Cinema Canada (Sep 1981)

—be it through quotas, levies on the box office, incentives or the like —would still be competing with the American product. To be competitive we must produce quality films that Canadians are going to want to watch. And to produce quality films, we need a massive infusion of funds into the production industry. Without funding we are not going to get the talent in this country working often . enough to produce the kind of-quality we need to be competitive. As Verrall emphasizes, a good director is not going to develop the skills he needs to compete in the marketplace if he only makes a film every five years. There must be continuity of work, and this requires a constant source of funds. “Without this infusion of funds, the film industry in this country is a dead duck.” The NFB and the private sector For NFB features co-produced with the private sector, the capital cost allowance will continue to be important. Some of the partners the Board will be co-producing with will be using the tax shelters as a way of raising their share of the money. Thus the Board has officially, through the Film Commissioner, declared its support for the continuation of the CCA. Although the tax shelter succeeded in creating a massive infusion of funds into the film industry in 1978/79, cultural objectives were lost sight of. It became an industry of dealmaking over filmmaking. “To guarantee the money in the first place,” explains Verrall, “we had to guarantee that we were making international movies — whatever they are — which would sell in the American marketplace, It’s now doubtful that many of them will even do that. So we, the collective ‘we’ being the filmmakers, have made some mistakes. We have been guilty of a failure of imagination, and the investors will be much more cautious now. But the tax shelter could We do not have now, and have never had, the capacity to produce and distribute the kind of product that speaks to ourselves. We have managed to sit with the NFB, one of the greatest film resources in the world, and not use it. The fact that 1% of prime time of the national network is devoted to the national film agency is ridiculous. still be an important instrument with which to raise enough money to sustain a volume of work which will keep the talent in this country busy.” The CFDC was originally established as a complement to the NFB. The NFB was to be primarily responsible for documentaries and/or non-feature films, while the CFDC was to stimulate the making of feature filins in the private sector. Gathercole would like to see this guiding line changed in the future so that it reads: “The CFDC makes commercial films aimed at making money, if that is possible in this market, and the NFB makes those films for us and about us, independent of the marketplace and independent of whether or not they’re going to make money.” The distinction between the NFB ana the private sector, however, is not likely to be as clearly defined as all that. Their interrelationship is growing increasingly contentious and complex. When the NFB was created 42 years ago, there was no commercial film industry capable of producing the films the country needed, so there was no question of the Board posing any direct threat to the private sector. Today the picture is different, with a viable commercial industry legitimately complaining that it cannot compete with a government-funded production agency which undersells the private sector product, and which coordinatesthe film requirements of government departments. There is some question as to whether or not the NFB should continue to coordinate the films sponsored by government departments and agencies, With the proliferation of these departments today, previously clear lines of responsibility have become blurred in overlapping authorities. Assistant film commissioner Frangois Macerola admits that the commercial sector is now capable of producing 95% of sponsored films. He believes that the Board should retain the role of executive producer of these sponsored films, but that their execution should be increasingly left up to the commercial producers. "We didn’t wait for the private sector to get in touch with us, We contacted them to say we'd like a new agreement concerning the Sponsored Program, which won't be based on the financial volume of production... What I would like to find is a kind of cinematographic raison d’étre for the NFB's involvement in the execution of films from the Sponsored Program, rather than a financial, mathematical solution,” states Macerola. This “cinematographic raison d’étre” infers a kind of artistic value judgement which would be left up to the discretion of the NFB. Straightforward information films, such as shorts on the metric system or fire prevention, would be delegated to the private sector, whereas the Board would continue to involve itself with the more noble, developmental orcultural undertakings such as the Santé Afrique or Challenge for Change series. In any event, it appears obvious that for financial reasons, and in the pursuit of Canada’s cultural goals, there must beacloser collaboration between private and public sector film production in Canada. And this collaboration is likely to be catalyzed by an increasing awareness of a commonality of interest be Bob Verrall tween private and public sector. There must be a continuity of a certain volume of production to ensure the viability of a Canadian film industry. As Macerola predicts : “The price we will have to pay in order to have a real Canadian film industry is that we will have to join forces. We can no longer rely on the private investors.” The NFB: A Crown Corporation ? For the past two years there has been some talk about the possibility of the NFB being reorganized as a crown corporation. Macerola believes that the Federal Cultural Review Committee will make a recommendation to that effect. The Board’s funds now stand ata composite ratio of 75% government subsidies to 25% revenues from sales and rentals. Federal government agencies like the Board operate under fixed budgetary constraints; the Board, for example, has always had difficulty convincing Ottawa that 85% of its budget is spent during the summer — which is usual in the film industry. As a crown corporation, the Board would have greater administrative flexibility over the dispersement of funds, and the freedom to transfer funds from one year to the next. Says Macerola : “With crown corporation status it would be easier to adjust ourselves to the production of films. Our first goal in becoming a crown corporation would be to better answer the needs of our filmmakers and our distributors, instead of answering the bureaucratic needs of the various government ministries and departments.” lhe NFB is currently undergoing a renovation, and the changes promise to be more than just cosmetic. Structurally the Board is less than sound. Like any institution which has grown too big, it has become over-bureaucratized, wasteful, and inefficient. Hopefully, measures taken in such directions as the regionalization program, co-production with the private sector, crown corporation status, or a more wholly-integrated cooperation between production and distribution, will render it more responsive to its mandate. The institution still exists for quasimoral reasons of public interest, but the moral emphasis seems to be shifting in reflection of the times. The previouslyprescribed documentary film with a social conscience is evolving into a prescription which promotes film as more of a cultural product. Whether or not this is the magic formula remains to be seen. The fact is that 42 years and 4006 films later, the Board is, like the country, still Waging a battle for credibility. Clearly, more effective ways of improving access to Canadian culture must be found, if only to improve the nation’s capacity to know itself as distinct from its southern counterpart, Until then, no cultural — institution will be free from serious: scrutiny.@ ¢ September 1981 -Cinema |