Substantial oversubscription. That’s how Telefilm executive director Francois Macerola describes the documentary envelope within the Canadian Television Fund’s Equity Investment Program.

But with the Canadian documentary industry growing rapidly, it’s no surprise the number of independent producers seeking a share of public money through the eip is significantly higher as well.

This year, documentaries received $8.3 million through the eip, with $5.4 million committed to English-language documentaries and $2.9 million committed to French-language documentaries. Overall, the eip allocated $18 million for documentaries, children’s programming, and variety and performing arts programming for both French- and English-language projects for private broadcasters.

Concludes Telefilm’s Macerola: ‘It is fair to say that oversubscription is substantial in documentaries, but thanks to the advent of the Canadian Television Fund, we are capable of making more high-quality documentary productions than ever before, a fact which is in keeping with the documentary tradition in Canada.’

But Macerola says the process is not over yet; the Licence Fee Program will be ranking the applications and more results will be available by the end of May.

Suzan Ayscough, director of communications for Telefilm, says, ‘Because of the creation of ctf, Telefilm has doubled the number of projects it can participate in – via the eip.’ While Ayscough says that in 1996, the first year of the ctf eip program, the Telefilm television catalogue listed 62 documentaries, in 1997 there were 125 documentaries listed. Each year the number of productions funded varies, of course, depending on their budgets.

Barna-Alper Productions, a Toronto company which has produced numerous documentaries, requested funding for 32 hours of documentary programming as part of three different series, but came up empty from the eip.

‘Our eip requests were turned down. We are disappointed, but we will go ahead and make the shows,’ says Laszlo Barna, president of Barna-Alper. He was surprised there didn’t seem to be any attention paid to the fact that the programs he had applied for were continuing series.

When it comes to funding, Barna says, ‘it is too much in a short time. I regret that financing has come down to a five-week period in a year and after that the door is closed. It is no way to run an industry.’

Robert Lang, president of Toronto’s Kensington Communications and executive producer of Exhibit A, a documentary series entering its third season on Discovery, did receive eip money, but less than what he requested.

‘We now have to seek other sources of funding and rally very quickly in the five-day period to show that new financing is in place for the series to be funded by the lfp program,’ says Lang. He adds that fortunately, Exhibit A is doing very well, with good ratings and an established track record which improves his chances for alternate financing. ‘But I wouldn’t want to be in the first year of a series this year, even if it is a good idea,’ says Lang.

Barri Cohen, a Toronto filmmaker and board member of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, says the eip attributes too little to the cultural aspect of a project proposal.

‘Creativity, originality, productions, track record are ranked at 15%. For a cultural agency to be assessing the creative aspects at only 15% means the cultural mandate of the agency is being eroded,’ she says.

Cohen and others at the cifc are also concerned that with Dollars At Risk valued at 20% of the application process, stories that need to be told will not get made, because independent producers can’t match the stringent requirements of the Dollars at Risk criteria.

New doc strand for Newsworld?

The ctf’s new rules mean that CBC Newsworld has for the first time been allowed to access funds from the eip. The cable channel commissioned a High Road Productions project, Through Thick and Thin, a documentary dealing with the underlying causes of anorexia and bulimia.

Jerry McIntosh, executive producer of documentaries for Newsworld, says, ‘With the ctf’s new rules, the cbc will no longer have a guaranteed envelope and Newsworld will be competing against the cbc, along with other broadcasters, for ctf eip dollars.’ McIntosh is not happy about this turn of events. ‘It is better if the broadcast industry overall is guaranteed the same level of access to those eip funds,’ he says.

In its licence renewal application, CBC Newsworld has asked the crtc for a subscription rate increase, and if that’s granted, the cable channel has plans to introduce a new strand of Canadian documentary programming. Newsworld hopes to increase its investment in documentary funding by $600,000, or about 10 documentaries with an average licence fee of $60,000. That’s double the amount Newsworld is currently commissioning through Rough Cuts, a series which commissions 12 or 13 productions per year.

‘Our audiences are big fans of documentaries. They are consistently our better rated programs on the network,’ says McIntosh.