The boom in documentary production, driven by the explosion in specialty and diginets and an unprecedented number of funding applications to the CTF, has once again raised the question: What is a documentary?

Just 10 years ago Playback and other publications were warning of the imminent ‘Death of The Documentary’ and the demise of documentary filmmakers. It appears that rumors of our death were greatly exaggerated.

But despite the acknowledged boom in ‘factual programming,’ filmmakers engaged in the production of politically committed, passionately authored documentaries continue to struggle.

Flooded by a record 250 applications for documentary funding at its March deadline, the CTF recently reiterated that ‘lifestyle’ and ‘human interest’ genres of documentary are not eligible for LFP financing. The CTF also recently announced that the so-called ‘Living History’ genre (e.g.: Pioneer Quest) would continue to be eligible, but projects with paid ‘contestants’ would be closely examined.

At last week’s Hot Docs festival in Toronto, John Panikkar, VP production at Canada’s Discovery Channel, revealed that U.S. Discovery doesn’t classify its, or his, programs as documentaries – they’re ‘factual entertainment.’ Chewing a thick wad of tobacco, CNN’s Ted Turner once told me, ‘Don’t call it a documentary, kid, it’s ‘adventure television.’

So then, what is a documentary?

In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion in ‘factual’ programming, much of which is industrial in nature. The specialties and now the diginets have an insatiable appetite for the stuff, as it’s cheap and doesn’t require much effort to watch. But Canadian producers of these pseudo-docs have been applying en masse to our public funding agencies, sucking up millions of dollars of taxpayers’ subsidies for productions that should be able to stand on their own feet. The real documentaries, which desperately need and deserve public funding, are being squeezed out.

So I welcome the CTF’s efforts to tighten up its documentary definition.

In 1996, faced with the initial explosion in the ‘documentary’ craze, Canada’s public funding agencies clarified their vague definition. To be eligible for funding, documentaries had to provide a ‘critical analysis,’ an ‘in-depth treatment,’ require ‘substantial time in preparation, production and post’, have an ‘original narrative’ and ‘enduring appeal’. That same year, Rogers Communications also targeted the real documentary as an underfunded genre, creating the Rogers Documentary Fund – $1 million a year in grants to help finance genuine documentaries. In 2000, the CTF created a special ‘October Tranche’ for ‘POV’ documentaries, which it defined as not being ‘factual programming’, stressing ‘the creative vision of the filmmaking team.’

The CTF’s funding of the documentary genre has increased from $28 million in ’97/98 to $44 million in ’01/02.

But despite all this defining and refining, documentaries – pseudo or real – are still eligible for only 20% of the funds available from the CTF’s LFP program and just 17% of Telefilm’s EIP funds. For the country known worldwide for the exceptional quality of our documentaries, this is a pitifully tiny piece of the pie.

Peter Raymont is president of White Pine Pictures.