Montreal: Some of Quebec’s top producers are asking Telefilm Canada: ‘Should we be punished for success?’

The group includes Lorraine Richard of Cite-Amerique, Denise Robert of Cinemaginaire, Roger Frappier of Max Films, Richard Goudreau of Melenny Productions, Nicole Robert of Go Films and Claude Veillet of Films Vision 4.

Their concern stems from changes to the Canada Feature Film Fund recently announced by Telefilm. Because the French market was so successful at the box office last year, driven by hits including Seraphin (Cite-Amerique), La Grande seduction (Max Films) and Les Invasions barbares (Cinemaginaire), Telefilm has shifted resources from the CFFF’s French selective component to its performance component. The performance component will make up Telefilm’s target of 75% of CFFF French funding in 2004/05.

To protect producers and filmmakers without the box-office track record, Telefilm is taking $4 million from its 2003/04 recoupment revenues, which it distributes at its discretion, and putting it in the French selective component. The recoupment funds come from the year’s successful Quebec productions, so it wouldn’t be hard to see why the French producers would want to see more of it going towards the French envelopes.

To maintain its 75% cap of envelope funds going to performance, Telefilm is reducing its reward rate to $0.34 for each box-office dollar earned for French productions. English performance envelopes, meanwhile, are calculated at $0.86 per box-office buck earned.

The French producers would like to see their allotment at $0.50 per box-office dollar, and expressed their views in a letter published in La Presse on Feb. 3 and at a subsequent press conference.

Claire Samson, president and CEO of the APFTQ, the Quebec producers association, shares her members’ frustration.

‘The whole point of the current system was to promote box-office success, and now that we have it, we’re penalized with less than 50 cents on each box-office dollar,’ she says. ‘But under no circumstances did we ever ask for money to be taken from the [overall] English envelope [as some have claimed]. Never, ever have we asked Telefilm or the government to revisit the one-third to two-thirds split between French and English funding, because the Quebec industry realizes that there is a specific challenge facing the English-Canadian movie industry.’

Richard Stursberg, executive director of Telefilm, says that to agree to the Quebec producers’ $0.50 figure would be detrimental to those producers without a commercial track record.

‘Given the outstanding success of 2003-2004, this calculation method would mean that 90% of the fund resources are allocated to the performance component, leaving a meager 10% for other companies,’ he says. ‘In 2004-2005, $11.5 million will be available to the envelopes, an increase of $500,000 over this year. This amount is divided among six companies, which represents a remuneration rate of 34 cents per box-office dollar. Contrary to claims made by the producers, Telefilm never committed itself to a remuneration rate of 50 cents per box-office dollar.’

Producer Richard sees it differently.

‘In the beginning, the French performance was at 30 cents per dollar of box office and the English envelope was at $2 per box-office dollar,’ she explains. ‘It really was the intention that, slowly, the gap would be reduced so that in the last year of the program, in 2005, both envelopes would be calculated at 50 cents per dollar of box office.

‘We really want the selective [French] envelope to be at 50 percent, because under the current rules, at 25 percent, it’s barely enough money to make a few films,’ Richard adds.

Other Quebec producers and filmmakers share that concern, and a group of 25 of them, including Kevin Tierney of Park Ex Pictures and director Bernard Emond (20h17 Rue Darling), said so in an open letter published in Le Devoir on Dec. 12, 2003. The signatories expressed concern that the current envelope system too heavily favors established producers on the commercial track at the expense of those without box-office history looking to make more auteur-driven projects.

Samson agrees with this contingent of producers as well.

‘The position of the APFTQ is that there should be a decent and reasonable split between what is going into the performance envelope and what is going into the selective envelope. It’s supposed to be a 50/50 split until the end of the current program, which has two years left,’ she says.

Stursberg sees the CFFF functioning smoothly in Quebec. The fund was created to both encourage and reward performance, he says, and Telefilm’s goal is to preserve balance when it comes to funding, while building audiences across the country.

‘Where we finally land on all this is that we really need to have a broad range of films – which is what we have in French,’ he explains. ‘We have horror films and thrillers and big comedies, big auteur films like Les Invasions barbares, and big melodramas. Where we finally ended up, in terms of financing in Quebec, is that the balance between selective and performance is about 50/50. And what we have is more good [French] stuff than we can finance. It’s not just a lot of projects – it’s very, very good projects.’

The issue of revisiting the funding system will be taken up by the Canadian Feature Film Advisory Group, a meeting of industry stakeholders scheduled for the end of March.

-www.quebec.audiovisuel.com (APFTQ)

-www.telefilm.gc.ca