When the Canadian Independent Film Caucus was first organized by a group of 10 Toronto filmmakers in 1983, there were few television slots devoted to documentaries, no specialty channels and only a handful of film festivals celebrating documentaries in Canada.

While the industry is much bigger today, the cifc is still working to expand the funding sources for documentaries and grow the expanding appetite that Canadians share for documentary programming.

From a small group of active members out of Toronto, the cifc grew to a membership of 200 in 1997, and today there are 350 members across the country with chapters in Vancouver, Montreal, and Halifax.

The caucus continues to actively lobby television networks, funding agencies and the crtc to provide more outlets for documentaries.

‘It is a broad coalition of people with a wide range of interests who are all driven by a shared passion for the documentary tradition in Canada,’ says Gary Marcuse, cifc national chair and president of Face to Face Media in Vancouver. Marcuse, the organization’s first national chair, was appointed last year in response to the tremendous growth of the organization in recent years.

While the cifc founded Hot Docs, it no longer runs the festival, although it remains closely aligned with the event. The caucus maintains minority representation on the Hot Docs board and representatives from cifc act as volunteer jurors for the festival. It is also the main organizer of the festival’s Industry conference.

Since cifc separated from Hot Docs in 1997, the organization has been refocusing its energies as a voice for the documentary industry on both a regional and national level. ‘Our mandate is and has always been to promote and defend the independent documentary tradition,’ says Marcuse.

Marcuse says the caucus is working to get more funding for documentaries from the Canadian Television Fund and provincial funding agencies, lobbying for better tax programs for producers, and providing training through workshops and networking opportunities.

For some cifc members, the organization provides a place to network and find professional development tools such as information on negotiating licence fees and partnering with international broadcasters. Last year, the caucus published the Documentary Buyer’s Guide, which provides a comprehensive guide to markets in North America

Current lobbying

The caucus is currently in the midst of preparing a crtc intervention on cbc’s licence renewal.

‘We strongly support a new vision for public broadcasting,’ says director Barri Cohen, a member of cifc’s board and consulting editor of Point of View. While Cohen will not reveal the details of cifc’s intervention, she says ‘it will be critical of the way cbc’s main network deals with the independent production community.’

In the last year, the caucus filed two other crtc interventions: ‘A Level Playing Field for the Documentary’ as part of last year’s Canadian Television Policy Review and a submission to the crtc’s review of new media and technology regarding the type of regulations which should be implemented with the introduction of new technologies such as the Internet.

Independent producer Geoff Bowie, cochair of the cifc’s Toronto chapter, worked on both crtc interventions. Bowie says one of the key recommendations addressed by the cifc’s Television Policy Review submission is that documentaries be included in the entertainment category so they’re eligible for Cancon credits as part of a broadcaster’s promise of performance.

‘It would give private broadcasters an incentive to start scheduling documentaries,’ says Bowie.

As part of this same intervention, the cifc also addressed some of its concerns with the cbc.

The cifc requested that the cbc appoint an ombudsman which reports to the cbc’s vp of media to deal with any conflicts that arise between independent producers and the corporation.

The caucus also suggested that the cbc publish a manual outlining its understanding of how it works with independent producers. ‘There seems to be a fundamental competition between the public broadcaster and the independent producer over the control of rights,’ says Bowie.

In its intervention relating to regulating new media, Bowie says the cifc argued that funding needs to be made available to Canadian producers to ensure that Canadian content is represented on the information highway. ‘When it comes to Canadian content, we don’t think that new media is much different than linear media,’ he says.

One of the organization’s successes in the past year was lobbying against the ctf’s proposal to restrict funding to only those documentaries which shot entirely in Canada. ‘We want to send the camera around the world and see what’s happening,’ says Marcuse.

In mid-January, the ctf backed down on the funding restriction.

Marcuse says while ctf’s lfp program supported $80.5-million worth of documentary production last year, it is still not enough.

‘We’re very interested in how the new point system will affect the production of documentaries – traditional documentary and the more commercially viable ones – through private investment,’ he says.

Marcuse and others at the cifc say the ctf’s new Dollars at Risk program could jeopardize the funding of what he calls socially useful films that traditionally have difficulty generating private investment.

This year, Marcuse says, ‘we’re expecting 20.5% of available licence fees from the ctf to be devoted to documentaries.’

At this year’s Hot Docs, the cifc elects its new national executive and a new national chair will replace Marcuse.