Montreal: Quebec’s cultural funding and certification agency, sodec, is raising a number of concerns about new funding rules for the Canada Feature Film Fund.

In a letter to Telefilm Canada executive director Francois Macerola from sodec president Pierre Lafleur, Lafleur points out Quebec has a longstanding cultural policy for cinema, and that this policy is itself currently under review.

Lafleur’s Feb. 5 letter, which follows several meetings between the two agencies including a meeting on Feb. 14, calls for more consultation and a "simulation" exercise to evaluate the impact of two main guideline proposals presently on the table: the establishment of an "automatic" fund for production based on a producer’s box office and commercial track record, and a proposal to eliminate the distributor’s minimum guarantee in the financing of productions.

Telefilm is charged with developing CF3 guidelines, which reflect four fundamental industry objectives (including capturing 5% of the box office and raising average production budgets to at least $5 million) as outlined in the Oct. 5 Canadian Heritage policy document From Script to Screen. The Canadian government has doubled its investment in the industry to $100 million a year from $50 million.

Lafleur says restructuring Telefilm’s funding policy based on the performance goal of capturing 5% of the Canadian theatrical market ignores the fact Quebec films already have a 5% average annual share of their own market and have received as much as 8% in years when several popular titles were released. As a result, he says, the federal project effectively penalizes French-language producers with higher triggering thresholds based on the higher existing average of returns for French movies compared to English movies. (Heritage’s From Script to Screen document says all Canadian films combined earned 2.1% – or $13.8 million – in box office receipts in ’99, "the low performance among comparable filmmaking countries.")

In reference to a proposal to use the average box-office returns for English and French movies financed by Telefilm between ’93 and ’99 as a benchmark-minimum threshold for funding, Lafleur asks, "In effect, how can one justify a distortion which asks a box-office/receipt minimum of $240,000 for English Canadian production companies operating in a population market of about 24 million while the threshold for French companies would be $455,000 for the 7 million francophones in Canada?"

Lafleur says even if he is in "apriori agreement" with the proposed "automatic" producer envelope, sodec is worried the policy could undermine the diversity of films produced. The letter suggests sodec and Telefilm test the proposal’s impact by working together to create a simulation model based on accurate current market data.

Lafleur is also asking for a more detailed study of the impact of eliminating a movie’s minimum guarantee, and has also requested a sodec representative be included in any future federal consultative body.

In his letter, sodec’s president raises the problematic issue of international distribution for French-language movies and suggests coproduction issues be included in the current round of consultations. *

-www.pch.gc.ca

-www.telefilm.gc.ca

-www.sodec.gouv.qc.ca