A glitzy, glamorous Oscars-style film awards show in Canada, celebrating the best in domestic movie talent on primetime TV? Even today, the notion rails against the ingrained humility and inferiority complex that lurks inside most Canadians. Twenty-five years ago, it seemed like a wildly overambitious pipe dream.

Fortunately, Andra Sheffer didn’t listen to her innately Canadian self-doubts back in 1979. The first executive director of what is now the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, Sheffer and a handful of others were relentless in their determination to launch the organization and bring a world-class annual awards show to Canada.

The Academy’s mission was to raise the profile of Canadian films and motivate the general public to go see them. With Canuck flicks accounting for 3.8% of overall box office in 2003, this remains a challenge.

And there were other reasons for creating an Academy of Canadian Cinema. One was to replace the jury-based awards system used for the previous Canadian Film Awards with a membership-based voting system, giving the entire Canadian film community a voice in the process. Another was to bring all Canadian filmmakers into the fold – English and French, East Coast and West Coast. Finally, the Academy was to become a center of excellence for raising production standards in the industry.

What the Academy is not, however, is a lobby group for the industry, its fundamental role since the beginning being more promotional in nature.

‘From the outset, we banged the drum for Canadian cinema wherever we could,’ recalls Sheffer, now executive director of the Independent Production Fund, the Cogeco Program Development Fund and the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund. ‘I can even remember going on CBC Radio, having to debate some people who were against promoting Canadian-made films.’

Today the Academy is headed by president and CEO Maria Topalovich, who joined the organization in December 1979 and assumed her current position in 1997.

‘[Today] we remain shameless in our promotion of Canadian talent,’ Topalovich says. ‘If people see us as cheerleaders, then so be it.’

But the concept of using an awards show to boost the box office of Canadian films was not without its hurdles. Despite on-air appearances by Canadian-born stars such as Christopher Plummer and Donald Sutherland, viewers were being asked to watch awards being presented to films that, often, they had not actually seen. Distributors, meanwhile, didn’t help matters, often delaying the release of their films until after the Genies had aired, using the show as a launch pad for their promotional efforts.

From the outset, the campaign to establish the Academy wasn’t easy. Not only was there opposition to the idea from some CFA diehards, but money was also very tight.

Financial help arrives

‘We got started thanks to a $5,000 grant from the Ontario Ministry of Culture,’ says Topalovich. ‘We then got some federal government support, which helped get us going, and then Air Canada came in as a major corporate sponsor, which was a big boost to our morale. Andra and I may have had to share hotel rooms, but at least we got to fly first class.’

By the time the first Genie Awards were held in 1980, when TV viewers saw Joel Michaels and Garth Drabinsky pick up the best picture award for The Changeling, the Toronto-based Academy had just three staffers and fewer than 500 members. By contrast, today’s Academy has nearly 4,000 members and offices in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. For the first few years, the Genie ceremony was held at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre, followed by a gala party at the nearby Ed’s Warehouse Restaurant.

‘The nominees were somewhat overwhelmed by the need to dress up glamorously and be chauffeured to the theater by limousine,’ Sheffer recalls. ‘Still, from the first show on, the Genies were a fabulously glamorous event. We were also helped by the attendance of high-profile stars such as Plummer and Sutherland, and then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau, coming one year with Kim Cattrall and another with Gale Garnett.’

‘I remember attending the second Genie Awards in 1981,’ says Paul Gratton, current Academy chair, VP of CHUM’s Bravo! and VP/GM of Space: The Imagination Station and Drive-In Classics. ‘I was quite taken with the whole thing – coming to Toronto from my home in Ottawa and spending an evening with glamorous women in gowns. I recall writing about it for the now-defunct Ottawa Weekly newspaper, and filing a report to Carleton University Radio.’

Despite the theatrical beauty of the Royal Alex, the Academy decided to move the awards to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in 1986.

‘We needed someplace larger,’ says Sheffer. ‘The Convention Centre had the space, plus the facilities for CBC to broadcast the event nationally.’

Responding to calls from the Canadian television industry for a similar awards show to replace the ACTRAs, the Academy of Canadian Cinema added ‘& Television’ to its moniker in 1986. In short order, both the English-language Gemini Awards and the French-language Prix Gemeaux were born. The separate TV awards shows were an attempt to encompass all of Canadian television within the Academy, while acknowledging that the two markets are separate entities with their own programs and stars.

Adding television to the Academy paid off promotionally, says Gratton. ‘With Canadian movies then only accounting for 1% of the domestic box office, it wasn’t surprising that the mainstream TV media tended to ignore our activities,’ he explains. ‘But once television was included in our activities, the broadcasters were able to get a handle on what we’re doing and get interested in it.’

Twenty-five years in, the changes continue at the Academy. One of the biggest was the decision to use CHUM as the Genie Awards broadcaster for the May 2004 show, after years mostly with CBC. Many observers griped that the Ceeb’s treatment of the show had grown stale, and TV ratings had dipped.

‘It was time to shake things up by going with someone else,’ says Gratton, who must delicately straddle his roles at the Academy and at CHUM.

CHUM cross-promotes

‘We found that CHUM’s creative approach was very much in sync with ours,’ adds Topalovich. ‘They also brought a single-minded enthusiasm for Canadian film, and did a lot of cross-promotion between the Genies and CHUM’s family of channels.’

The show’s end result may not have been as free-flowing as had been billed – CHUM had promised something in the informal style of the Golden Globes – but the Academy was satisfied enough to sign CHUM on for next year’s 25th Genies. The caster did match CBC’s average-minute audience of last year despite having less reach, and CHUM reports that it more than doubled the number of viewers in the 18-34 demographic.

Meanwhile, responding to criticism that an outdated voting system has allowed for some worthy names to fall through the cracks, the Academy says it has refined its processes in the feature film and TV journalism categories.

‘It just didn’t smell nor taste right when David Cronenberg’s Spider wasn’t nominated [for best picture], and didn’t get to compete against Atom Egoyan’s Ararat for best picture,’ says Gratton. ‘We want to make sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen again. Changes made this year resulted in a slate of nominations that clearly passed the ‘taste test’ this year.’

The changes Gratton refers to saw the Genies going from a system in which members of two large juries silently put forward numerical evaluations, to one whereby one smaller jury screens all the entries and discusses each members’ choices over two days.

As for the future? ‘I am hoping that the Academy will eventually serve as an archive for the best of Canadian film and television,’ says Topalovich. ‘As for everything else, I see good times ahead.’

-www.academy.ca