The Fight For Canadian Film

He discovered that getting a good, an excellent, a great feature film by Canadians into Canadian film theatres demands the determination of a religious zealot, the patience of Job, the selflessness of a suicide bomber, and the willingness to live in the fantasy world of someone dangerously near to being “put away” permanently. And then to sweeten his experience, he learned that when a Canadian feature film is finally IN Canadian theatres, (to reapply the words of philosopher Thomas Hobbes) its life there is “nasty, brutish, and short”. That’s the first part of the tale. It involves Bessai appearing before a recent meeting of The House of Commons Standing Committee for the Public Hearings on Canadian Feature Film Policy with a paper entitled “Screen Quotas To Protect Cultural Sovereignty”. It involves the creation of The Citizens’ Coalition For The Protection of Canadian Films. It involves the growing determination of that group to do something about the disgraceful state of Canadian film. Concerning the second part of the tale, I will be brief, though it is immense, of long duration, and painful. Despite decades of published analysis, meetings, conferences, media theorizing, House of Commons proposals, Parliamentary debate, and public discussion, virtually nothing has been done. In order to cover for the fact of inaction, governments have bribed many involved Canadians into silence (by various stop-gap “support” structures) and have bribed U.S. film-makers with tax incentives to “give some work” to Canadians. The simple fact is that the construction of a viable, profitable, attractive, Canadian-owned and controlled film industry, producing feature films that Canadians in large numbers want and enjoy does not exist. It does not exist because of U.S. imperialism and the trading-off, compromising, colonial-minded, shambling weakness of Canadian legislators at the national level It does not exist because the one thing necessary – made clear by Canadian film workers for at least 50 years – is what is called “distribution”. In short, Canadian films must be given fair access to Canadian movie houses so Canadians can see them. They have not been given and they are not given fair access. With the takeover, as I write, of (U.S.) Famous Players by Cineplex Galaxy LP, a Canadian-owned corporation which owns now 132 theatres in Canada with close to 1300 screens, there may be hope. Foreign ownership of theatres has long been named one of the distribution problems for Canadian films. The foreign owners didn’t want to make space for Canadian films. But the problem is not as simple as that. Any owners have to bring on a product (the Canadian product) that Canadians have been taught during decades of indoctrination to believe is inferior. Even Canadian owners might resist doing so. What’s more, the contracts with U.S. film suppliers squeezes any time that might be made for Canadian film, squeezes the time intentionally. The theatre owner says, moreover, “this good Canadian film isn’t making as much money as that U.S. trash film will make. Dump the Canadian film”. The truth – as with the Canadian music quotas introduced by the CRTC under Pierre Juneau in the early 1970s – is that when Canadians get a chance to experience Canadian cultural products, they embrace them. The Juneau rules that Canadian music (which was almost universally excluded) had to be played on Canadian media for a set percentage of time sky-rocketted Canadian musical talent at home and abroad. Without those rules there is every possibility that the internationally leading Canadian popular music groups and individual “stars” we take for granted today would never have been produced. Think about that. The Citizens’ Coalition For The Protection Of Canadian Films – and Canadian Parliamentarians – are going to have to do their work. Cineplex is owned by Onex Corporation. Its CEO is the husband of Heather Riesman of Indigo/Chapters bookstores. Professing deep concern about Canadian books, Heather Riesman has done little to advance them. Pushed to carry books published by Canadians in the regions, she talks well and does little. In all the news stories I have read about the Cineplex takeover of Famous Players, Cineplex spokesperson CEO Ellis Jacob has not once mentioned a new opportunity to show Canadian films. In my tracking of the stories, I have never seen Canadian films even mentioned. The government of Canada is going to have to “mention” the subject and, in fact, is going to have to legislate (like the Juneau rules) movies into Canadian theatres, through the CRTC or Parliament itself-. “Oh,” you may say, “the Liberals always sell us out.” That is true about film, and at the present they continue to sell us out on film policy. But so have Conservative governments sold us out on film policy. It was during the Mulroney government that Flora MacDonald, around 1987, was prepared to make a break-through move in film legislation. But U.S. movie lobbyist Jack Valente worked with U.S. president Ronald Reagan to put pressure on Brian Mulroney. He forced Mac Donald to “listen” to Jack Valente. Thus the first important step to liberate Canadian film from U.S. shackles was totally destroyed. Why has the destructive situation gone on in Canada for the whole history of the movie industry? Early in development, the U.S. realized that film (whether in theatres or later on TV screens) combined huge potential for private profit and for U.S. propaganda. As a result, the U.S. has tried everywhere in the world to force in and to develop taste for U.S. film. Canada provides a market in a culture that can understand U.S. culture – and so the U.S. has done everything to prevent a significant Canadian film industry from developing. The U.S. knows that Canadians make better films than the U.S. does. They know vital Canadian film production and distribution would cut into U.S. profits and the numbers of viewers of U.S. films in the U.S. as well as in Canada. They know that with a healthy Canadian film industry whose products would be seen in the U.S., the propaganda power of U.S. films would be weakened. U.S. film-makers have had heavy government support (the exact opposite of the Canadian situation) to assure U.S. movies remain powerful propaganda vehicles for U.S. interests, U.S. power – in a word, for U.S. imperialism. The relations between U.S. government and Hollywood have always been close. No wonder, then, the New York Times editorialized in 1928 that “the sun never sets on the U.S. film”. That statement was a play on the nineteenth century claim that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. No wonder, then, that in the late twentieth century, Hollywood contributed a Hollywood star, Ronald Reagan, to the White House. And it is perfectly appropriate that he, in turn, set his energies to work in order to destroy film legislation intended to liberate the industry in Canada. Demonstration that Canadian governments have worked actively to destroy development of film in Canada may be studied in one example among a multitude. In 1939 Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King decided Canada should have a National Film Board to tell the story of Canada’s participation in the Second World War and to provide information – through film – to the country. He was fortunate in appointing a Scot already versed in documentary film, John Grierson. He was a keen, intelligent, resourceful person. Under him, the National Film Board did exceptional work, and grew. The National Film Board is revered in the world (though certainly not by politicians in Canada). It has produced major film-makers and has always been an important training centre. Its achievement is admired internationally. It was always a potential launching pad for a Canadian film industry. But with almost no break in policy, Canadian governments have made sure the National Film Board has been manacled, limited in its mandate, prevented from challenging or competing with the U.S. monopoly in Canada. A wise Canadian government would have increased the training capacity of the National Film Board while bringing in legislation to guarantee reasonable distribution of Canadian films in Canada. In fact, as such a situation produced harvest, there would be every reason for the Canadian government to say to the U.S. government – “We will begin blocking U.S. films in Canada unless you show Canadian films, reasonably, in prime time and in major U.S. theatres.” To this date, Canadian governments, one after the other, have buckled before U.S. government pressure on film-making. One after another Canadian governments have betrayed the Canadian theatre and film communities – and have betrayed all Canadians denied a chance to see and know “their own story”. Look at the situation very conservatively. The U.S. stranglehold on every aspect of film production and distribution in Canada has four effects. One. Canadians who have a right to train and participate and succeed in a major industry are shut out or severely limited. That means writers, actors, technicians, directors, publicists, etc. Two. Canadians are prevented from telling – and seeing told – their own story. Peter Harcourt, a long-time hero in the fight for Canadian film, wrote twenty years ago: “A nation is rich in proportion to the pride it takes in its image of itself, an image that can be created most persuasively in our cinemas and on our TV screens.” But, he went on, “because Canada is considered part of the U.S. domestic market, Canadian films have no guaranteed access to our theatres and only intermittent access to our TV screens.” Those are bitter facts that Carl Bessai and others have had to learn. Three. The Canadian community is denied an industry. It is denied, that is to say, reasonable economic activity, taxes to support governments, wages, profits. It is denied reasonable wealth in a modern industry so that U.S. film-makers may gather obscene wealth. Four. Canada is denied significant contact in the world. When most Canadians think of the character and the culture of countries like France, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Germany, Britain (just for instance), they very often include (even unconsciously) the knowledge and the impressions they have gathered from seeing fine films from those countries. Canada has a right to present itself “outwards” in the same way. With an industry strangled by U.S. power, Canada’s chances of being seen in the world through film are seriously restricted. The solution to the problem, we all know, is simple. Distribution. Canadian film makers don’t demand subsidy, assistance, special aids of any kind. They only demand that their films be made available to the Canadian audience, that Canadian films have fair and reasonable showing in Canadian theatres. Because that has never happened, many among the film community are calling for legislation. How do we get legislation? More than 50 years of pleading, petitioning, meeting, and publicizing has not brought change or decent legislation. How about a new strategy? How about the Truckers’Strategy? A thousand B.C. truckers are – as I write – bringing Vancouver Port to a standstill, costing $30 million a day, we are told. The truckers have real grievances. Already both the federal and provincial governments are getting in touch with all the parties involved, offering help, offering mediation, burning up the wires in a desire to do good. The good they want for the truckers could have been done a long time ago. Now – you may be sure – it will be done. Maybe a thousand film industry people with their movie viewing supporters should calmly declare publicly that if legislation is not announced now, they will begin (on a very near date, clearly set out) quietly, firmly, peaceably, and forcefully a program of activity to stop U.S. feature films from being shown in Canada. The Canadian film industry would receive more attention than it’s received in the last quarter century. Heroes would be made in the conflict. Wonderful stories would result – stories ready-made for feature film-making. After a time of fighting against them, the Canadian government would realize it couldn’t win trying to criminalize and attack Canadians fighting for other Canadians and for Canada. A shame-faced government would be forced to pass the legislation that has been called for over the last more than 50 years.