MONTREAL — Will the two solitudes ever share a film audience?

The organizers of Quebec’s annual Prix Jutra say no, citing the brief mention their Sunday gala got in Canada’s national print media. Canadian Press and Canwest did short briefs, while The Globe and Mail seems to have forgotten the Jutras entirely, noting the winners three days after the event. The National Post, the other national English-Canadian daily, did report on the event.

‘There is a real barrier. Toronto is viewed as Canada’s economic, cultural and political center, so the media focuses on what’s going on there. Even though the Quebec film industry is doing well, I don’t think they could care less about what’s happening here, unless it’s Céline Dion or Cirque du Soleil,’ Jutra organizer Henry Welsh tells Playback Daily.

This year and last, two Quebec flicks, Les 3 p’tits cochons (2007) and Bon Cop, Bad Cop (2006), were the top-grossing Canadian films. About 80% percent of Bon Cop‘s box office — and virtually all of Cochons‘ — came from French screens in la belle province.

Welsh’s remarks come on the heels of the accusation by Quebec pop singer Claude Dubois that the CBC was racist when it failed to include francophone performers in a 44-minute cut-down of the recent three-hour Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame gala. The CBC later apologized for the oversight.

And although the French media does not say much about Toronto, TIFF always gets covered. And this year there appears to be great interest in English-Canadian cinema, particularly Sarah Polley’s Oscar-nominated Away from Her, which has received extensive play in Montreal’s French-language dailies. One La Presse critic noted that 2007 was an ‘exceptional year’ for English-Canadian film.

Part of the issue is that most Quebec films don’t get a cross-Canada release, and when they do, it’s a battle to pull in audiences, says producer Denise Robert, whose film L’âge des ténèbres was up for half a dozen Jutras. ‘Of course we’re disappointed if The Globe and Mail doesn’t cover the Jutras. But how many English-Canadians have seen the French-language films which were nominated?’ says Robert. ‘It’s a big country and they have to make editorial choices. ‘

Kevin Tierney, the producer of Bon Cop — one of the only Canadian films to reach out to both francophones and anglophones — believes the general public in Upper and Lower Canada has always been and will continue to be mutually indifferent to each other.

‘Unfortunately, we don’t seem to find each other exotic enough,’ says Tierney, currently on location in Newfoundland. By contrast, he says, filmmakers on both sides of the divide support each other.

‘We have a great deal of respect for French-language cinema and the reverse is also true,’ says Tierney. ‘I’ve always thought that the Jutras should have a best English-language film category and the Genies a best French-language one. That way we are acknowledging how different we are.’