2007 was another year of disappointment for the Canadian film industry.

As of Nov. 22, domestic filmmakers had taken in $25.7 million at the national box office, accounting for a market share of 3.3%, according to Telefilm Canada.

That’s well down from a 2006 domestic box office of $34.7 million for Canadian films, or a 4.1% share at the local multiplex.

‘Through the blunt prism of box office, it’s always distressing when numbers go down. I’d prefer they went up,’ Telefilm executive director Wayne Clarkson says of last year’s performance.

But wait. It gets worse. Canadian film is on the wrong side of the curve.

It was thrilling to watch Quebec movies lift the Canadian industry’s national screen share to a record 5.2% in 2005. That was up from 2.7% in 2002, when then-exec director Richard Stursberg shifted Telefilm to a more commercially minded movie strategy.

But since 2005, the industry’s share of domestic screen success has slid, the opposite of what was intended in 2000, when Ottawa introduced its Script to Screen initiative to get the domestic box office to 5%, and then doubled investment in the Canada Feature Film Fund.

The takeaway message is that a rise in government investment in homegrown film apparently discourages box-office returns and domestic audience share. No amount of spin and press release clips can disguise the fact that this is an industry swimming off the beach, unable to feel the bottom.

A harsh judgment? Not this year. Not this box office.

There’s always the potential home-video market offered by newer distribution outlets like NetFlix and Amazon, but the truth of the matter is that, at the multiplex, without David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises ($3.1 million at the local box office) – a London-set thriller based on a script by British screenwriter Steve Knight – and Sarah Polley’s Away from Her ($1.4 million), 2007 would have been even uglier for English-Canadian film.

By the numbers, English-Canadian film collapsed in 2007 to a 1% screen share, compared to a 1.7% share in ’06.

While some duds were simply poorly made movies, several smart films with big stars vanished at the box office, or remained stuck on the festival circuit.

The French-language market share in 2007, by contrast, was 16.2%, down from 17.1% a year earlier, as Quebecois films such as Les 3 p’tits cochons and Nitro easily crossed the $1-million box-office mark [$4.5 million and $3.6 million, respectively].

But in a national market where $8 million represents one percentage share, the biggest reason to frown may be that the difference between a good and a bad year for English-Canadian film remains one box-office hit, be it a Mambo Italiano or a Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

If this were Los Angeles, disappointing box-office numbers would be greeted by a sharp intake of breath and studio heads clutching their scalps. But this being Canada, sliding box office has people merely scratching their heads as they rattle the begging bowl.

Telefilm’s Clarkson insists there’s always next year. He touts upcoming films including Paul Gross’ Passchendaele, Rhombus Media’s Blindness, Vincenzo Natali’s Splice and Atom Egoyan’s Adoration as worthy enough to get numbers for Canadian film heading back upwards.

But while Telefilm and other industry boosters like to emphasize the critical acclaim for Canadian film at international festivals, indie producers still insist they can barely keep the wolf from the door. That’s especially true in Quebec, where too many scripts continue to chase too little local financing, even with the provincial government upping SODEC’s annual budget by $10 million.

Clarkson also expresses frustration with the box office for Canadian film being tied to the performance of Hollywood movies at the local multiplex.

When Hollywood slumped in 2005, Canadian film saw its market share rise. In 2007, when blockbusters like Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Transformers dominated Canadian screens, homegrown films suffered as a result.

That being so, other national cinemas flourished in 2007. The likes of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Mr. Bean’s Holiday and Atonement pushed the market share for British films at the U.K. box office to 27% in 2007, compared to 19% for 2006, according to the UK Film Council.

On a smaller scale, Flemish cinema posted a record year in 2007 on the strength of local movies such as Dominique Deruddere’s Firmin and Nic Balthazar’s Ben X.

By the end of November, French films accounted for 36.7% of theater admissions in France, down from 43.9% in 2006, but still very healthy.

So, what now?

Canadian filmmakers continue to subsist on a drip-feed of subsidies from Ottawa. Successive governments have tried with little success to redress the screen imbalance between local filmmakers and Hollywood studios.

Unless Canadian film catches a wave soon, this is an industry that will soon be looking for a tow back to shore.