There is only one Canadian film presented at the Cannes Film Festival which opens today.
It’s Crimes of the Future by David Cronenberg. His science fiction feature film found favor with the selection jury. Starring Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart and Viggo Mortensen, Future Crimes will be one of 24 films in competition. No Quebec film will be screened at the festival as such, but the parallel organization, La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, has selected Falcon Lake, Charlotte Le Bon’s first feature film.
Be that as it may, our “senior officials” from culture and Telefilm will be present in Cannes to show off and praise the successes of our cinema and our television. The future is not as rosy as they claim, because producing an ambitious film or television series is increasingly risky. Robert Lantos, whose Future Crimes is the fourth Cronenberg film he’s produced, claims he had to travel the world to complete financing. This is undoubtedly true, since it is a Canadian-French-Greek co-production.
Lantos is rowing against the current. This is how he struggles like hell in holy water not to resort to streamers’ money. He is convinced that we must first present a feature film in theaters before it “retires” on the small screen. More than one producer seeks to finance his films from streamers, even if it means giving them all his rights and leaving them free to exploit the film as they see fit.
SPREADING OF PUBLIC FUNDS
Future Crimes is not a blockbuster, but a mid-budget film. Telefilm invested $3.5 million, or about 14 percent of the production budget. Telefilm also participated in the development of the project and will contribute to its promotion. Like other granting agencies, Telefilm prefers to invest modest amounts in several films rather than substantial sums in a small number.
As films and series cost more and more, this policy of sprinkling public funds makes the production of large-scale films and series more problematic. There is still more sterilizing. Creators, screenwriters and producers are now subject to a myriad of requirements, rules and standards. If some can be considered as simple annoyances of civil servants, some constitute a serious brake on creation.
SEXUAL DIVERSITY
In addition to a point system that has long determined a Canadian work, other rules continue to be added, including that of equality between men and women. For a work to obtain its full funding, women and men must be on an equal footing both on the side of the craftsmen and of the writing and creation teams. But the new requirements do not stop there.
At the NFB and at Radio-Canada, at Telefilm and at the Media Fund, in the arts councils and all the federal granting agencies, we want to ensure that diversity, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made an unavoidable rule, is respected and that the greatest number of sexual orientations are represented. Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, Justin’s father, must be turning in his grave, he who had established that the state has nothing to do in the bedroom.
At the rate at which the rules are multiplying, creation will soon be done like painting by numbers!
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