Documentaries gaining momentum, Telefilm’s Clarkson tells policy summit

Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board recently held a Documentary Policy Summit on May 1 in Toronto. At the event, Telefilm Canada executive director Wayne Clarkson pointed to numerous successes in Canadian documentary film production within the last year, but also cautioned that the recent election might dampen longer-term plans. Excerpts from Clarkson’s speech appear below. As everyone here knows, there has been enormous change in the public perception of the documentary over the past number of years, as evidenced by the increasing commercial success of the feature-length documentary... Documentaries such as The Corporation, Shake Hands With The Devil and Les Voleurs d’Enfance are better able to serious and credible political and social debate...than any dramatic fiction. Quite simply, people want to know more…they want to learn more of the seemingly invisible forces of change that are dramatically impacting their lives each day at a pace that is overwhelming… What of the past 12 months since we last met at the last documentary policy summit? Frankly, in my humble opinion, quite a bit has happened and not enough has happened. On the plus side, Telefilm Canada, in partnership with the CBC, announced in June of last year…the creation of a theatrical documentary pilot project with a total initial investment of $2 million... In the same week at Banff the National Film Board, in partnership with The Documentary Channel, announced their new program in support of documentaries. Two significant interjections of new dollars and partnerships in support of the Canadian documentary community, in the same week… that’s action. In February of this year we announced our first English-language pilot project investment – Stuart Samuels’ 27. On the French side, we have funded two projects in development and three in production. Two other projects have received post-production and completion funding, including the "shockumentary" on abused children Les Voleurs d’Enfance (Thieves of Innocence), an outstanding film that’s been a huge hit in Quebec theatres. And, earlier this year the producers of the very successful documentary The Corporation received their own performance envelope from Telefilm as a result of its box office success in Canada... However, the funding for the pilot project was for one year… and will have been fully committed around the end of this month with the final project selection. So positive change has taken place – a lot has happened – but not as much as we all may have wanted. Ideally new money would have been made available from the government for fiscal 2006-2007 for the establishment of a long-form theatrical documentary fund. But a surprise event – called a national election – intervened to alter that opportunity. Unless there is a big surprise in the budget announcement sometime this week I don’t foresee any new dollars for this fiscal . (Note: the Federal Budget released on May 2, the day after this speech was given, made virtually no reference to the arts.) ...This year, the Department of Canadian Heritage, in consultation with the industry and Telefilm, is undertaking a policy and program review of the Canada Feature Film Fund....Our message will be simple: given the continuing creative and marketing power of feature documentaries we must increase, on an ongoing basis, our financial and marketing support – in partnership with other public and private investors.

Documentaries gaining momentum, Telefilm’s Clarkson tells policy summit

News | 05/19/2006 4:00 am EDT

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