With the recent announcement of a five-year, $30-million commitment to feature films, cbc is looking to up the ante in its role in financing Canadian movies, as are other broadcasters across the spectrum of regional, pay and specialty services.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, cbc has licensed 20 features which are now fully financed. cbc’s head of movies and miniseries Brian Freeman says this fiscal, three films have been prebought, while last fiscal, seven features with cbc presales went into production.

Projects presold to the cbc include Anne Wheeler’s Marine Life, scripted by Rob Forsythe (currently in preproduction), and Robert Lepage’s first English-language feature, Possible Worlds. cbc has also prebought St. Jude, John L’Ecuyer’s second dramatic feature, now in post-production. And it has acquired broadcast rights to Atom Egoyan’s Felicia’s Journey and the Robert Lantos-produced Sunshine, both screening at the Toronto International Film Festival this year.

cbc also prebought five other titles at tiff – Jerry Ciccoritti’s Life Before This, Jeremy Podeswa’s The Five Senses, Scott Smith’s rollercoaster, Davor Marjanovic’s My Father’s Angel and Allan Moyle’s New Waterford Girl.

‘As we continue our involvement in feature films, we will go outside the box of current public financing – the Canadian Television Fund,’ says Freeman. ‘I look forward to announcing a couple more features prelicensed by cbc and not dependent on Telefilm [Canada]. This will become a bigger factor in our programming decisions.’ These projects have been financed by foreign presales and a combination of private equity and sales projections, he says.

Freeman says cbc’s $5-million commitment will be spread among prebuys, acquisitions, equity investment and development loans, as well as airtime to promote individual titles and Canadian filmmaking in general.

Without any new money to tap into, the funds will come from ‘a redirection of internal resources,’ says Freeman. Ideally, he would like to see a deep-pocketed sponsor host a Canadian movie night on cbc. While feature films are a growing component of the arts and entertainment budget, Freeman says this will not be at the expense of the movies and miniseries budget.

Under tight budget restraints, the broadcaster cannot pay a high price for feature films – the current Canadian Television Fund trigger is 5% of the budget, up to a ceiling of $150,000, and that’s cbc’s current benchmark.

Freeman is looking at increasing cbc’s involvement at the development level, primarily by putting up as much as 25% of an approved development budget to cover costs of optioning rights. Freeman would also like to offer assistance at the packaging stage to ensure cbc’s involvement in casting and preproduction. Down the road, he anticipates cbc taking an equity investment in certain films to ensure they go forward.

Freeman is putting together an advisory committee to help define the objectives of cbc’s feature film mandate and determine how the network can best use its resources to promote its films.

As for the type of films cbc is interested in, Freeman says he is casting a wide net – from lower-budget indies to international coproductions, which because of their higher budgets, cbc usually takes as acquisitions.

‘Some of the material is extremely provocative, some viewers may find it offensive, but I am prepared to take the hit to create dialogue and build audience interest,’ says Freeman. ‘At the same time, some of the films are very broad in appeal.’

The first set of features acquired by cbc is available for broadcast this fall. Freeman says they are bandying about several ideas as to how best to program the films, including running them in a Thursday 8 p.m. slot already reserved for arts programming. A feature film strand, not exclusively Canadian, is also being considered.

‘The idea is to showcase Canadian features in primetime, make a big deal of this fact, and create a viewing habit with our audience,’ says Freeman. ‘We have a lot of work to do to overcome built-in prejudices about Canadian features, something which theatrical distributors have not been entirely successful in doing. There’s an assumption, no longer borne out – if it ever was – that their production values are low. We want to be instrumental in changing that.’

As Chum Television’s group of stations grows, so does its commitment to feature films, says vp of programming Jay Switzer, pointing out that with Space: The Imagination Station, Citytv, Bravo! and the New vr, more than 100 hours of Canadian features are programmed annually in primetime.

‘With more channels there is more support we can offer, so the ratio increases as our business increases.’

Welcome news for producers, Chum is also willing to pay more. Switzer says in the past 18 months he has prelicensed six films at more than $300,000 per film, although the others are generally in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.

At the development phase, anywhere from treatments to draft scripts, Chum writes cheques ranging from $5,000 to $15,000.

Chum prebuys 12 to 15 new Canadian films a year, and provides development money for roughly 20 to 30 more projects. Another five to 10 are picked up as acquisitions. In the last three years, Switzer says Chum has prebought between 40 and 50 films, ranging from ‘small labors of love’ to larger international coproductions such as The Red Violin.

Chum looks for ‘modern, urban stories that can connect with younger thinking viewers,’ says Switzer. For the most part, Chum prefers to support smaller-budgeted personal films where its licence fee makes a significant difference. However, Switzer points out there is no hard-and-fast rule. While Chum has supported films with budgets as low as $300,000 to $500,000, it has also been involved in the $10-million The Red Violin. Chum will take first, second or third windows, even behind the cbc, he adds.

Chum has taken broadcast rights to John Paiz’s Top of the Food Chain, Mort Ransen’s Touched, Carl Bessai’s johnny, Reg Harkema’s A Girl Is A Girl, Anne Wheeler’s Better Than Chocolate, Curtis Wehrfritz’s Four Days, Malcolm Ingram’s Tail Lights Fade, Ron Mann’s Grass, Keoni Waxman’s The Highwayman and Francois Girard’s The Red Violin.

During the 1999/2000 season, Chum will broadcast Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo, Gary Burns’ Kitchen Party, Katie Tallo’s Juiced, Eric Till’s Bonhoeffer, Carl Goldstein’s Shadow Lake, Shawn A. Thompson’s Dinner at Fred’s, Rodney Gibbons’ Little Men, Neil Grieve’s Stuart Bliss and Paul Donovan’s Paint Cans.

With this month’s launch of entertainment specialty Star!, Chum has an additional instrument to reinforce the marketing and promotion of Canadian film. ‘We want to glamorize and elevate Canadian films – that’s the missing link,’ says Switzer. Although Star! does not have national carriage, Switzer anticipates reaching more than one million homes.

While specialty channel Showcase typically acquires finished films after pay-tv and national broadcast rights have already been exploited, programmer Laura Michalchyshyn says on ‘rare and select’ occasions she is starting to commit to first-window prelicences on projects which have been unable to secure national broadcast presales (generally because of edgy content) and have 95% of financing in place. Showcase will then provide the back-end financing, although the price is obviously lower than a network fee.

‘If the material is provocative and challenging and the producers have shopped the project to other broadcasters first, then we will consider it,’ she says. Colleen Murphy’s Desire, a Manitoba/Ontario coproduction currently shooting in Winnipeg, is an example.

Michalchyshyn is willing to look at projects at the fine-cut stage that have not been able to find broadcasters, as was the case with Jacques Holender’s Rats.

Showcase airs an average of four films a week (including mows, industrial and theatrical films) for a total of about 208 films a year. Michalchyshyn says about 40% of the films are new to each cycle. In addition to the regular 10 p.m. and midnight Showcase Revue slot and the 7 p.m. Showcase Weekend Revue (specifically for Canadian films), ‘directors festivals’ are programmed to coincide with theatrical premieres of new films, as in a coming Atom Egoyan festival to coincide with the launch of Felicia’s Journey.

Coinciding with the Toronto International Film Festival is a week dedicated to films which have made a profile on the international film festival circuit. In December, Showcase will premier the new Canadian Film Centre shorts, and later this winter, the latest crop of Ontario Film Development Corporation Calling Card films.

Of the Perspective Canada lineup, Astral Television Networks (formerly TMN Networks) has prebought The Five Senses, johnny, New Waterford Girl, rollercoaster and Top of the Food Chain. atn has provided equity financing to Felicia’s Journey, Five Senses, Four Days and Touched. Through The Harold Greenberg Fund, screenwriting support was given to Five Senses, Lea Pool’s Emporte-moi, Four Days, Life Before This, New Waterford Girl, Jean Beaudin’s Souvenirs intimes and Touched.

In addition to presales and acquisitions, Astral’s TMN-The Movie Network provides development money to roughly four or five films per year.

vp programming Robert Lapointe says the pay service looks for ‘intelligent pictures people will react to.’ Budget isn’t an issue, he says, wide commercial appeal is. ‘We are more interested in the bigger market, films that will interest the vastest majority.’

wtn acquires roughly 12 Canadian features per year for its primetime Friday night strand Girl Movies, generally after pay-tv and first-window broadcasts have already been exploited. However, recent acquisitions such as Fish Tale Soup, which ran only on Citytv, gave wtn the second window.

Director of acquisitions Angel Narick says over the next couple of years wtn will be in a position to begin offering presales on Canadian features. The wtn mandate is films with strong female protagonists.

About a third of the movies produced with a prebuy from The A-Channel Drama Fund have theatrical releases, according to executive director Joanne Levy. The A-Channel Drama Fund is a $14-million, seven-year commitment to kick start Alberta production. Of the nine movies produced through the fund over the past three years, two have already had theatrical releases, Red Devil Films’ Bad Money will open in theatres this fall, Landed Eagle Entertainment’s Grizzly Falls is set for release and Illusion Entertainment’s A Question of Privilege is being considered for a theatrical run.

Levy says A-Channel keeps open the possibility of a theatrical release for movies which go into production as tv movies without distributors on board. ‘If it’s made and there is a theatrical possibility then we allow the film as much of a window of opportunity for a theatrical release as possible.’