In October two important films had their world premiers at the Vancouver International Film Festival: Velcrow Ripper’s Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action, and Sam Bozzo’s Blue Gold: World Water Wars. I was credited as an Executive Producer on both films. It was a first for me to receive such a credit on someone’s film other than my own, and in each case it meant something very different.
Velcrow and I met in the mid-eighties in Montreal working on a short documentary film East Timor: Betrayed But Not Beaten, which is also how I met Noam Chomsky for the first time, when he was interviewed. Velcrow became a friend and I was fortunate that he was willing to pause his own projects to oversee the sound and music design for The Corporation. When The Corporation received a “performance envelope” from Telefilm Canada, a kind of special reserve fund for projects of my choosing, Velcrow’s film was ready to go and had already done a bit of preliminary shooting. With these funds I committed to help finance four feature documentaries in production and six in development. The rest of the financing came together at the Hot Docs documentary festival in Toronto, an important market for docs. A short two years later, Velcrow’s was the first film past the finish line.
Here in Vancouver, Betsy Carson, my co-executive producer, and my wife, Siobhan Flanagan, a script writer and script consultant, all contributed along the way to help the film get made and finished to the highest possible standards. One of my main pieces of advice to Velcrow was to not just listen to us and other key advisors, but to listen to the views of test audiences throughout the editing process. Velcrow was reluctant at first, but finally admitted “you can’t have too many test screenings.” He had regular screenings at the NFB and at the Royal Theatre in Toronto and was extremely open to hearing how the film was being received. He tried numerous editing strategies, some dramatically different from each other, till he finally navigated the most effective course through the material. When the film premiered, it got a 5 minute standing ovation and at the end of the festival, won the NFB Award for Most Popular Canadian Documentary.
About a year ago, Sam Bozzo, a first-time feature documentary filmmaker from California, won a camera from Kevin Spacey in a short film contest. He approached me for information on where to find footage of the popular uprising in Bolivia to reclaim public ownership over water. It was a story we’d told in The Corporation and he wanted to go further with it in a film about water. At the same time, he asked if I’d look at a rough cut of his film which I agreed to do. Sam’s film, Blue Gold: World Water Wars is based on Maude Barlow’s and Tony Clarke’s book Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.
My co-executive producer, Si Litvinoff, brought the book to Sam’s attention when they were collaborating on a sequel to a film Si had produced in 1976 called The Man Who Fell To Earth. (He also executive produced one of my all-time favorite films: A Clockwork Orange.) The reality of the world water crisis was a revelation to Sam and he decided to acquire the rights to the book and make a documentary about it.
Based on the rough cut, I thought Sam’s film had promise and was inspired to write four pages of detailed notes on how to improve edit. Sam agreed with all of the suggestions, and thus we initiated a 1,000 email correspondence sorting out the myriad details of finishing and distributing the film.
Sam and I finally met at the Vancouver International Film Festival just days before the film’s premiere after collaborating by email and phone over almost a year. The resulting film won the Audience Award for Best Environmental Film and was runner-up to being the most popular documentary in the festival, which showcased 100 documentaries this year. No small accomplishment considering that all during production Sam held down a full-time job, continued to raise a family, and worked with a budget about 1/20th the size of a typical Canadian feature documentary.
Blue Gold is distributed by Mongrel Media in Canada and by PBS Video in the USA. Both will launch the DVD on April 7, Earth Day. It will be shown in theatres in selected cities in both countries, starting with Vancouver, BC, on December 12 at the Vancity Theatre.
Open Letter to Telefilm boss in the new POV magazine.
My lobbying efforts to get an third year of eligibility from Telefilm, the federal film funding agency have returned to the pages of POV magazine, this time in the form of an open letter to the head of Telefilm, Wayne Clarkson. This is a matter which concerns documentary filmmakers across the country, and ultimately you, the documentary-viewing public. You can read my letter here and catch my previous article about it here.
THE CORPORATION TO SCREEN IN CANADIAN HIGH SCHOOLS
REEL CANADA is a day-long traveling film festival that goes from high school to high school. Each event includes films chosen by the students themselves from a curated program of features, documentaries, animated programs and shorts. Special guest speakers such as actors, directors and other prominent personalities present the films and take part in Q&A’s with the students.
The aim of the project is to make students more aware of Canadian films and the Canadian film industry. Jack Blum, the festival director, wanted to include The Corporation but the limit for films in the program is two hours. “No problem,” I said, and promptly sat down to do what probably should have been done ages ago—make the film shorter. This time I was cutting with a high school audience in mind and might not have made the same cuts for a general audience, but many parts of the film move along much better now.
