Editorial

Feature films in Canada: towards improved eXistenCe

As the Montreal World Film Festival parties to a close and Toronto revs up to count down through hundreds of films, dozens of parties and the odd Standing O, feature films soak up the media spotlight at centre stage.

Meanwhile, lead actors in the federal culture ministry should be soaking up the details of a proposed new policy, to reinvent the role of the Canadian feature, from Telefilm Canada’s head scriptwriter, exec director Francois Macerola. As we tell you in our story this episode (see ‘Macerola,’ p. 1), many interesting and debatable plot lines intersect within this plan for a Canadian Feature Film Fund. One of the key leaps-of-faith in the policy proposal envisions feature production increasing, in part, via strong public-private partnerships. Telefilm’s ED says he’s confident private broadcasters will be eager to invest in, buy and promote Canadian ‘long metrage’ films – but recent experience in Quebec reveals b’casters act more readily when they have financial incentives.

Consider, for instance, the way Quebec enticed more private broadcaster involvement in Canadian movies. Total investment in Telefilm-funded movies by Quebec broadcasters in ’97/98 was a shabby $55,000, and that came from Radio-Canada.

The situation has changed this year – the result of a tradeoff which took place back in June of ’98. Private broadcasters in Quebec had been pushing for access to the production tax credit, a move strongly opposed by the APFTQ (producers association). The government brokered a deal which capped (tax-credit) admissible production by private broadcasters or their affiliates, in both the content and services categories, at $20 million a year. The producers got a formal fiscal commitment out of the deal requiring the private networks to reinvest half the tax-credit saving – $1.5 million in the case of credits totaling $3 million – in original French-language feature production.

The casters keep the remaining $1.5 million. The upshot is a vital resource historically reserved for independent producers became partially available to private broadcasters.

At whatever cost, the fiscal wrangling does not indicate private broadcasters are not committed to homegrown movies. Under the new fiscal regime, which was supposed to go through a five-year ‘experimentation’ period, Group TVA has invested in, and licensed, five feature films this year, and those films will benefit enormously from on-air promotion.

Effectively, the June ’98 tax-credit revision increased feature film production financing for the licensed productions, creating a new funding source which otherwise did not exist.

Of course, one year later, the $20-million cap on admissible private TV export and service production has been withdrawn, and there is no cap now on eligible content and service productions from broadcasters. Still, the moviemakers have that extra $1.5 million.