Montreal: The controversial budget-cutting measures of a slimmed-down and newly dedicated National Film Board have been implemented, a daunting opening assignment for Sandra Macdonald.

The reinvention has lead to a new emphasis on documentary production, children’s and youth programming, including multimedia production, and artistic animation. This year alone, some 70 to 80 projects are in various stages of development or production in the English Program, not all of which will go into production, with more than 40 ‘projects on the go’ by the French Program.

As many as 50 projects are slated for release this year, says Macdonald, who assumed her five-year term as nfb chairperson and government film commissioner in April 1995.

Macdonald (former crtc director general, television from 1990-92, and cftpa president from 1992-95) says there is money around elsewhere for feature films but next to none for documentaries and artistic animation, sectors where the nfb ‘can do the most good,’ she says.

Macdonald attended the Cultural Roundtable summit in Ottawa earlier this month.

That agenda looked at various issues including the ‘mix’ of Canadian incentives, the prospects for human resources, and the highly reported, if somewhat distorted, subject of ‘domestic versus international.’

On the latter, Macdonald says successful Canadian program exporters present ‘all reinforced the point that without securing the domestic market, export is not really a business strategy. You need to have a domestic market as a base. You have to bear in mind there is a kind of scale in these things, too. And the people who export the most at this moment, at another time exported less and relied more on the domestic marketit was their ability to rely on the domestic market that put them in the position to be major exporters.’

Macdonald says Heritage Minister Sheila Copps deserves the industry’s support.

‘She goes out and fights, and sometimes it’s an uphill battle but she does fight.’

The sweeping cuts will leave the nfb with an appropriation of $54 million in 1998/99, down from over $80 million two years ago. The projected budget for fiscal ’97/98 is $65 million, including $56 million from government and about $9 million in revenues, including $3 million in international sales. It’s about $8 million less than this year (ending March 31), but ’96/97 included $7 million (with some extra help from Treasury) in one-time expenses related to staff reductions and Action Plan costs.

‘In theory, without a significant shock to the system, it should plateau at that point (the $54 million appropriation for ’98/99) because usually the government, through this mandate, has been better at alerting people about what to expect,’ says Macdonald.

Under Macdonald’s direction, the nfb has set goals for primetime programming (attracting audiences of 500,000 to one million) and ‘a much stronger focus on learning and young audiences.’ In addition, the board is on course to produce some 40 one-off docs a year, on both international and domestic issues.

Highlight nfb productions to come include Gail Singer’s international doc study of women and a remake of Helicopter Canada, a much-in-demand 35mm Colin Low-directed film on the physical and human resources of Canada, says Macdonald.

The film commissioner says the key message and goal continues to be ‘preserve production at all cost’ at 85 original titles a year.

The NFB collection

As for the nfb’s library, Macdonald says only 500 or 600 titles ‘are really active,’ but the board has already transferred 4,000 titles to laser disc. ‘We think as we go through the vaults we’ll actually hit a wall at somewhere over 5,000 (titles), because of the remaining titles there may be deterioration and we may be missing some elements.’

Macdonald says the nfb is fully aware of the commercial and heritage value of its library collection and is making appropriate investments, including a new refrigeration system for the library vault as well as the maintenance of a conservation lab.

Macdonald says the resale value of the collection is partly limited to historical relevance, especially for social documentaries. ‘The nature stuff just goes on forever and the feature films go on a long time (and some of the animation), but the bulk of the board’s work has always been social-issue documentaries, and those things date themselves to a certain degree.

‘In theory, yes, it is a wonderful exploitable catalogueit may have a very good message, but in fact if it was made in the ’60s and you had people with bellbottoms and sideburns and you put it in a classroomthe kids laugh.

‘We released a series last year for the 50th anniversary of the end of wwii, Canada Remembers. It was entirely cut out of stock footage, and the series No Price Too High was also largely nfb stock footage. Even the (historical doc series) l’Epopee du Quebec on Tele-Quebec has a lot of archival material. So there is interest in it and we have in fact been increasing our sales of stock shots.’

The nfb was established in 1939 and has received more than 3,000 domestic and international awards, including 61 Oscar nominations and 10 Oscars, the latest nomination being Richard Condie’s brilliant animated comic opera La Salla.