As a new festival season rolls around, look for Canada’s movie directors to start some serious lobbying for what they consider to be their share of the reserved or performance envelope of the Canada Feature Film Fund. Quebec’s French-language directors association says features are made by a team consisting of the producer, screenwriter and director, and the reserved CFFF allocation, 50% of all production and development monies this year – $23 million on the French side and $46 million on the English side – should be ‘automatically and equitably shared by directors, screenwriters, producers and distributors who would be free to associate in a new project, or to attribute their share of the envelope to projects of their choice.’ The ARRQ says it hopes to discuss the issue with managers at Telefilm Canada later in August.

The Directors Guild of Canada says it expects to come up with a proposal in early November, but it has already expressed ‘serious concern with respect to Telefilm’s distribution of funds through the performance-based envelopes.’

In a private letter to outgoing executive director Francois Macerola, and copied to the ARRQ and writers in SARTEC and the WGC, DGC president Alan Goluboff writes, ‘While we support your wish to reward performance, we question Telefilm’s policy of rewarding only production and distribution companies. Directors and writers play a major role in the success of a production and, we believe, deserve a fair share of this funding in addition to producers and distributors.’

The directors readily admit funding movies will become even more complex, as resources are seriously fragmented, if performance benefits also flow to themselves and to writers. But they claim the issue is one of principle. The belief popular directors and screenwriters only have to negotiate better deals for themselves with producers is seriously compromised in view of the cap imposed on directors’ salaries on films financed by Telefilm.

Producers respond that directors and other artists (Should the highest-paid performers also be considered?) have to look closely at CFFF’s overall policy objectives – increasing production values through higher average budgets and the ultimately dismal market share for Canadian movies. If performance funds, which significantly command an important share of selective funding, are fragmented even further, producers rightly wonder, ‘How will the production ever get made?’

The issue is a difficult one. If CFFF’s calculation of ‘performance’ is devoid of any commonly held notion of ‘profit,’ it is also true audiences are drawn by subjects, treatments, performers and a director’s reputation. On the other hand, Telefilm’s deal letters and production financing agreements are directed exclusively to producers, not directors, and the copyright to films financed by the agency must be held by the producer(s).

The directors’ concerns deserve a full hearing and should be placed high up on this fall’s CFFF Advisory Group agenda.