By the time this issue of Playback reaches most of its readers, the members of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus will be reflecting on films seen, issues raised, agencies probed and awards won at its first awards show-cum-convention Feb. 24-27. The Hot Docs! national documentary film awards will have wrapped up four days of talking, screening and partying staged by the caucus, an event which it says is the only awards show/conference in Canada devoted exclusively to documentary films.

Paul Jay, national cifc cochair, says the arrival of Hot Docs! symbolizes the maturation of Canada’s documentary industry, to say nothing of its diversity and national scope. More than 140 films were submitted to the awards committee, more than half from outside Ontario. Of those films selected as finalists in the various categories, Jay says one is from Eastern Canada, seven are from Quebec and four each are from Ontario and Western Canada. He is very pleased that sogic is paying to transport and accommodate nominated filmmakers to the awards in Toronto and excited that Canadian Heritage helped the cifc make its budget for the conference and awards by approving a $50,000 grant.

Broadcasters are showing definite signs of taking the documentary form as seriously as doc filmmakers have always taken it. Just why this should be so, just now, is a matter for debate. Whether this would have been the case had it not been for a decade of lobbying, image-raising and promotion done by the caucus, is anyone’s guess.

A fair bit of attention

What is true is that Canadian docs are enjoying a fair bit of broadcaster/public/critical attention and there is much that the caucus has done, and continues to do, to have helped all of this come to pass.

Nevertheless, as the cifc enters its second decade, members reflect on shrinking public funding pots and wonder, as Jay writes in the winter ’93/94 issue of pov magazine, ‘whether or not there will be an independent documentary to celebrate in the year 2003.’

So as the cifc looked forward to the Hot Docs! celebration of a decade done, all the while bearing in mind the challenges to be confronted in the decade to come, Jay and two other members of the caucus executive, Peter Raymont and Rachel Low, met to talk with Playback. A good day for reflection with a warm sun shining in the east-side Toronto windows at Jay’s High Road Productions, and a deliciously perfumed (if unidentified) scent filling the air.

Broadcast fund

Raymont of Investigative Productions is a National Film Board-turned-independent filmmaker and a founder and former chair of the caucus. He says at least part of the impetus to establish the cifc followed the establishment of a broadcast fund at Telefilm Canada over a decade ago, a fund with no provision for documentaries. ‘Ten years ago,’ he recalls, ‘we got together six or eight people to create the organization…We started as a lobby group.’

Raymont says at the time, many people assumed the nfb was ‘taking care’ of documentary production. But, he adds, many like-minded independent filmmakers saw value in working outside institutions. Recalling this time in pov, Raymont says he went to see Telefilm’s then director of development, Peter Pearson: ‘I remember going to see (Pearson) and making a sort of passionate presentation to him about why the cfdc (Canadian Film Development Corporation) should support independent documentary makers. He listened politely, and then he said, `Look, if you’re so keen on this why don’t you really get organized, lobby and do this and that, write letters to the minister…that’s what I did when I was your age.’ ‘

Access

Eventually, the caucus succeeded in gaining documentarists access to the broadcast fund. Then, of course, there was the matter of persuading broadcasters to provide broadcast licences – committing to air the films – in order to trigger Telefilm financing.

Jay says over the years, cifc’s efforts began to include lobbying the crtc to require that broadcasters schedule documentary slots. Slowly, slowly, the windows began to swing open. For instance, cbc put together the Witness series, first under Trina McQueen and now under Mark Starowicz. (The cifc is hoping if CBC Prime Time News is moved to 10 p.m., Witness, currently airing at 10, will be moved to 9 p.m.) At tvontario, documentarian Rudy Buttignol is programming the p-o-v time slot. On CBC Newsworld, Rough Cuts affords younger filmmakers with the opportunity to make a first documentary or to make a doc, say, with a Hi-8 camera.

Now the caucus is pushing the crtc to bring private broadcasters on side. Raymont says CTV Television Network vice-president of entertainment programming, Arthur Weinthal, is considering running six or eight documentary hours per year in the W5 with Eric Malling slot, once W5’s season has ended.

Unique method

Vision/tv has developed its own unique method of coming up with money for licence fees for approved projects.

Vision’s director of programming, Peter Flemington, says producers have to raise money themselves by having supporters donate funds to Vision (a non-profit charitable corporation), or by encouraging foundations to give grants to Vision, or by soliciting government departments to give money to Vision, all of which goes into Vision’s general revenues but is earmarked for the production whose producer has done the fundraising. Then the money comes out of the general fund in the form of a licence fee which triggers Telefilm financing.

While financing and other business-side issues may always try to one-up creative concerns in the minds of independent filmmakers, there were other needs to be met through the coalescing of people that became the caucus a decade back. ‘We wanted to end the isolation of independent filmmakers,’ Raymont says.

On the face of it, it’s a straightforward objective: setting up a forum where people were making films outside broadcasters or the film board could talk to each other to find common approaches for getting financing, getting the filming work done, finding a broadcaster, cutting a licence deal, or even just meeting other creative souls who also worked alone in an office or at a kitchen table.

Something appealing

There must have been something appealing in one or the other or both of those rationales. Today, the caucus claims membership of more than 200 across Canada, with established chapters in both Toronto and Montreal.

Low, who is also currently working with Primedia, says the caucus operates in a democratic way that encourages the sharing of information among filmmakers so that everyone can be aware of, for instance, the licence fee value of a particular type of project to a given broadcaster. ‘It’s a really tough road getting into the film business,’ she says, adding that the caucus brings people together and uses their collective experience to benefit others in the caucus, particularly young filmmakers.

Obviously, if the caucus’ existence has helped to abate the creative isolation of its members over the years, and if it has helped clear some of the business and financial obstacles from the paths of emerging talents, it has succeeded in meeting some of its founders’ objectives. Clearly, as well, more documentary broadcast windows have brought fresh perspectives onto Canadian tv screens. But did the caucus intend to accomplish more, and has it?

There’s no easy answer to that, as is spelled out plainly in a roundtable interview also published in the current issue of pov. Participants engage in a spirited debate as to whether the caucus has expanded the documentary form and broadcaster acceptance of it or whether there are just more windows for a form/content package that is controlled by, and some say still misunderstood by, broadcasters.

Critical filmmakers

Independent filmmaker Laura Sky, in response to a question on what the formation of the caucus signified for her, says: ‘I think an important part of what we had in common, or what we thought we had in common at the time, was the notion of being critical filmmakers. A great part of our identity was in the fact that we were independent of an institution. The contradiction, of course, was that we were still trying to get access to audiences through such institutions (as the nfb).’

Later in the roundtable discussion, the issue again arises as to whether the caucus is best, or even most, able to give its members direction on the financial and technical aspects of filmmaking, as opposed to offering alternative points of view on the intellectual process involved in making documentaries.

tvo’s Buttignol says in the caucus’ early years, the focus on the practical aspects flowed from Toronto’s being a ‘business-oriented city’ where financing concerns reigned supreme. He also says that a few years back, when many filmmakers preferred one-offs to documentary series, many chose to join the cbc and present work on Man Alive, The Nature of Things or The Journal. ‘A lot of us,’ he recalls, ‘took exception to this kind of work.’

Sky adds: ‘But something happened because I remember how passionate we were about the idea of documentary and how anti-Journal we were. We were really hot against that whole model of documentary filmmaking. We had such a strong identity in that direction, and over time, I don’t know if the identity slipped or the profile slipped, but that whole love of process, the whole love of ideas, was overshadowed by survival in the marketplace.’

Although the caucus members continue to push broadcasters to a broader acceptance of the documentary form, Buttignol says all is not lost. As he says in the roundtable, the doc strand he is commissioning is ‘for independent filmmakers only. It’s for point-of-view, filmmaker-driven documentaries on the human condition. I’d say this is, if not an exact reflection, then at least a kind of codification of what the caucus in its sort of loose, ambling way, ended up pushing.’

Further caucus’s efforts

While the caucus is not only concerned with documentaries, these doc-related issues will have found a ready home at the Feb. 24-27 Hot Docs! Documentary Awards and conference in Toronto. Hot Docs!, an effort to discuss and further the efforts of the caucus’ first decade in existence (officially 1983-93), was a conference/screening fest and party.

Its raison d’etre is to meld filmmakers’ discussion groups – on subjects ranging from the business side of making a film to ethics in documentaries, including the issue of checkbook journalism – with broadcaster/filmmaker sessions, technical instruction, screenings, more screenings, and galas and entertainment.

The program, in brief, was scheduled as follows: Thursday, Feb. 24, kicked things off with an Opening Gala double-bill screening of Jean-Claude Lebrecque’s Andre Mathieu, musicien followed by u.k. filmmaker Nick Broomfield’s Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, with filmmakers in attendance.

On Friday, Feb. 25, the day began with an invitation-only filmmakers’ working group looking at, according to Jay, ‘dealing with (funding) agencies, broadcasters, editorial control – the business side of it.’

POV docs

Next, the agency people were invited to join the discussion, which was to focus on the future of pov docs. In the afternoon, the talk agenda was to turn to ethical issues. Friday ended with three hours of screenings of films nominated for Hot Docs! awards, and the requisite opening party, Live at The Left Bank (that’s a local restaurant).

Saturday, Feb. 26 was given over to a Kodak Technical workshop in the morning, followed by more finalist screenings.

More screenings on Sunday, more frantic note-taking by members of the Blue Ribbon awards jury, whose members are: Michele Coulombe, Norma Bailey, Haida Paul, Bridgette Berman, and Paul Watson. The event concluded with the awards gala Sunday evening, hosted by Bob Robertson, the male half of CBC Radio’s Double Exposure comedy team of Bob Robertson and Linda Cullen.