More out of curiosity than anything, I watched Michael McGowan's One Week. Starring Joshua Jackson of Dawson's Creek fame, One Week is one of those relatively well-budgeted Canadian films that seem to pop up from time to time. And like all well-budgeted Canadian fare, One Week is awesome in its adequacy. The story of a young man in his early 30s diagnosed with terminal cancer deciding to go on one last adventure, motor-biking across the country. For all of the film's deficiencies, including mediocre story-telling and an over-bearing voice-over narration, there's something irresistibly endearing about a film so earnestly acting as a love-letter to Canada.
And yet, you cannot help feel that we should be doing better. A lot better.
From James Cameron to Norman Jewison, Paul Haggis to David Cronenberg plenty of Canadian filmmakers have found success, making some of the most commercial and critically lauded films in history. And yet, other than a select few like Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin, a small number remain in Canada to actually make their films, and even fewer make films that differentiate themselves from their American counterparts.
But when one looks at the hoops Canadian filmmakers have to jump through to get a film made, it's astonishing that anything gets made at all.
The federal government sets aside approximately $100 million dollars a year for the Canadian film industry, a third of which goes to French language film. Despite this seemingly large amount of funding available, Canadian films make a measly 1% of the Canadian box-office, far short of Telefilm's 5% goal. The big problem is that Canadian funding does not hinge on the quality of a Canadian filmmaker's script (although that does play a part), but rather the amount of Canadian content within the film. This results in Canadian artists trying to shoe-horn as much Canadiana into their work in order to maximize the amount of funding they can receive, rather than trying to maximize the actual quality of their film.
A screenwriter friend of mine (and one of the few within Canada who can actually make a living doing it) recently ran into this exact same problem a few months ago. Commissioned to adapt an American short-story into a workable film, an already daunting task, he expended most of his creative energy trying to figure out a way to make a story about a redneck sheriff in Texas, into an Aboriginal RCMP officer in Northern, rural Ontario. By the end, his work may have had a sufficient amount of Canadian content, but the story had become strained and the quality suffered.
If there's a problem in trying to make a film uniquely Canadian, the biggest mistake a Canadian filmmaker can make is to try and go the conventional route, making big-budget genre films like Passendale or the misguided Ryan Reynolds star-vehicle, Foolproof. Why watch a Canadian film, identical to those made down south, except for its significantly lower production values?
Some might suggest stopping any and all government funding, and let Canadian filmmakers fend for themselves. If a Canadian filmmaker wants to succeed, let him succeed in the free-market. Unfortunately, despite the advances made in digital technology which have made independent filmmakers more self-sufficient than ever, the costs of making a film, not to mention to the overpowering presence of the American market down south, make producing and distributing a Canadian film, regardless of quality, near impossible.
The happy medium of course is for Canadian funding to emphasize the potential quality of a Canadian film, rather than trying to arbitrarily decide how ‘Canadian' the film is. Rough models already exist, such as Kevin Spacey's Trigger Street Productions. Founded in 1997, Trigger Street founded as an online community for independent filmmakers. Within a few short months, thousands of artists had uploaded their work in order to be reviewed by fellow filmmakers, and Trigger Street judges, the best of whom were often offered development deals. Why can't a similar model exist in Canada, where Canadian artists are given funding based on merit? Imagine a future where we can count on Canadian films to entertain, provoke, and dazzle, rather than just aggrandize the country in which it was made?
Is it just me or does this question of preserving Canadian identity from erosion by the Americans sounds a lot like the French v. English culture war in Quebec?
I'm of two minds on the subject of government funding for film, and the arts in general. I'm not opposed to giving grant money to artists, but why does there need to be strings attached? If the work is good, than that should be enough to warrant giving it funding. I can count the amount of Canadian films I liked, and by liked I mean I was entertained. I don't own any of them on DVD and I certainly wouldn't call any of them favourites. It's time to change how we determine what movies get money from the government or whether or not to give money period. I'd like to see a political party weigh in on this for once.