For Canadian filmmakers, especially those with debut features, the coup of getting into the Toronto International Film Festival can make them forget, if only for a time, the reality of Canadian film: long after the festival wraps, most homegrown movies die an unheralded death at the box office.

With our national cinema commanding only 2.5% of theatrical screens in English Canada, and the rest tied up by Hollywood distributors, that’s not surprising.

Given such distribution hurdles, many of the indigenous movies in this year’s Perspective Canada program will never reach a wide audience.

To help provide a happier ending for Canadian film, a combination of Telefilm Canada inititiatives, innovative marketing strategies and ambitious TIFF-related campaigns aim at improving the fortunes of Canadian filmmakers.

‘The challenge for independent films is to get the attention of the Canadian public. It’s a multilateral question,’ says John Fulton, director of the feature film unit for Telefilm in Toronto.

Nimble marketing will be required to get Canadian movies into the local theatre. To find an audience last summer for the science fiction parable Between the Moon and Montevideo, Cinema Libre premiered the Canadian film shot in Havana at Montreal’s Fantasia festival.

‘We crossed over genres and brought a different audience to the film, who may not have seen it otherwise,’ says director Attila Bertalan. ‘Audiences expect a certain kind of animal at a certain kind of place. This was a creative way of showing the film.’

Similarly, Andrea Dorfman’s Parsley Days, which bowed in Toronto last year with Mongrel Media as its distributor, broke out of the usual film advertising box by offering free bike tune-ups in a downtown parking lot during last year’s festival. The tie-in: a main character in Parsley Days was a bicycle maintenance instructor.

‘We could have done a wider marketing campaign to target a more general audience,’ says Heather Neville, materials co-ordinator for Mongrel, after the niche rollout for Parsley Days.

Other Canadian distributors are taking a leaf out of the Hollywood studio play book and using Toronto to support their fall movie releases.

Cineplex Odeon did impressive business with Rhombus Media’s The Red Violin after it opened the Toronto festival in 1998 with Samuel L. Jackson and Colm Feore getting marquee billing nationwide for the ambitious Canadian film.

‘Having the opening night at the festival led to mainstream coverage and instant name recognition,’ recalls Mark Slone, VP of marketing and publicity for Cineplex Odeon.

When the movie went into general release after Toronto, that name recognition opened marketing doors that may otherwise have remained shut.

Another example: Indigo Books featured point-of-sale marketing displays for The Red Violin soundtrack, complete with a photo exhibition. The soundtrack went on to earn The Red Violin an Oscar for best original score at the 2000 Academy Awards.

TIFF ‘lops off the initial inertia of how to get the film noticed,’ Slone insists. But he adds that the benefits of a Toronto festival launch can be short-lived.

‘The most useful application of the interest at the festival is immediately after,’ he says.

Last year’s New Waterford Girl went into general release in spring 2001, long after TIFF had folded its tent. ‘We had to rebuild the campaign from the grassroots,’ Slone recalls.

For a Canadian independent, the deck may be even more stacked than for an indie import that bowed at Sundance.

‘For a small film, you have an eclectic audience, but even eclectic audiences don’t go to Canadian films,’ says Mongrel’s Neville.

That reality is not stopping the distributor from handling Cancon films. Mongrel has already picked up Asghar Massombagi’s Khaled, and will mine Toronto for other undiscovered gems.

Meanwhile, public policy is also moving in the direction of well-marketed, commercially-viable films.

Last October, Telefilm launched a $50-million Canada Feature Film Fund (bringing the annual fund to a total of $100 million) with an eye to doubling the percentage of domestic box office for homegrown movies to 5%.

In a change of Telefilm policy that ties funding to performance, half of the money in the new fund will be disbursed based on a producer’s previous box office.

At the same time, constraints will be imposed on distributors so that by 2004/05, the money in distributors’ performance-based envelopes will no longer be available for the acquisition of films.

Telefilm wants to stop completed Canadian films too often being dropped off at the distributor’s office, with little or no marketing coordination between filmmaker and distributor.

‘The problem is that after the films were delivered, they were not being adequately or enthusiastically marketed,’ says Fulton.

Telefilm is looking for more aggressive marketing of Canadian film going forward. ‘When a company buys a picture, it will encourage them to buy it based on their assessment of the market,’ Fulton adds.

This new emphasis on bolstering the domestic box office for Canadian film will not compromise quality, the Telefilm executive promises, adding independent filmmakers will still retain creative rein and expression.

While industry players applaud the increase in Telefilm funding, some suggest there may be some changes in the type of films that make it to market. ‘We may have to find more mainstream films to benefit,’ says Katherine Ouimet, who is responsible for sales at Montreal distributor Cinema Libre.