August 07, 2008
The Fight for Genre Equality!
By
Katherine Dodds
Because of the box-office success of The Corporation Mark Achbar was given a performance envelope from Telefilm Canada which he has been using to support many social issue doc-makers. (I confess I am one of them, so my bias is showing.) While Mark was thrilled to get the money, he discovered there is a double standard when it comes to documentaries. It was apparently an exception for him to get the money, and for no good reason they decided to give him less than they would have if was a fiction feature film. He wrote about it before in our "News of the Cool" e'zines.
Now, he's published an updated view of that story in POV, and it's attracted some attention. Check out what the Globe and Mail had to say.
A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF THE BEST MAGAZINE READS ON THE RACKS by GUY DIXON/The Globe and Mail"...Point of View -- Summer, 2008/ Everyone has (or should have) an opinion about Cancon. It must be nurtured with public grants. It should be left to the open market. Regardless, it helps to be better informed about the mechanics of the arts funding system. Look no further than filmmaker Mark Achbar's piece on his dealings with Telefilm Canada.
In addition to backing Canadian productions, Telefilm also grants "performance envelopes," incentives to filmmakers who create money-making movies. Achbar, as one of the creators of the successful doc The Corporation, got more than $2-million over two years to reinvest in other productions. But then came the red tape, from the constricting time limit on how quickly the money had to be reinvested to the fact that Achbar received less for his documentary than other directors got for their fiction films (even though Canada is among the world leaders in theatrically successful films testing the boundary between doc and drama). It's the clash between artistic free-thinking and institutional logic."
You can read Mark's article as it appears in POV (by the way, subscribe to POV -- and support the Canadian documentary community!) Anyway, I've written a support letter for Mark which I've included below. And if you want to write to Mark in support he's Mark@thecorporation.com
Cheers, kat
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Letter of Support For Mark Achbar from Katherine Dodds: July 20, 2008
Re. Support for Big Picture Media Corporation receiving the Telefilm Performance Envelope eligibility for the same number of years that it is usually allocated.
To Whom It May Concern,
Through Big Picture Media Corporation’s support of my film through his Telefilm Performance Envelope I was indeed fortunate to receive a significant amount of development money for my feature documentary about robotics and fembots, currently titled “I, Fembot”. The film takes a unique look at a topic with an exponentially growing impact on society and the planet, through the lens of sex and gender and through the POV of a fembot. As science fiction becomes science fact this is an essential subject for a documentary to address in our time.
As a first-time feature documentary director I cannot stress enough the impact this has made. I was able to shoot in HD and edit an extremely stylish demo and to go to international markets like Hot Docs and Sunnyside of the Doc. Top notch producers like Betsy Carson and Lucie Tremblay came on board to assist me in financing the film. The support I got from colleagues, and the interest this has generated in potential audiences (including an not insignificant amount of donations to a grant fund for the project) show how this subject area resonates and provokes.
Mark Achbar is both executive director and director advisor, and before the time window had run out for year two of the Envelope funding, he had been willing to give me a lot of his personal creative support as well as to invest a substantial portion of his Envelope into my film. This involvement, and financial support leveraged potential international co-production potential and interest in the film from broadcasters such as Arte France. In the weeks before we ran out of time to finance the film as an international co-production, we were generating an amazing amount of support. But Telefilm’s deadline loomed. Because we were not able to get a Canadian broadcaster committed in time to trigger the overall financing, we lost the chance to make a 1.8 million dollar film for an international market place.
Mark’s support for me personally as a director, was worth more than the money itself. As he explained to potential broadcasters why he was offering so much support to my film, he expressed his confidence in me creatively and also emphasized my own role in the success of The Corporation. I had been involved with the film since it’s early days right through to the present as the producer of the website and as director of communications. Through my company, Good Company Communications Inc. we created the brand, and I directed the grassroots marketing in Canada and the US, and to a lesser degree Australia and the UK. I admittedly have a lot at stake in advocating Big Picture Media receive envelope eligibility for a third year.
With more time, and potentially more money my film could regain the momentum we had last year and could actually get made. If this film is made, there is no doubt in my mind that with the full force of Corporation-style production values and marketing behind it, as well as the timeliness of the topic, it could also return money to Telefilm’s pocket. My commitment to the film would be no less than it was for The Corporation.
In conclusion, giving Big Picture Media more money with which to support Canadian feature documentaries would not just be the right thing to do, it would be a smart thing to do.
With Regards,
Katherine Dodds
Founder/President Good Company Communications/HelloCoolWorld.com
Director/Writer Big Picture Media Corporation
Tag(s):
Alternative Economics
Recent Blogs by Katherine Dodds:
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Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.
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