It’s time for the feature film industry in Canada, and public sector agencies that serve the industry, to consider the notions of duality and uneven development in the marketplace.

Burdened by the absolute need to produce some results, Telefilm Canada’s feature film production funds should now be opened to any Canadian organization with a qualified and promising culturally relevant programming proposal. There are indications Telefilm executive director Richard Stursberg is prepared to take such a step, and soon. The catch here is that access to Telefilm production financing for broadcaster affiliates such as CHUM Productions, Fireworks Entertainment, a CanWest Global company, and CTV production affiliate Landscape Pictures, should be restricted to English-language films.

Strong opposition to broadcaster-affiliate access on the part of producers in the APFTQ in Quebec may be one of the reasons Telefilm has delayed a decision. This is a legitimate reason for such a delay, because the APFTQ position is entirely justified.

There is a complexity of factors as to why and what projects are financed in the multi-tiered Canadian public funding system. But the fundamental performance credo of the Canada Feature Film Fund is not so complex. The message is irresistibly simple: get results, and reward those results.

With the two-thirds, one-third split in available federal production funding, Quebec’s French-language movie producers have only about $20 million annually in available equity investments – heaven forbid such a resource should be taken away (see story, p. 10).

As for the evidence of uneven development, Quebec movie producers are succeeding in capturing market share. The Quebec industry is now in a consolidation phase, securing earlier gains made by films like the Les Boys and Laura Cadieux franchises, La Vie Apres l’Amour, Nuit de Noces, Maelstrom and Un Crabe dans la tete.

French-track Quebec movies earned 9% of the total French box office last year. Their performance, again remarkably underscored this spring by a film like Moise (Savage Messiah) that earned $1.2 million, almost all with French-speaking audiences, deserves to be rewarded.

On the English side, and despite the redeeming $4.1-million box-office score for Men With Brooms, the main item on the agenda must remain more preliminary – getting results, not rewarding performance.

‘Let the players play’ is the credo at CHUM. And Bravo! station manager Paul Gratton says a CHUM Productions movie would derive all the considerable benefits of the broadcast group’s marketing acumen and leverage. The broadcasters want a fair shot at funding. ‘That is all we are asking. Let Telefilm decide in its wisdom what its slate of pictures will be with public money in that year. And hopefully it will choose in a way that will maximize the probabilities we have at trying to approach the 5% goal,’ says Gratton. ‘Television is a great unused tool in English Canada when it comes to promoting Canadian features. Part of the success of Men With Brooms was the way both the Alliance Atlantis channels and CBC, who had prebought it, got behind the promotion.’