In April 1979, Margaret Collier, William Marshall, Jonathan Welsh and a handful of others got together to form a membership-driven association that would celebrate Canada’s burgeoning film industry. Within a year, the Genie Awards were happening.

In the 15 years since, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television has largely evolved, and at some moments, devolved.

The omnipotent bottom line has been supply and demand. Jeanette Slinger, director of finance and administration, points out that in 1980, 6% of the almost $300,000 budget came from membership fees and 45% was government money. Today, membership accounts for 7% of a $4.2 million budget and about 36% comes from government. Membership was at 500 in 1980. Today it is over 2,000.

Along with everyone else who is exploring the depths of resourceful financing, Slinger says the Academy is ‘looking for new, more sophisticated ways to fund programs and projects.’ Slinger points to corporate donations as an example of the headway it is making: in 1980, corporate donations (and that was when dentists were producers) totalled $20,000 of the close to $300,000 budget. Now they bring in $200,000 of the $4.2 million (largely with the corporate membership program which offers an annual membership package to sponsors in exchange for $5,000).

The Academy is always devising new ways to service its membership. Number one priority is the awards celebrations (the Genies, Geminis and Prix Gemeaux).

Take the Genies, for example. In 1991, the selection process and the date of the annual show were both turned on their proverbial ears. Last year, the Academy made a bold stab at a bilingual, cross-border show that wound up speaking volumes on the failure of a unified national identity. Now, executive director Maria Topalovich is looking for something new.

Genies organizers have long established that without a television audience, they would be tooting their own horns in a vacuum. But since tv viewers don’t watch Canadian theatrical movies for the most part, what do they care about Anne Wheeler or Lothaire Bluteau?

To open the gates, Topalovich requested a minute-by-minute viewership analysis of the 1994 Geminis broadcast on cbc. ‘It gave us some insights and allowed us to gauge what the audiences respond to. They definitely went down during acceptance speeches, and that’s a real problem,’ she says.

This year’s Genies, set for a two-hour slot on Wednesday, Dec. 7 on cbc, will get what Topalovich calls a ‘long-awaited,’ half-hour preshow promoting Canada’s feature filmmakers and stars to tv audiences.

Circling around the celebrations are a series of programs and events that aim at educating, promoting and, well, schmoozing. Programs, according to Slinger, account for 8% to 10% of the total budget.

The program with the longest-standing record is the National Apprenticeship Training Program, established in 1985 in conjunction with the Toronto Screen Apprenticeship Award and chaired this year by Bev Oda. Each of about a dozen winning film students with a specialty (anything from special effects to screenwriting) gains 12 weeks of hands-on experience in their field within a year’s time with a $300 weekly honorarium slated for the training period.

The Academy boasts a ‘100% success rate,’ with all apprentices having been integrated into the biz.

The ‘most popular’ program by acct standards is the Breakfast Club series, which started in 1987. Liv Ullmann, Kevin Shea and David Cronenberg are a few of the names that have been placed behind a podium, addressing issues such as tv’s future and the tenacity of the Canadian film business.

The Director Observer Program, launched in 1986 and aimed at putting experienced directors on the path that leads to features (by ‘observing’ feature directors at work), is under review right now by researcher Margot La Rocque. Recommendations will be made to the Academy in July.

The latest addition to the slate of acct programs is The National Story Editor Training Program. Its first round was for 24 participants and targeted ‘the heart of a story.’ Half the original participants took part in a second phase and part three involved placing four future story editors with a cbc series. The workshop continues, at least for now, with ‘Understanding Story’ being held this summer and late fall in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.

Publications, a somewhat stagnant component of the Academy for the past couple of years, is gearing up again. Topalovich counts no less than four books in development: a Who’s Who/Qui est Qui update, which will appear on cd-rom (in conjunction with Paul Hoffert and his research center out of York University, Cultech). Hard copy will be available for the technological dinosaurs. A possible listing fee of $15 or $20 is being weighed as one way to cover its cost.

Next on the list is Selling It, a marketing companion to Making It, the 1987 production manual put out by the Academy. There is also a coming revision of Making It.

Finally, Topalovich is updating her Pictorial History of Canadian Film Awards, which currently takes us up to 1984. She says she will cut off the add-ons with the 1994 Genies.

Lynn Huxtable, director of communications and membership until June 10, put together the Academy’s first national membership survey with BBM/Comquest to assess membership services and activities (i