Wayne Clarkson is already looking for a new apartment. And he will have to look fast, given that he has just over a month before he’s due at Telefilm Canada’s headquarters in Montreal, where he is now set to take over as its new executive director.

‘I start on Jan. 17,’ he says with an uneasy laugh, on the phone from his Toronto office. ‘I’ll be looking for a place in the coming days.’

Clarkson was tapped last month by Minister of Canadian Heritage Liza Frulla and, pending an expected nod from parliament, will assume the post vacated four months ago when Richard Stursberg left for CBC.

Then it’s off on a tour of the regional offices, he says, to shake hands and learn his way around the multimillion-dollar agency. Despite his 30 years in the film and TV biz – at Toronto’s Festival of Festivals, the Ontario Film Development Corporation, and most recently, the Canadian Film Centre, which he departs after serving as executive director since 1991 – he insists he’s still on a ‘steep learning curve’ and, for now, will not make any solid decisions about how he will run the nation’s largest film and TV funding agency.

‘I’m not making any declarations about anything until I’ve learned as much as I can as quickly as I can,’ he says.

During his term, Clarkson will face the upcoming renewal of the Canada Feature Film Fund, the uncertain future of the Canadian Television Fund, and will be under pressure to save the lagging film and TV drama industries in English Canada.

The production industry overall has been in a decline for more than a year, and English-language features are stuck in neutral in terms of attracting audiences.

Producers across the country will be looking to Clarkson to come up with innovative solutions to help kick-start the industry in the areas he can influence.

Clarkson’s appointment has been widely cheered by producers who see him as an ally, in contrast to the more bureaucratic and aloof Stursberg, who many feel was too focused on box-office success at the expense of English Canada’s auteur filmmakers.

‘He’s always been a big, big supporter, especially in the feature film area,’ says Guy Mayson, CEO and president of the CFTPA, adding that Clarkson ‘brings a lot of credibility’ to the post.

‘And he’s earned it. It’s not something that can just be pinned on you,’ says Mayson.

For his part, Clarkson makes no attempt to distance himself from the Stursberg era. For example, he is quick to defend Stursberg’s controversial policy of making commercial-style films in order to boost the box-office take of Canuck movies, and says the ‘5% goal’ will stand during his five-year term with his blessing. He believes mass-appeal pics are as important to building audiences and the industry as the high-minded ones. ‘I believe in commercial cinema,’ he says, ‘but there’s no singular route.’

Clarkson has close ties to Canada’s auteur elite, and during his time with the OFDC – now the Ontario Media Development Corporation – was instrumental in launching the careers of Atom Egoyan, Don McKellar, Patricia Rozema and others. Many have expected his policies to favor their style of moviemaking. Not so, says Clarkson. ‘People have presumptions about me, and I can see why they do, but they’re not entirely accurate.

‘If you look at the work I did at the [Toronto] film festival, I was not parochial or provincial… there was a blend of big, commercial, most often Hollywood films and the best of world cinema,’ he notes.

‘And at the OFDC, everyone’s familiar with the Patricia Rozemas and the Atom Egoyans, but we also put considerable investments into companies like Alliance Atlantis and Norstar under Peter Simpson. And they were making commercial cinema.’

He believes it is important to keep pushing commercial films despite the recent failures of Foolproof and Decoys – focusing instead on past successes such as Cube and Meatballs.

‘What went wrong with Foolproof is there are no guarantees,’ he says. ‘But you can’t give up because that one didn’t work.’

He also notes that his experience with television and building its audiences is sometimes overlooked.

‘Yes, I’ve always been associated with film, but, again, at the OFDC our largest file was television.’ The file was $30 million, compared to $5 million for movies.

Telefilm paid out $251 million to various projects in 2003/04, according to its recently released annual report. The Canuck share of the domestic market hit 3.6% in ’03, propelled mainly by French-language hits, such as Les Invasions barbares, which continue to flourish at the box office despite the struggles of English movies.

-www.telefilm.gc.ca