Montreal: The English Program of the National Film Board has introduced 75 new films, videos, cd-roms and website projects to be released in distribution between now and April 1, 2000. The release program – Preview 1999-2000 – was introduced in cities across the country earlier this month and is part of the board’s ongoing 60th anniversary celebrations.

Despite major funding cutbacks, and an average release volume of 85 titles a year prior to ’95/96, a significantly restructured nfb is currently releasing more than 100 titles a year, including 117 in ’98/99 and a projected 105 this year.

Coming release highlights include animation short and double international award winner (Palme d’Or and Annecy Grand Prix) When the Day Breaks from directors Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis out of the Animation Children’s and Interactive East studio in Montreal, and documentary veteran Peter Wintonick’s Cinema Verite, an examination of non-fiction filmmaking in the 1950s and ’60s coproduced by the English and French Programs out of Documentary East – Montreal.

Other new releases include Catherine Annau’s Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the Seventies Generation (Documentary Ontario – Toronto), and Tim Latchem’s Norman’s Brain (ACI East), a website project which uses a cranial X-ray model provided by pioneering nfb animator Norman McLaren to explore and mirror the creative process from ‘idea to result.’

English Program budget

The overall English Program budget – including rental overhead for five of six studios, marketing, administration costs and production – is $29 million a year.

‘The money we have to [produce] these shows is about $18.5 million; the marketing budget is about $3 million,’ says Barbara Janes, director-general, English Program.

Exceptional nfb animation theatrical shorts do receive theatrical releases (The Sweater) but only a few documentaries will have an art house release (Project Grizzly, Desperately Seeking Helen, The Herd) or play in a major international festival.

The real source of distribution revenue is tv and sell-through video, says Janes, adding: ‘We have strong non-theatrical sales programs – we sell to education, to public libraries, to social services and communities and a modest amount to home consumers.’

English Program domestic distribution revenues were $2.8 million in ’97/98 and $2.4 million in ’98/99. While 90% of the nfb’s audience is sourced from tv broadcasts, sell-through video makes up the lion’s share of revenue, representing $1.6 million in sales last year. tv accounted for about $820,000 in English Program sales.

nfb chairperson and government film commissioner Sandra Macdonald says tv licences have ‘generally declined’ because of fragmentation.

‘We have, in fact, maintained pretty constant revenues, but that has actually meant we have had to make twice as many sales,’ she says.

What’s important to point out, says Macdonald, is that four or five years ago nfb distribution costs (aside from schools) exceeded revenues by a wide margin. Since then, most of the ‘storefront’ distribution points have been closed ‘and over the last five years we have reduced the expenses in the distribution of our films by $5 million.’

Overall, nfb distribution costs – English, French and international combined – are in the $8 million a year range, with global revenues hovering at just under $7 million.

‘So there’s a gap of about $1.5 million, down from $7 million five years ago,’ says Macdonald

Documentaries, ACI

In English documentaries, Macdonald says the nfb is placing increasing emphasis on cultivating filmmakers from minority communities. ‘The face of Canada is changing and we believe the faces in our films should be changing.’

Apart from the $1 million a year Aborginal Film Program, the nfb has mandated a producer in each studio (Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal) to cultivate filmmakers from minority cultural communities, she says.

At the Animation Children and Interactive studio, Macdonald says the growing emphasis is on web-based production and new media. ‘We are also cultivating a lot of new creators in this mode and we have a couple of special projects aimed at starting people in this field and letting them experiment.’

The nfb will deliver six multimedia projects in ’99/2000, two coproduced with the French Program, including the five-year Canadian History Project. The board expects to spend $5 million on its history website by project’s end. The initial wave will be rolled out this coming winter, perhaps before Christmas, adds Macdonald.

Other nfb cd-rom and direct-to-web projects are essentially educational, aimed at children and youth.

‘One of the reasons we’re doing this is that it seems to us more or less inevitable that this is the new frontier of storytelling,’ says the film commissioner.

Cine-Route this fall

The nfb’s multiyear Cine-Route project – the online delivery of the collection – is scheduled to roll out in September or October. To date, about 6,500 titles from the existing collection have been transferred to analog laserdisc and will be digitized as they go out, says Macdonald.

‘About 800 of those will be available on demand in schools and institutions via the Internet,’ she says. Tests are underway with the nfb’s partners in Cine-Route – canarie, the federally funded (Industry Canada) broadband research network, and risq, its Quebec component.

A controlled Cine-Route launch will be restricted to schools, universities and libraries. ‘At some point,’ says Macdonald, ‘the distribution system won’t be free. We have to work out the problem of who pays for distribution and how is it done. We sell videocassettes, for example, and so presumably there would be some mechanism whereby some portion of making the thing available is [picked up] by the user.’

The project, which includes long-term r&d and preservation elements, has been actively in the works for five years. Since 1992, the nfb has invested close to $2 million a year in Cine-Route and related activity.

’99 agenda

High on the nfb’s agenda in 1999 is its honored role as host of the International Conference of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, scheduled for Nov. 1-6 in Montreal.

‘Preservation of our audiovisual heritage is a serious matter, which is one of the reasons we’ve invested so much in it,’ says Macdonald.

She says the meet should interest a broad spectrum of the community beyond archival professionals.

As for her mandate as chairperson and government film commissioner, Macdonald says the issue has to be raised. She is currently starting her fifth year of a five-year mandate.

‘We have very much stuck to our [restructuring] plan and I am pleased about that,’ she says. ‘We set ourselves concrete goals and we’ve stuck to them. With creative institutions it does take some discipline to stick with a plan.’

Coprod policy

Macdonald says the nfb’s review of its coproduction policy has led to the decision to do fewer coproductions but for larger amounts, ‘so that when we coproduce we coproduce for a serious portion (30% to 40% and sometimes closer to 50%) of the budget. We were in for 15%, 20%, and didn’t think that was the best thing to do. We think it would be better if we were seriously involved, and that means being in for more money.’

The nfb coproduces all over the country and its spending allocation for coproduction is still high. Of the 75 nfb productions to be delivered in ’99/2000, no fewer than 30 to 35 are coproductions.

‘Generally what tends to happen is the projects which are most risky are the ones we do ourselves,’ says Janes. ‘We don’t want the future of a project to depend on whether or not a broadcaster is willing to pre-commit, because then you end up with totally formatted productions.

‘You have to look at what that means. If a broadcaster is not going to prebuy then [the coproduced project] is not going to get financed through the independent system.

‘So we look at the things which are most risky, whether it’s because it’s a developing filmmaker, a subject that is unusual or because the filmmaker’s treatment is not the standard television approach. So we say, `Okay, we’ll take responsibility,’ and we worry about getting it on tv after.’

Conversely, if the project looks like it might get a presale and the filmmaker is willing to work within the funding system, then Janes says the nfb is open to coproduction.

The nfb’s contribution on coproductions includes creative input and cash participation, and is limited to no more than 49%. ‘There may be some [in lieu] services, but services are not a key component on coproductions anymore,’ says Janes.

The line on drama

Macdonald says the nfb’s announced position on drama has been communicated to both the board’s trustees and Heritage.

‘We’ve never said drama is something we’ll never do,’ she says. ‘What we’ve said is where it is the best way to deal with a topic we consider important, most often in the context of the material we do for young audiences and schools, then we reserve the right to use it.’

Some of the rumors concerning the nfb’s role in drama have centred on the novel The Stone Diaries. Macdonald says the literary property was acquired before the nfb got out of fiction.

‘We would like to see this go somewhere because it’s an important Canadian work and [director] Cynthia Scott (Company of Strangers, Flamenco at 5:15) invested a great deal of her energy and creativity. So we entered into a development agreement with Rhombus Media (a Toronto production company) which permits them to have all the work done up to now for a period of, I think, one year, and they would see if they could take it any further.’

Janes adds drama at the board is essentially limited to certain children’s programs and some aboriginal projects.

Obviously, apart from the non-nfb productions which have received support – $5,000 to $10,000 in cash from the Filmmakers’ Assistance Program – the nfb has not acquired any additional literary property, nor has it invested in theatrical or broadcast drama production or development, at least not since 1995, says the commissioner. The annual fap grant is just over $500,000 a year.

Other developments

Macdonald says she hopes to name a replacement for Doris Girard, former director-general, French Program, before the end of July. Girard is the new president of Tele-Quebec. ‘Certainly [Girard] did a very good job opening doors for the nfb with Tele-Quebec,’ says Macdonald. ‘We have several ongoing windows with them now which we didn’t have before she decided to pursue that avenue.’

On losing out on its French-track history channel specialty bid along with majority partner Radio-Canada, Macdonald says, ‘At least they [licence winner Canal Histoire] will need programs.’

‘I think this [latest licensing decision] was less about the quality of the applications than about the whole process of crtc licence renewals going on at the moment,’ she adds.

From the nfb’s annual budget of $59 million, $42 million is invested in the English and French Programs, the latter with $17 million and some 40 production titles slated for delivery this year. Another $9 million is invested in ‘the collection, in vaults, in ONF Montreal, in the Cine-Route project, in transfers, etc. The balance being normal administration costs,’ says Macdonald.

NFB release highlights

regional highlights of nfb and coproduction releases this year include:

Documentary East – Halifax

* Donna Davies’ Kitchen Goddess, a breakthrough one-hour doc on the supernatural in Maritime Celtic culture

* Lesley Ann Patten’s one-hour doc Loyalties, about an extraordinary meeting of two women who work at the Museum of Natural History

* Meredith Ralston’s Why Women Run, an examination of women’s participation in contemporary politics profiling the recent campaign face-off between Liberal incumbent Mary Clancy and ndp federal leader Alexa McDonough

ACI East – Montreal

* Gail Sweeney’s A Mind of Your Own, a doc for preteens on issues surrounding learning disabilities

Documentary East – Montreal

* Wendy Rowland’s and Jeremiah Hayes’ dust-to-dawn chronicle of the annual high-school graduation ritual The Prom, coproduced with Cineflix, Montreal

* Alanis Obomsawin’s latest, the one-hour documentary Rocks takes the perspective of encouraging better relations between people in a recounting one of the more shocking developments to emerge from the 1990 Oka crisis

* George Hargrave’s and Joe Moulins’ Welcome to Nunavut, a one-hour portrait of the frenzy leading up to the birth of Canada’s newest territory, coproduced with Nutaaq Media, Montreal, and presold to CBC Newsworld’s Rough Cuts

Documentary Ontario – Toronto.

* Michel Jones’ one-hour doc Kim Campbell Through the Looking Glass

* Deep Inside Clint Star, Clint Alberta’s 90-minute raw and humorous ‘re-imagining’ of Native people as unique individuals

ACI West – Winnipeg

* Gary Ferington’s Media Literacy, a cd-rom which encourages students to expand language skills through the study of mass media

Documentary West – Winnipeg

* River of Time, a look at the work of a young paleontologist, coproduced by Credo Entertainment, Northern Lights and Clearwater Media (Discovery)

Documentary West – Vancouver

* Wild Goose Chase, an evaluation of the unexpected evolutionary success of the snow goose and Canada goose, presold to cbc’s The Nature of Things

* David Ozier’s Java Jive, presold to CBC Newsworld’s Rough Cuts