So now that we’ve got it, what do we do with it?

Double the feature film money, double the fun? Or double the jeopardy?

Alex, I’ll take Classic Canadian Cinema for $50 million. ok, it’s the second daily double. For $100 million, here is your answer: This film is one of Canada’s seven modern natural wonders. I’m sorry, Thelma and Louise did drive into the Grand Canyon, but the correct question is ‘What is The Hanging Garden?’

The ecstasy of the correct question, the agony of not having a clue.

But how can we bring what should be the natural wonder of Canadian cinematic consciousness to the masses, while repressing the dread tendency to repel audiences?

We could doggedly rewrite funding guidelines with the same old tired phrases about productions that resonate with this country. But maybe we should tell ’em to flick ash at this culture or fly the flag upside down if it will make people pay attention.

(Then again, Helena Bonham Carter skewered taboos in Margaret’s Museum, and Chris Leavins turned ‘off limits’ into fair territory in The Hanging Garden, but still, too few people came.)

Of course, achieving world cinematic domination will require Canadians to create productions or majority coproductions as often or more often than films which explore international issues from a Canadian perspective. We do need to be clear about who we are, first of all.

Then again, no need to be parochial, especially if that narrowness comes from within a small market which can learn from The Full Monty, The Crying Game or Breaking the Waves. Each of those was rooted in place, universal in theme, brilliant in execution. The sorry part, alas, is that we in Canada keep sighing and pointing, pointing and sighing when we talk about these films. We feel reasonably certain we could do our own equivalents, but we rarely do. Until now, we’ve said it was lack of money, lack of critical mass, lack of marketing, lack of screen time, lack of exhibitor support – hello? Is anyone really still expecting our producers to pull it off?

But of course.

Relentlessly optimistic in the face of low box office and public awareness, we continue to smile and hope for the best.

Telefilm’s Francois Macerola says the news of the new feature film money (see story p. 1) spurred ‘a lot of producers’ to talk to him following the Vancouver announcement. He says the ideas are certainly out there. Now we have the money, we wonder about distribution and screen time, but we have the ideas, the expertise and the mentors, too. And if the current slate in development at Serendipity Point Films is any indication, we certainly have the projects.

This is Final Jeopardy. The category is 21st century Canadian cinema. Are our contestants headed for the agony or the ecstasy? What is the answer to that correct question?

Ours is not to crash amid the maelstrom, ours is to smell the lilies, hear the red violin, blister the viewers’ five senses, never waiting for the last night or the passage of the divine Ryans into the sweet hereafter.

Who are we?