Cinema Canada (Oct 1973-Jan 1974)

: Another long winter before CFDC funding The Canadian Film Development Corporation doesn’t start its new fiscal year until April Ist, 1974, and producers of big budget features will most likely have to wait until then to get confirmed funding. It’s going to be a long cold winter for many, but it will also afford screenwriters and directors the chance to go over their scripts and do a bit of polishing, and producers to work on the budget — both by raising private money and by balancing the books in advance. As for the $100,000 low-budget feature program, the next deadline is December Ist and the total budget allowance has been raised to $115,000 in keeping with the lessons learned from previous productions. As before, the Corporation will supply 60 per cent of the financing, the rest having to come from the private sector. Ted Rouse, Toronto CFDC Director, told Cinema Canada that of 20 recent applications in the low-budget area, none have been given outright Corporation blessing, as yet, although Peter Bryant’s The Supreme Kid, a west coast project, will be resubmitted after a rewrite. Latter is to be produced by David Tompkins of the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. Altogether, ten hundred-thousand dollar films have been produced so far with CFDC money, five in English, five in French. Jean-Guy Noel, Andre Forcier, Michel Bouchard, Jean Cousineau, and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre were the recipients in Quebec, and Jack Cunningham, Paul Lynch, Robbie Malenfant, Jack Darcus, and Morley Markson shot English-Canadian features under this program. So far none of these ten features have been distributed. Some of them are finished and ready to go, most of them are winding up post production. Noel’s Tu Brailes, Tu Brailes and Forcier’s Bar Salon have been shown in Quebec, but neither had a regular commercial run. The Derret Lee, Paul Lynch film, The Hard Part Begins, was recently previewed in Toronto, and its country and western theme might enable it to succeed on the drive-in circuit. But while the film is available in 35mm, the 8 Cinema Canada CFDC’s policy now is that these lowbudget features should be shot on 16mm and also distributed on the alternate, non-commercial circuit in that format. According to Rouse, the two major reasons the CFDC has not been announcing the funding of new projects lately are that private money is tight, and “creativity is a bit dry at the moment.” But there’s a lot of behind the scenes activity, what with CFDC Director Michael Spencer being involved in a whole series of negotiations with the TV networks (which now number three, don’t forget), aimed at major Corporation involvement in the financing of Canadian movies for television. When this topic was raised at a recent Council of Canadian Filmmakers executive meeting, the consensus of the room was that television is not a desirable primary outlet for Canadian films, since, in Richard Leiterman’s words “When you shoot a film for the tube, you handle it very differently from one shot for the screen.’’ Even though these new schemes would involve theatrical release in other countries as well as greater exposure for the ‘‘film’’ at home, they might irrevocably damage the developing art and craft of making widescreen motion pictures in Canada Eight Canadian motion pictures play Toronto and audiences are flocking to see them At press time, The Pyx has been playing in Toronto for seven weeks (in two theatres), Between Friends, Paperback Hero and Kamouraska for almost that long, and Slipstream just opened. UTurn and Keep It in the Family just recently wound up playing to good houses, and The Death of a Lumberjack is due to open here soon. What makes this remarkable, is that all of the above are Canadian films, i.e. made-in-Canada by Canadians! One sad note, is that all these films are competing against each other. But still, the box-office grosses have warranted holding them over the usual onetwo-three week period usually allotted films made in this country by the foreign controlled exhibition/distribution alliance. Peter Pearson’s Paperback Hero is leading the current ‘“‘b.o. gross’ race, Canada-wide, while Harvey Hart’s The Pyx is the major contender in perlocation figures. It is no accident that both were produced by sharp moneypeople, John F. Bassett and Maxine Samuels respectively, and were some Producer Chalmers Adams with actress Bonnie Bedelia at the opening of Don Shebib’s Between Friends.