What’s the magic formula that feeds and nurtures the Quebec feature film industry to hit after hit – and has for the past decade? The latest example of its seemingly inexhaustible surge came the Canada Day weekend, when Alain DesRochers’ thriller Nitro opened to $1.2 million on 124 screens in its home province.

Possibly it’s the captive culture exclusive to Quebec. But that culture was there before 1996, when Quebecois films couldn’t get more than 2% of their own box office. Perhaps it’s the additional production financing from SODEC that allows for a slew of $5-million to $7-million budgeted movies. But you still have to come up with great screenplays and competent directors to turn them into movies that people want to see.

Then there’s a star system that somehow translates audience draw from the small screen to multiplexes across la belle province, from Sorel to Quebec City.

Or maybe Danny Lennon has something to do with it.

Don’t bother searching on IMDB. You won’t find him there. But Danny Lennon is very well known – not only in Quebec, but by festival programmers around the world. In more than 60 festivals in 19 countries – and counting.

The former bodyguard, driver and personal assistant to World Film Festival head Serge Losique is programming director of a short film screening series called Prends ça court! – literally translated as ‘Take this short!’ – which he began more than eight years ago. Lennon has always loved short films, but found the existing programs boring.

‘Basically, I couldn’t bring my friends because they’d leave after one or two films – and I couldn’t bring my girlfriend,’ says Lennon of his motivation for starting his own monthly series. He became the arbiter of choice, selecting the films and screening them in a modest 40-seat carabet-style theater in Monument-National in downtown Montreal.

He knew he’d tapped into something when his own friends couldn’t get into the sold-out screenings. He even had to knock down a wall to accommodate the demand. And it’s been standing-room only since then. For Canadian short films. Who knew?

The indefatigable Lennon made it his business to uncover the best local talent he could find. Jean-Marc Valleé (C.R.A.Z.Y.) made several shorts before his first feature, and his film Les Mots magiques played to packed houses around Quebec in Prends ça court! screenings.

Monument-National has become a networking hub for short filmmaking talent. Students in Quebec colleges and universities even attend the screenings as part of course curricula. And Lennon regularly drops in to advise the student body at Montreal’s Institut National de l’Image et du Son.

‘It’s good to know how to make a film, but you also have to know how it works with festivals and distribution and all that,’ he says. ‘I tell them about the game and what it’s like. It’s not like, ‘I was in a festival three years ago.’ No, I was in a festival two days ago. This is how it works.’

But it’s the impact on the feature film industry that is most remarkable. As a recent example, filmmakers Simon-Olivier Fecteau and Marc-André Lavoie met at Prends ça court! Their first feature, Bluff, starring Rémy Girard, is the opening night film at this year’s Montreal World Film Festival. The list of PCC alumni is impressive (see sidebar below).

Producers including Barbara Shrier, Luc Déry, and Bernadette Payeur, and prodcos La Coop Video and Max Films also began to take notice. But not just for the screenings. At the end of every year, Lennon produces compilation DVDs (out of his own pocket) of the very best of Prends ça court! Max Films requested seven just before Cannes this year.

‘There’s something going on right now,’ he says. ‘The quality of the short film community here in Quebec is insane. We were laughing at the awards [ceremony for PCC] that if you blew up the building where we were, you would have killed Quebec cinema for the next 10 years.’

News of Lennon’s handicapping skills has quickly spread beyond our borders – to the point where he’s now asked to put together short programs in festivals the world over.

‘The demand for Canadian short films is very surprising,’ he says. ‘[Festival programming has] become one of the principal things I do outside of the screenings.’

This is somewhat of an understatement. When Lennon returned from a recent festival trip to Spain, there were already seven new requests waiting for him. Lennon will soon be off to Croatia, Singapore, Turkey, Barcelona, Santiago and Bilbao. He’s even programming the Venice Short Film Festival before jetting to Cape Town, South Africa.

Thanks to Lennon, Canadian short films are going to be everywhere in the next few months. And you can bet his list of alumni who bolster Quebec’s box office as feature filmmakers will continue to grow exponentially.

English Canada can take solace in the fact that Lennon is in talks to bring Prends ca court! to English Canada. Let’s make sure he does, because you never know – he just might be able to transfuse some of that Quebec magic into our filmmaking veins.

10 ALUMNI FROM PRENDS ÇA COURT!

•Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.)
•Philippe Falardeau (Congorama)
•Robin Aubert (Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés)
•Stéphane Lapointe (La Vie secrète des gens heureux)
•Ricardo Trogi (Horloge biologique)
•Denis Côté (Nos vies privées, 2007)
•Stéphane Lafleur (Continental, 2007)
•Rafael Ouellet (Le Cèdre penché, 2007)
•Lyne Charlebois (Borderline, 2008)
•Kim Nguyen (Truffe, 2008)