Cinema Canada (Apr 1976)

ESSERE A SET CT SO FIN SSD TE LIE EOS EE IE ing of Boccaccio. The court dismissed the obscenity charges. But of course the damage had already been done. What was to many people a good laugh, and to the financially strapped station a source of high ratings, was taken off the air soon after the charge was laid last year. Another victory for the forces of Right and Justice. WINTARIO. All of a sudden Wintario has opened the coffers to a flood, and in one day about fourteen million dollars was given out, very little of it to professional cultural organizations... And in Toronto the City Council, despite protestations by Metro Arts rep David Silcox, froze cultural grants at their former level. The _ interesting thing is that no arts groups protested the freezing, even though total grant requests are double the budget. So now the groups are fighting to get a bigger share of the same size pie. GLOBAL TV has reported a profit in the last quarter of 1975, mainly due to seasonally high advertising. Overall the network will still show an annual loss, although it will be substantially lower than expected. The goose may be ready to start laying the inevitable golden eggs... And whatever happened to Al Bruner?... On the ratings level Global has moved up significantly, mainly due to Wintario shows and reruns or new foreign shows... CBC and CTV have increased their ratings in the crucial Toronto battleground, but most of the increase comes from American shows. THE TORONTO _ FILMMAKERS’ CO-OP has revised its fee schedule, to charge ten dollars for membership on a quarterly basis, instead of annually... Filmmaker Kenneth Anger visited Cinebooks, York University and The New Yorker Theatre in February, to promote his book Hollywood Babylon and toscreen some films. Stephen Chesley QUEBEC RSL PRODUCTIONS has acquired the rights to Stephen Vizinczey’s novel In Praise of Older Women and plans to turn it into a $1.5 million film, directed by George Kaczender. This is the first film by RSL, and Robert Lantos will be producing with Stephen J. Roth as associate producer. Filming should start in the fall; the CFDC is participating. DISTRIBUTION. Quebec’s lowbudget features are having a tough time getting to the people. The latest distribution victim is Chanson pour Julie whose premiere was scheduled for March 26. Not only has Films Mutuels put off the opening of the film, it has backed out of its distribution deal, leaving the film without a distributor. And all this despite the press conference which Mutuel had given to announce the opening and to introduce Jacques Vallée, director, to the press. Although Pierre David, president of Mutuel, will make no comment other than to _ say that the rupture had nothing to do with the quality of the film, it seems that personal difficulties between David and Jacques Ferland, the songster-star-andscreenwriter for Chanson, led to the break. Cinepix is now evaluating the situation. JOS CARBONE is another lowbudget film; it opens simultaneously in Chicoutimi and Jonquiere in the Lac St-Jean area where it was filmed by Cinénord with Hugues Tremblay directing. Not having been able to find a Montreal distributor, ACPAV (Association Cooperatif des Productions Audio-Visuelles), which helped in the production, is responsible for the regional distribution aided by the CFDC. THE CFDC has long since given up insisting that low-budget films have confirmed distribution before they are produced. But the result, at least in Quebec, seems to be that these films may well be denied any normal distribution and promotion. Distributors, even those who have invested in the films, are wary. Mutuel put $10,000 in the ACPAV production L’ab sence by Brigitte Sauriol but today it is ready to give up its distribution rights. The same story is heard at Cinepix which invested $15,000 in Pierre Harel’s Vie d’ange rapt de star. TI-CUL TOUGAS, which promises to be one of the more successful of the low-budget efforts, and which has a $30,000 investment from Les Cinémas Unis (The Famous Players branch office in Quebec), has just lost its distributor, Prospec. Produced by ACPAV, directed by Jean-Guy Noel, the film has yet to line up another distributor. FRANCE FILM seems to be honoring its commitment to distribute La piastre by Alain Chartrand. The opening is scheduled for the Complexe Desjardins but the building isn’t yet finished, and so the opening | has been postponed. The target date now seems to be April 16. What is needed for all these films is a distribution system adapted to the audience which is receptive to them. No one seems ready’ to invest the $15,000 or $20,000 necessary to have a Montreal premiere with all the appropriate publicity. At the CFDC the search is going on for this new system, and the experience of Jos Carbone in Chicoutimi will be watched with interest. ASTRAL-MONTREAL. After six years with Astral, Claude Chené is leaving his post as general manager for Quebec. The new head of Astral (the distribution branch of Astral Bellevue Pathé) will be Maurice Attias. SNC. The Syndicat National du Cinéma has sent a letter to Robert Andras, Minister of Manpower and Immigration, deploring unemployment among film technicians, and taking Ms. Marie-Josée Raymond to task for employing -a non-union crew with a majority of foreign technicians for her co-production Diane. The SNC states that 60% of its members are looking for work and living from unemployment compensation. It wonders why it was not consulted by the Manpower Office before work permits were given to the foreign technicians, stating that precedents for this consultation were established when Tony Saita and The Little Girl Down FILIYINEWS the Lane were shot in Montreal. In these latter productions, the quota established by the SNC (1 foreign technician for 3 Québécois technicians) was respected. Producer Raymond answers simply that the co-production agreements do not oblige producers to go through the unions to find technicians, and that as the investments in the film are 70% Italian and 30% Canadian, this proportion of technicians was respected. She mentions also the difficulties in dealing with the SNC since the union hoped to force acceptance of a collective agreement on April 1 which the producers found totally unacceptable. RADIO-QUEBEC, the © provincial educational television agency, will have to get along with a reduced budget this year if the National Assembly adopts the budget submitted to it for the fiscal year °76-77. Down 3° from $16,345,000 to $15,818,000, the budget reflects the transfer of government sponsered films from Radio-Quebec (Ministry of Communications) to the Ministry of Education. Last year, the production of these films cost $1,164,000. Communications Minister Denis Hardy has stated that next year should be one of “reflection” for Radio-Québec so that it may become the “most powerful expression of the Québécois community”. & DGCA. Meanwhile, the Direction Générale du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel is becoming that bureaucracy which was promised by the Law Concerning theCinema, voted last June. With nearly 200 on the staff, the DGCA will have a budget of $2,832,400 for its operations. This is an increase of $1,524,000 over the combined budgets of the various agencies which did similar tasks last year. $1,319,200 is set aside for the coordination of governmental productions (as opposed to M. Denis Hardy April 1976/9