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TeleFilm Canada, the most incompetent people on earth


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Ok, time to start a public thread about TeleFilm Canada, & their on going failure.  I hope other people involved in the Canadian film industry will join in with their comments.  

There is so much to talk about, but let's take the most recent display of gross incompetence from the decision makers at the Toronto office.  Playback reports today that 7/10 of the highest grossing Canadian films come from the province of Quebec, a French speaking province with only 22% of the population.  As opposed to the rest of English speaking Canada which accounts for 78% of the population.

On the Canadian side, Quebec-made films continued to dominate, with seven of the 10 films on this year’s list coming from la belle province.

The top four spots on the chart went to director Émile Gaudreault’s Menteur ($6.3 million, pictured), Louise Archambault’s Il pleuvait des oiseaux (“And the Birds Rained Down,” $1.8 million), Snowtime! sequel La Course des Tuques (“Racetime,” $2.64 million) and La femme de mon frère (“A Brother’s Love,” $753,757) from Monia Chokri. Other Quebec features like Matthias et Maxime ($547,212, #6), Telefilm Canada’s international Oscar pick Antigone ($408,926, #9) and Jeune Juliette ($296,393, #10) also made the list.

Read more: http://playbackonline.ca/2020/01/07/2019s-top-grossing-films-at-the-canadian-box-office/#ixzz6ANbobG9F

I can only describe this as a laughable disaster for the decision makers at the Toronto office.  If they had any decency they would admit their gross incompetence and resign.  Unfortunately for TeleFilm Canada so long as they continue with their policy of banning all white males from being financed, the results will continue to suck.

R,

PS: I have invited the Toronto TeleFilm office management to debate me here in public, let's see if any have the guts to do so?

 

 

 

 

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I'm not sure I understand the situation -- if the most successful Canadian-made films are in French, shouldn't Toronto TeleFilm concentrate funding of French language films?  Or are English language films funded by Toronto TeleFilm more profitable? You'd think that they wouldn't want to compete with the larger English language American-made movies...  Is their mandate to simply make profitable films in Canada or to help fund films that preserve unique elements of Canadian culture and heritage?

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But if Toronto TeleFilm hands all the money to Quebec, there will be zero dollars to make movies for the English language market which is 78% of Canada.  Basically TeleFilm has two divisions, French and English.  The French division centred in Montreal Quebec, which gets 50% of the total TeleFilm budget, even though Quebec makes up only 22% of the population.  Which is an on-going problem in Canada, Quebec gets the lion's share of everything in order to bribe them into not leaving Canada.  For instance they get 13 billion a year handed to them from English Canada as another way of bribing them into staying in Canada, but that's another story.

My point is that....The Toronto office which mostly invests in English language films has done such a horrifically awful job of picking winners, that audiences stay away in droves.  They invest in "art" movies, and then sit back and wonder why there is no audience.  Their mandate is to promote Canadian culture, whatever that is? No one knows to be honest, Canada has no "culture" of it's own.  And to invest in movies that generate a positive box office, something the movies they choose to invest in in English Canada clearly cannot do.

They have had a mandate for a while now to not invest in projects being made by English speaking white males.  If you're a white male and you live in Quebec and speak French, well you're fine.  If you're a white male from Toronto, forget it.  They'll tell you to run off to LA and join, Ivan Reitman, James Cameron, Norman Jewison, and all the other hugely successful white male Canadian directors in Hollywood.

R,

 

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Oh believe me.....I have.  Details to follow upon resolution.

And TeleFilm reps are welcome to come on here and defend their policies.  That "mandate" BTW is made up by TeleFilm employees,  it's not at the behest of elected officials.  

R,

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Oh if any British members want to talk about the ridiculous BFI, feel free, as I also dealt with BFI on two projects as well.

R,

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Just now, Max Field said:

Do we know if TeleFilm actively reads this place?

I sent their management the link, to ensure that they know.  I await their response......

R,

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9 hours ago, Richard Boddington said:

Oh if any British members want to talk about the ridiculous BFI, feel free, as I also dealt with BFI on two projects as well.

R,

BFI's policy seems to be funding the same 10 people again and again... It feels often that they have "people they like" to fund, rather than the quality of the project. 

The rest of us basically submit projects to the BFI as a hail mary pass. Pretty much every decent project has to get its BFI rejection in the bag before they move on and get it made. It's a right of passage.

I'm in post production, at the moment, on my most recent BFI rejected project. 

I will still have a punt at the BFI iFeatures next time round, the potential upside is still worth the aggravation - but I'll need to attract a co-producer to the project that has a track record of BFI success. 

I know that life isn't fair and places like the BFI are going to disappoint the majority, so in my case it could just be bad luck or that my work isn't good enough to be championed by them. So you have to take my comments with a pinch of salt. But at times it feels that the BFI has a "thing" they will fund and if your work/profile isn't "that thing" regardless of its artistic merits it won't get funded. 

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I've always considered organisations like BFI to be essentially a bunch of upper-middle-class people using public money to fund upper-middle-class people they went to (fee-paying) school with. Is it even pretending to be a vector for actual commercial viability these days?

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1 hour ago, Phil Rhodes said:

I've always considered organisations like BFI to be essentially a bunch of upper-middle-class people using public money to fund upper-middle-class people they went to (fee-paying) school with. Is it even pretending to be a vector for actual commercial viability these days?

Thats a big chunk of the UK media, BBC is similar - most of the opportunities are sown up by the private school oxbridge set. It's not the best way to either support filmmakers or produce films people would like to watch. 

Occasionally they will support a few working class/minority voices in a cack handed attempt to pay lip service to diversity. Which is patronising to all involved and wouldn't be needed if most the funding wasn't hoovered up by the private school contingent. 

But I agree in general they don't seem to make particularly good choices about content, fund the same narrow trench of people multiple times regardless of the outcome of their previous efforts.

It's a shame it's not better as it could really develop the UK film industry. But that's the main issue with class stratification in sectors of UK public life. It's a huge missed opportunity, with a great deal of potential talent ignored. While so many opportunities are contained within specific social class circles. 

Its always been hard to "make it" in film/TV/art's in the UK - but I think it's becoming harder due to the increased costs of living in London etc.. many people are just priced out of the race. I know thats a trend in places worldwide and income disparity is going up in many western countries. So if a country is going have government film funding agency  its important they do their job properly. 

You could argue why do they need to exist at all? E.g American cinema dominates the world cinema market without public funding. But then maybe that's why, Hollywood has worked hard to maintain its monopoly, so filmmakers in other markets do need additional support to produce content.

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Phil Connolly said:

BFI's policy seems to be funding the same 10 people again and again... It feels often that they have "people they like" to fund, rather than the quality of the project. 

That's been the unofficial policy of every arts council in Britain for at least as long as I've been in this industry.

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3 hours ago, Stuart Brereton said:

That's been the unofficial policy of every arts council in Britain for at least as long as I've been in this industry.

Same problem in Canada with TeleFilm, same 10 people over and over again.  Producer's in Canada jokingly call TeleFilm the "Atom Egoyan Fund," he has been financed so many times!

R,

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