The Canadian Film Centre and National Film Board announced Wednesday that directors Sarah Polley (Away from Her), Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze), Shelley Saywell (Crimes of Honour) and John Walker (Place of the Boss: Utshimassits) have been tapped for the inaugural CFC/NFB Feature Documentary Program.

For six months, starting in January, the quartet will work together, accompanied by a handpicked who’s who of international mentors, to develop their projects into full-length nonfiction films.

Shepherding the filmmakers are project manager and former CBC documentary executive producer Jerry McIntosh, multi-award-winning docmaker Larry Weinstein (Ravel’s Brain), director of the CFC’s special projects Sheena Macdonald and NFB producer Gerry Flahive.

One of McIntosh’s prime concerns — and those of his team — was ‘how will the filmmakers work together?’ But he was ‘over the moon’ after their first session on Monday. ‘It was a magical afternoon — as powerful an experience as I’ve ever had in the [TV and film] field. The four were generous, collaborative and creative,’ says McIntosh.

‘We got 53 proposals and I estimate that 35 could be made,’ he adds. ‘That’s how strong the applications were.’ The slate of potential films is diverse, ranging from Polley’s The Stories We Tell, which will explore memory and storytelling, through Chang’s look at the nature and obsession of the fruit underground, The Fruit Hunters, to Saywell’s Ghost Dance, which combines ecology, aboriginal prophecy and rock ‘n’ roll.

Those pieces ‘are somewhere between a dream and a theme,’ says McIntosh, who is looking forward to seeing how their visions are ‘nurtured over time.’

Walker’s project Seven Wonders, about master drummers teaching students in a Canadian nature reserve, is more fully developed, as he was able to do some preliminary shooting in August. ‘Drummers are the time keepers of the most fundamental instrument in music. A lot of them have a powerful, spiritual dimension,’ observes Walker, who wants to make a film that incorporates music, teaching, spiritualism and politics.

Walker is pleased with the CFC/NFB program because it is placing feature documentaries firmly in the cultural agenda. ‘Documentaries shouldn’t be segregated,’ he believes. ‘We should have the same support from Telefilm as fiction features.’

McIntosh isn’t as sure, but he admits that ‘the model [for funding docs] is broken. They need to be paid for in a different way.’ The plan for the films being developed at the CFC is to get them to the point where ‘funders could step up to the plate with dollars’ by June to produce the films.