Robert Lantos:
Producer & former ACCT chair

The Academy is one of the pillars on which the industry is built. When I started making films, there was no such thing as a Canadian academy, and honoring films was an ad-hoc affair, left up to whoever felt like doing it, the CBC or ACTRA. So, to have a concept of an academy that represents all segments of the industry, that’s there to ‘cheerlead’ the indie film and provide a forum for peers to judge each other, is something important. Obviously it’s not going to make an industry, but you can’t have an industry in its absence.

Some people question whether winning awards in Canada has any impact. I’m not sure that it does when it comes to films. If you win an Academy Award or Golden Globe there is a direct translation to commercial success. That doesn’t happen with Genies, but winning these awards becomes a feather in the cap of the filmmaker.

The awards do two things, equally important. They focus national attention on Canadian film and TV a couple of times a year… and they provide a semi-annual party. The industry has to have a party. Both are equally meaningful.

Until we had the Academy, we couldn’t call ourselves an industry.

Wayne Clarkson:
Director of the Canadian Film Centre

I was running the Toronto International Film Festival as of 1978. At that time, the Canadian Film Awards officially closed the Festival of Festivals. It was a very contentious year. There were lawsuits and court injunctions against the Canadian Film Awards – what films were eligible, who could vote on them. There were a number of tax-shelter films; there were coproductions. The industry was significantly changing in terms of the number of productions being done – the Capital Cost Allowance was very much in play – and yet we still had what was a rather antiquated and parochial system for awards.

Then, in 1979, [the Academy emerged, and the Genies replaced the CFAs.] I was part of that, more on the periphery, sitting on boards. It was a traumatic and dramatic birth, but a good one.

I certainly remember the year that Black Robe won (1991), specifically because Robert Lantos, one of the film’s producers, then of Alliance Communications, was very generous. There was an award from Telefilm Canada for $200,000 to the best Canadian film, and Robert generously gave that to the Canadian Film Centre. The Film Centre trains them, TIFF exhibits them, and the Academy extends honors to them.

The growth of the Academy – and the debates and comings and goings and issues that emerge – really have reflected the growth of the two industries in film and television.

Stephen Waddell:
National executive director, ACTRA

The Academy has made a significant contribution to Canadian culture. I know that performers value and cherish the Genie and Gemini Awards

they receive, and that these honors do help performers get recognized for their work – something that’s always a challenge in this country.

Atom Egoyan:
Filmmaker

I chart my entire career with the attention that I was given by the Academy from a really early point. I was nominated for director for my first feature, Next of Kin.

I’ll never forget the experience of going to the press conference where they were announcing the nominees. At that point, the chair of the Academy was Robert Lantos. I was watching Robert read these names and thinking he just lives in a different world. There was absolutely no point of similarity between the world he represented in terms of his practice and the world I was coming from. In that way, our first contact was through the Academy. I don’t think he had any idea who I was, at that point; I certainly knew who he was, but I had no idea at that moment that our futures would be so joined.

You have to remember, this was 1984. There was the birth of Perspective Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival. So it was this strange point. We were coming out of the tax-shelter years and all the kind of glamour of that era. I associate the Genies with the awards ceremony at the Royal Alex at the time, where various limos carrying stars outside my orbit would pull up. It was for me at the time as glamorous as the Academy Awards – totally outside my Arts Council world.

I was 24. That was an incredible vote of confidence.

Even when the nominating committee has overlooked my films, I’ve always personally received nominations as director and that always meant a lot – except for the last movie, Ararat. I’ve always felt that my star was being followed, and – given the huge unpredictable nature of carving a career – that has always remained quite consistent and valuable.

It was such a sweet moment when Exotica won. That was just such a vindication of a whole family of people who have been making films together. To see us all receive that recognition was really huge, especially coming after The Adjuster where we were completely shut out except for directing.

* * *

It’s a particular twist of our film industry. The year David Cronenberg and I were both vying with Ararat and Spider, it would have been such a cool thing to compete for director and for picture. It just says something so particular about our industry that that was the year that I didn’t get nominated for director and he didn’t get nominated for picture. There’s something so Canadian about that. Of course that’s not planned or designed, but there’s something resolutely non-confrontational.

It’s amazing to me that the Genies have been able to survive in a culture that doesn’t really thrive on displaying overt gestures of competitiveness.

David Cronenberg:
Filmmaker

(The Academy lists David Cronenberg as its winningest filmmaker of all time, with nine Genies to his name – 10 if you include the Golden Reel Award he shared in 1996 for the year’s biggest box-office for Crash.)

I remember, first of all, lusting after what was then called an Etrog, because it is without doubt the best-designed award ever. Sorel Etrog always was – and still is – a brilliant artist. So you were actually getting an Etrog sculpture when you won a film award. It’s a real piece of art. Don Owen (The Ernie Game) had one. He used it as a doorstop, but nonetheless was very proud of it. And I always said, ‘Don, I’ll probably never get one of those.’ I had made five movies not having won one.

When I did Videodrome (1983), I got nominated for director and just totally assumed I would win nothing, as none of my crew had won anything. Then, the best director was announced, and it was Bob Clark for A Christmas Story. And then I noted the camera guy sort of swooping over to me where I was sitting – normally a sign that something’s up, and I couldn’t figure out what it was, since Bob Clark had already won. And they said, ‘No, we’re giving two best director awards. We’re splitting it, and the second one is to Cronenberg for Videodrome.’

I couldn’t believe it, because that’s a very extreme movie and none of my crew or actors had won anything. I was really very, very excited about that – first of all, to have a genuine Etrog, and secondly, because of the movie itself. That I had gotten that kind of support from my peers for a movie that was fairly ambitious and challenging made me really feel I was part of a community in a way that I

hadn’t felt before. And to me, that’s what the Genies are all about.