Canada’s place as a producer of feature film documentaries dominated talk at the second annual Doc Policy Summit, held April 25 in Toronto in conjunction with Hot Docs.

The Summit, organized by the National Film Board, Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund, was created as a forum to discuss top-of-mind issues concerning Canadian docmakers. The three federal organizations, which came together last year to create the Documentary Policy Advisory Board, spent the past year studying various aspects of the sector and filled the morning of the one-day event presenting findings. (The afternoon was devoted to panel discussions.)

Among the more significant findings, data clearly reflected that feature docs in Canada are still largely produced first for TV and then rejigged for the big screen. Participants were told that broadcast support for feature docs accounts for 50% of the total volume of $5.2 million in 2003/04, coming mainly from the CTF, public, specialty and pay broadcasters.

The study also noted that the emphasis of production is toward factual TV series, which accounted for 1,058.8 hours in 2003/04, compared to 203.3 hours of one-offs produced in French and English.

Yet, despite the strength of series production, participants were clearly focused on the prospects of getting projects into movie theaters.

NFB chair and government film commissioner Jacques Bensimon said he was pleasantly surprised that feature-length and one-off documentaries emerged as key issues, saying that current CTF regulations do not reflect the perceived importance of those types of documentaries.

‘It was interesting to see that of all the topics that we discussed two things emerged as issues that preoccupied most of the people in the room; the feature-length doc and the one-off, which, for the time being, escape regulations put forth by the CTF because they’re so much point-of-view and author-driven,’ said Bensimon.

Central to these discussions were remarks made by Telefilm executive director Wayne Clarkson that he is looking to find a way to create a feature docs envelope at Telefilm.

‘I am committed to creating a separate fund for feature film documentaries,’ he said. ‘[But] we will not be taking money out of the Canada Feature Film Fund to do this. It would not be prudent to take money from Peter to pay Paul. So we will have to find that money elsewhere.’

The focus on features is not surprising when one considers the rapid rise in the stature of theatrical doc releases in recent years. According to data presented by Telefilm, 2004 saw doc box-office receipts surge 428% to nearly $30 million in Canada from the previous year. While Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 accounted for 40% of that figure, the total number of doc theatrical releases jumped from below 10 in 2003 to nearly 70.

Documentary Channel director of programming Michael Burns underlined the worldwide trend by citing data he recently compiled from box-office charts published by U.S. industry pub Variety, an admittedly unscientific study, but illuminating nonetheless.

Documentaries that broke $1 million in 2001 totaled one: the Imax release of Cyberworld, totaling $11 million. In 2002, there were three docs over $1 million, totaling nearly $25 million. The next year, 12 docs made the list for a total of over $131 million. In 2004, there were 17 docs totaling $300 million.

This trend left Bensimon lamenting that Canada is missing out while it tries to work out funding issues. ‘It’s still fascinating to me, that we in this country invented the word documentary, but here we are in 2005 debating whether we should fund docs,’ he said. ‘The world is passing us by.’

-www.hotdocs.ca