MONTREAL — Quebec’s minister of culture has stepped in to resolve a heated territorial dispute between multiplex owners and a public cinema network that promotes homegrown auteur films.

The battle began in earnest last week after Cineplex Entertainment cancelled the May debut of Un baiser s’il vous plaît, distributed by K-Films Amérique, in its downtown Montreal and Quebec City multiplexes.

Cineplex took the step because Un baiser‘s producer broke the chain’s unofficial ‘first-run only’ rule by also programming the film on the publicly subsidized Réseau Plus circuit — a network of 40 outlets, including community centers and schools, set up to bring auteur films to people living outside urban centers. Réseau Plus gets roughly $220,000 annually from SODEC.

‘They want to monopolize the market,’ says K-Films president Louis Dussault, who has blasted Cineplex in the Quebec media. ‘Cineplex are following the American model. They want to saturate the market so their big commercial films get all the attention in rural areas. But it doesn’t work like that in Quebec. It’s different.’

Cineplex also pulled the EyeSteelFilms/National Film Board doc Up the Yangtze from a Montreal location after it ran in a Réseau Plus cinema, says EyeSteel producer Mila Aung-Thwin.

‘We got a call from Cineplex saying we weren’t allowed to do that. That it was them or Réseau Plus,’ says Aung-Thwin. ‘But the problem is we didn’t know we were breaching any agreement.’

With some calling for a boycott of Cineplex theaters, the debate made it to the floor of Quebec’s National Assembly last week. On Friday, Culture and Communications Minister Christine St-Pierre announced she was setting up a working group to hammer out an agreement between the Association des Propriétaires de Cinémas et Cinéparcs du Québec and Réseau Plus.

But a spokesman for the APCCQ maintains that Réseau Plus is becoming more aggressive. ‘The first-run rule is a common commercial practice around the world. Réseau Plus wants to show films faster than in the past because now DVDs come out shortly after a film is released,’ says Marcel Venne.

Réseau Plus’ Michel Gagnon maintains he’s been operating the network the same way for 25 years. ‘I don’t understand why this is happening now. Many of the films I run, the big cinemas have rejected. And we represent a tiny percentage of box-office receipts,’ he tells Playback Daily.

‘This is a question of principle,’ he adds. ‘How can a cinema in Sept-Iles compete with one in Montreal?’ Fifteen years ago, Gagnon ran five Réseau Plus outlets, while today that number has jumped to 40.

Cineplex did not return calls for comment on this story.