for comment at Playback press time.

While currently in advanced negotiations with two Canadian distributors for a domestic theatrical deal for the ffp’s Clutch, Whyte says as the proposed deals currently stand, the ffp will once again be forced to oblige the cipip agreement as the distributors refuse to do so.

‘So once again the independent producers – who are probably on the same financial level as actors despite actra’s thoughts – are left to pay,’ says Whyte.

Negotiations

On the actor’s side, Alex Gill, director of communications at actra, says cipip has been criticized by some but that the agreement is designed to help good low-budget Canadian films using the best possible performers get made and distributed.

‘We do run into problems where people say to us that having actors’ royalties attached to distributors’ gross makes the film hard to sell,’ says Gill. ‘But the thrust here is to make sure that good films get made. It’s our belief that good films will get made and distributed if they’re good films.’

Gill does admit, however, that few producers are using cipip. ‘Do we have a lot of stuff being produced under cipip? Probably not as much as we’d like,’ he says.

‘We’re entering into negotiations right now and maybe we will end up looking at a lower-budget structure,’ says Gill.

Lyon, who says Motion’s cipip acquisition policy could change if a more realistic agreement is struck, says he hopes actra will take into account ‘that Canadian independent distributors are an important part of the film packaging and production community and that our needs should be recognized.’

Both Whyte – who will be at the cipip bargaining table representing producers – and Lyon say a revamped cipip agreement could spur the kind of production intended by the agreement by providing an incentive to producers and distributors to produce low-budget features with actra talent.

All agree that the particulars of the current cipip agreement have resulted in a marked decline in the number of features accessing the ‘incentive,’ leaving low-budget producers the choice of added back-end costs or to shoot non-union.

‘I do not have a choice,’ says Whyte, who has roughly $1.25 million to spread over three ffp features. ‘My only other option is to go non-union, but anyone who has half an ounce of talent belongs to actra.’