Montreal: Filmmaking has been part of Jacques Bensimon’s life almost since he first arrived in Canada. He was 15 when he picked up a film camera, a proud winner of a CBC/Radio-Canada competition. ‘And since then I have never let go,’ he says convincingly. That was some time ago, but the chair of the National Film Board and government film commissioner says that early leitmotif – his experiences as a Moroccan Jew and immigrant, and his youthful fascination with film – is still very much a part of who he is today.

His goals include bringing in a new generation of filmmakers, managers, distributors and marketers across all NFB departments and building brand awareness through an expanded distribution network, on the street, on TV screens and via broadband systems. And he’s open to changing preconceptions about how and when the board partners. There are new opportunities here for coproduction.

After university and film studies in the U.S., Bensimon joined the NFB in 1967 as an editor, making new friends like Robin Spry, Michael Rubbo and Yves Dion. ‘What was great about the film board was that it allowed you to learn, allowed you to make mistakes, and you had mentors like Tom Daly and Colin Low.’

Bensimon worked on both the French and English sides, headed the French Program committee and reorganized international distribution. Two standalone NFB projects for specialty TV licences in documentaries and animation were denied, and by the time he left the board in 1986 he was perhaps discouraged, sensing the venerable institution was being left behind by developments elsewhere in television.

He moved to TFO and TVOntario, where he was head of the primetime schedule and director-general of the pioneering French-language TFO network through to 1999. That experience brought him into direct contact with international broadcasters like ARTE, BBC and PBS. He traveled to Africa during a two-year period, working with frontline U.N.-commissioned filmmakers and with world development leaders like Maurice Strong.

In June 2000, Bensimon joined the Banff Television Foundation and its CEO Pat Ferns as BTVF’s executive VP and COO. ‘The reason I went to Banff and we got along together was that I was a broadcaster, and I lived the daily reality of what it meant to put out 6,000 hours of programs a year,’ he says.

Branding the NFB

One of Bensimon’s principal preoccupations will be to make Canadians, especially young Canadians, more aware of the NFB. He appears to like things practical, and the notion of shared goals is seen as a healthy remedy to the entrenched Canadian habit of endless bickering over differences.

And he is very enthusiastic about the NFB’s business partnership (15%) with Corus Entertainment and CBC in digital specialty channel The Documentary Channel.

‘To me this is a very practical way of doing business. We are not talking philosophy or semantics. We have to deliver a network and compete with the outside world. What’s important isn’t so much that our catalogue is nourishing [the network], but that Canadians have the possibility at least two or three times a week of seeing an NFB film.’ [Bensimon personally introduces the weekly showcase program NFB’s Best.]

The next step, he says, is a similar specialty window on the French side. ‘In a bilingual country with two cultures it’s important NFB films are seen on a regular basis on the francophone side as well.’

Bensimon will be an ardent brand builder.

He says it’s essential the board’s corporate logo and executive-production signature lead the way for unique and successful films like Westray, Atanarjuat, Cinema Verite: Defining the Moment, Spirits of Havana and Ame Noire. ‘The point is the NFB is part of these stories and these films will not be made, and would not have been made, without the board.’

Distribution issues

Bensimon will favor distribution, perhaps in ways unseen at the board for many years. ‘It is important that [we] become part of the younger generation’s reality.’

A recent NFB-commissioned survey indicates Canadians 40 and over know and appreciate the board, but that does not seem to be the case with younger people. ‘We’ve disappeared from their radar in many cases and importantly they don’t see the NFB as an accomplice, as an institution at the top of the hill you want to be part of. We make films because we want to reach an audience. Part of that audience is in theatres, on TV and on the Internet, but we need a tactile presence.’

As such, Bensimon says the NFB will open a prototype storefront and screening theatre in the downtown Queen Street district of Toronto, a kind of old and new neighbor for the kids at the multiplex and the aging hipsters (and friends) at Citytv. The facility will house interactive terminals, possibly a DVD burn unit, and much more.

‘I am going to have to find the money, but that is my ambition, to bring back the NFB to the consciousness of Canadians and to do that all across this country,’ says Bensimon.

And the NFB is talking with distribs about taking CineRoute and ‘the Collection’ beyond institutions to Canadian homes. A trial delivery experiment in 2,000 homes via cable is in advanced planning.

New partnerships

Will all this mean cutbacks in production resources? Not according to Bensimon.

‘It means being creative and inventive on the business side as a manager, in the same way I am asking the filmmaker to be creative. And what I mean by that is partnership – people want partners. We don’t have to start at zero. That’s the problem with this country. At this point in time it is about what we have in common and how do we go forward.’

Once the new French and English Program heads are settled in and a certain amount of official and unofficial coalescense has transpired, Bensimon says it will be only a matter of a few short months, perhaps even by the end of February, before the board releases a new set of industry coproduction and coventure guidelines.

(Toronto documentary producer Tom Perlmutter is the NFB’s new director general of the English Program. A replacement for French Program head Andreanne Bournival could be in place by the end of the year.)

Bensimon says the audiovisual landscape is changing, and other players, in some measure, can do what the NFB used to do in documentaries, in POV films, in features and animation, and the NFB has to exist within that broader Canadian and international industry.

‘Maybe for some time the NFB protected itself by setting out some very rigid rules and regulations and by protecting itself editorially and in distribution. And all of this is being questioned. We will open the door to partnership again in terms of coproduction. There are no sacred cows and no ‘We don’t do series.’ And as I’ve have already said publicly, we are open to a certain kind of fiction [drama and docudrama]. I know it might be very dangerous opening that door, but films like [Atanarjuat, Westray, Obaachan’s Garden and The Company of Strangers] are examples of where this country can go if we are willing to push the envelope. The NFB could be that distant lighthouse, that place where you develop a film [refused] by a network, that extra plus in terms of research, in terms of cameras, in terms of experimental.’

The board will maintain its strong editorial interests, no doubt, and will not become a financing agency, but Bensimon says partnerships will evolve and grow as the NFB finds new and exciting ways to fulfill its broad mandate.

In his view, it is the avant-garde filmmakers and their success and efforts in developing film narrative which point the way to the future.

And the government film commissioner holds that new partnerships, in production and distribution, will ultimately lead to a consolidation and deepening of revenues ($69.8 million in appropriation, sales and rentals in 2001/02).

‘The Canadian government has had the guts to continue to maintain this organization for a long time and I think it is a treasure we have to preserve for the generations to come.’ *

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