Telefilm Canada’s sweeping changes to both the English- and French-language components of its Canada Feature Film Fund lower the bar for performance envelopes on the English side while making access to funds more equitable on the French.

The changes are meant to stimulate English-language market share of its own box office while maintaining a 20% level for Quebec cinema. They take effect in 2007/08.

Going forward, production performance envelopes will be awarded to the top 15% of English films that achieve a box office of $500,000, down from $1 million.

Distribution envelopes will eliminate the $500,000 requirement for marketing activities, allowing a number of distributors that were eligible for the envelope in previous years but didn’t meet the threshold to access marketing dollars.

In addition, development envelopes of up to $150,000 will be awarded to producers of movies in the English market that exceed $500,000 in box office but fall short of $750,000.

On the French side, producers will see a $3.5-million per year cap on the combination of selective and envelope production money, while the number of performance-based envelopes will be reduced from 12 to five. An additional $1 million will also be injected into the selective program and 40% of the decision (up from 20%) will be weighted on ‘international exposure,’ via festivals and worldwide sales.

‘One of the important decisions was made some months ago to set up an asymmetrical model, [because] the challenges in the French-language market are distinct from the English-language markets.’ says Wayne Clarkson, executive director of Telefilm Canada, in an interview with Playback.

The revisions handed down on Oct. 23 have been in development for months with working groups in both markets.

They are the first major moves by Clarkson, now almost two years into his five-year term, towards finding solutions for the woeful commercial state of English-Canadian film, and borrow directly from Quebec funding agency SODEC’s model of a more open and ongoing dialogue between the funder and the production community.

‘In English Canada, particularly, the industry wasn’t working collectively,’ says Clarkson. ‘It was at odds within itself. To get any kind of real results was going to be very, very difficult. Money is not always the solution.’

Brad Pelman, CEO of Maple Pictures, is a member of the English working group. ‘The Telefilm of the past has been one where the rules of the game consistently changed,’ he says. ‘You never knew where the goalposts were. Now we do. Getting there is still a challenge.’

Despite recent successes including Water and Trailer Park Boys The Movie, Clarkson remains cautious about English-Canadian cinema, pointing out that it earned only 1.1% of the total domestic box office in 2005, while Quebec’s share vaulted to 26%.

Clarkson does note, however, that Quebec had only 7% of its own market share less than 10 years ago, before films like Les Boys led the New Wave.

Those hits ‘almost psychologically changed the attitude of the production community, the distributors and the exhibitors,’ says Clarkson. ‘What I’m hoping is that the same momentum, optimism and psychological shift is happening in the English-language market.’

In order to urge it along, Clarkson has set a new 2% market share target for English Canada over the next few years, down from the 5% set for English and French in 2000 by then-heritage minister Sheila Copps.

In Pelman’s opinion, the reduction to a $500,000 box-office cutoff needed to access production performance envelopes means a shot at developing indie films along the lines of Little Miss Sunshine (the U.S. indie comedy has grossed more than US$57 million on a US$8-million budget) or The Illusionist – movies he hopes Canadian filmmakers would aspire to emulate.

‘What we’ve done is create a level by which the more auteur-driven films can find their way to be truly measured,’ says Pelman. ‘The $1-million box-office measurement [for envelope money] wasn’t realistic for the kinds of films Telefilm was greenlighting. They were films that were never going to make a million dollars. Many films in Canada never gross a million – foreign, big-studio or otherwise.’

But who will lead the English side at Telefilm? Former 20th Century Fox exec Michael Jenkinson was introduced on April 24 as gatekeeper to the $80-million CFFF and key to the future of English-Canadian cinema. A month later he was gone, citing ‘unforeseeable circumstances.’ Clarkson says he has no plans to revive the search for a more willing film czar.

‘Right now it’s my intention to continue that responsibility certainly for this fiscal year, which will carry us through to March 31,’ he says, adding that he’ll rethink things in the new year.

Linking production money to box office is slightly more controversial in Quebec, as performance envelope envy has divided the community after it left directors such as Robert LePage and Léa Pool out in the cold following the last round of funding in June.

‘It’s still [a] good [priority], but I don’t think it’s against the cinema d’auteur,’ says Clarkson. ‘If David Cronenberg’s film makes a lot of money, does that make it any less valuable than a Denys Arcand [film]? I don’t think Bon Cop is any less a success because it may or may not be by an auteur director. Telefilm will always give emphasis to talented filmmakers.

‘The cap of $3.5 million [between envelope and selective] is a significant decision based on a consensus by the industry of Quebec,’ says Clarkson. ‘[It says] you can’t make two or three films in a year and use your envelope, plus come and ask for additional dollars for more films in the selective.’

Michel Pradier, Telefilm’s director of French operations, agrees.

‘Since 2001 we were financing an average of 25% of the [budgets of] films we were supporting, and the average budget was $2.3 million,’ he points out. ‘Now the average is near $5 million, and our average investment per film is 35%. So it’s simple. We can’t sustain the same kind of volume.’

Some Quebec filmmakers have been outspoken in their opposition to the box-office-driven envelope system, even writing an open letter to La Presse in July signed by 43 directors.

The plan is to roll out solutions over the next few months through the French working group subcommittee on financing to try to sustain the growth of Quebec cinema and equalize resources. It will meet in December to hear a report on alternate funding based in part on findings of research analyst KPMG.

SODEC, which is part of the finance subcommittee, recently received a one-time ’emergency fund’ injection of $10-million from Canadian Heritage. Although in years past Telefilm and SODEC worked almost in sync greenlighting the same scripts, this year saw the two agencies at a disconnect on a number of projects, which left SODEC half a dozen films under its annual mandate.

Challenges for the future of the working groups include a look at the marketing of English-Canadian films as well as the relationship between producers and distributors.

www.telefilm.gc.ca