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Telefilm Canada Builds Box Office Success With Audience-Friendly Film Projects
Vancouver, November 13, 2002 – Richard Stursberg, Executive Director of Telefilm Canada, outlined his organization’s new strategy to boost audiences for Canadian feature films to a gathering sponsored by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television in Vancouver today.
“The federal government has given the Canadian film industry a target of capturing 5% of the domestic box office for Canadian feature films within five years,” said Mr. Stursberg. “That’s an ambitious goal but we are confident that, working together, we can do it.”
Mr. Stursberg pointed to markets as diverse as Australia, the UK and France where domestic feature films take anywhere from 8% to 40% of box office receipts.
“Other countries have succeeded in building their domestic cinemas,” observed Mr. Stursberg. “We can too, by encouraging more audience-friendly films and distributing them well.”
The federal government has doubled the resources available to the Canadian film industry to approximately $100 million annually. Telefilm Canada has developed clear audience performance objectives to guide investment decisions for all future productions.
Mr. Stursberg indicated that Telefilm Canada intends to support “a range of genres that connect with theatre audiences on many emotional and intellectual levels.”
He also cited a number of recent decisions to support film projects with strong audience potential (see attached).
“Over the last six months we have begun to strengthen our requirements concerning theatrical release with our distribution partners,” Mr. Stursberg explained to his audience of film industry representatives. “We have insisted on hard commitments for minimum levels of investment in prints and advertising for any film that is produced with the support of Telefilm.”
The Executive Director of Telefilm Canada reiterated his confidence in the Canadian film industry’s ability to build audiences for distinctively Canadian products.
“By serving Canadian moviegoers better,” Mr. Stursberg concluded, “we have an opportunity to repatriate for this country the most glamorous and exciting cultural product in the world.”
Telefilm Canada, a cultural investor in cinema, television, multimedia and music
Telefilm Canada is a federal cultural agency dedicated to developing and promoting the Canadian film, television, new media and music industries. The Corporation acts as one of the government’s principal instruments for providing strategic leverage to the Canadian private sector.
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Information:
Jeanine Basile, Manager – Communications and Public Affairs
basilej@telefilm.gc.ca
(514) 283-6363 or 1-800-567-0890
The ABC of Audience Building in Canada
Film : Can we do it? (Richard Stursberg's speech, Executive Director of Telefilm Canada)
Canada Feature Film Fund – fiscal 2002-03
Telefilm Canada to finance
Nine English-language feature films
MAMBO ITALIANO
Director: Émile Gaudreault
Producer: Denise Robert and Daniel Louis (Cinémaginaire inc.)
Distibutor: Les Films Equinoxe
The production team of Denise Robert and Daniel Louis are behind some of Quebec’s most popular and talked-about releases including L’Odyssée d’Alice Tremblay (Alice’s Odyssey), which is currently drawing huge audiences across Quebec, and last year’s hit Nuit de Noces (Wedding Night), Émile Gaudreault’s feature directorial debut. A gifted writer as well as director, Émile Gaudreault scripted the hit feature Louis 19 which inspired an American adaptation, the U.S. feature EdTV, directed by Ron Howard. Onscreen, Mambo Italiano pairs two of Canada’s most talented comediennes, Mary Walsh and Ginette Reno, alongside the critically acclaimed Paul Sorvino. It’s a romantic comedy about a young gay couple, Angelo and Nino, trying to stay in the closet in a tight-knit Italian community. Nino’s powerful Italian mother tries to become matchmaker, finding a “nice Italian girl” for Nino, with hilarious results.
FALLING ANGELS
Director: Scott Smith
Producer: Robin Cass (Triptych Media Inc.)
Distributor: Films Seville Inc.
Based on highly respected Canadian author Barbara Gowdy’s (Giller Prize and GG Award finalist) first novel, Falling Angels is a twisted, sometimes funny story, about an unruly and rebellious 17 year old – Lou and her two sisters who ‘escape’ from the secrets and dark corners of their peculiar 1950/60s family – a family haunted by the undisclosed death of an infant many years ago. In the end, the daughters and their father, are liberated by their mother’s shocking death. Genie Award nominee Scott Smith directs it. Falling Angels stars Callum Keith Rennie (critics say he is “Canada’s answer to Brad Pitt”) and Miranda Richardson who has appeared opposite Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone.
REPUBLIC OF LOVE
Director: Deepa Mehta
Producer: Anna Stratton (Triptych Media Inc.)
Distributor: Films Seville Inc.
Based on the best selling novel by Pulitzer Prize and Governor General Award winning author Carol Shields, The Republic of Love is a buoyant contemporary romance set in Winnipeg – over all four seasons. The fearless and controversial Deepa Mehta, who is receiving international praise for her most recent comedy Bollywood/Hollywood, directs this lively and deeply affectionate tale of two lovers. The Republic of Love will star Bruce Greenwood, veteran of such Canadian classics as Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter.
A PROBLEM WITH FEAR
Director: Gary Burns
Producer: Shirley Vercruysse (Fear Alberta Ltd.) and Luc Déry
Distributor: Christal Films Distribution Inc.
From the same team that brought us waydowntown, A Problem With Fear is the story of Laurie, a young man with more than the usual paranoia re elevators, escalators, subways, and intimacy, who has become an unwitting experimental subject for a corporation that makes personal safety devices. His paranoid thoughts seem to cause other people to suffer the real-life scenarios he imagines. The only way to solve the problem is to face down his own fears: can he cross the street to save the world? The movie is directed by Gary Burns. Critics called his last picture “a deadpan, almost pitch-perfect comedy”. Lead actor Paulo Costanzo has starred in the Dreamworks box office hit Road Trip as well as playing opposite Rachael Leigh Cooke in Josie and the Pussycats and in Scorched (also with Woody Harrelson and Alicia Silverstone).
AN INTERN’S DIARY
Director: Dave Thomas
Producer: Josh Miller (Minds Eye Pictures (Alberta) Ltd.)
Distributor: TVA International Distribution Inc.
An Intern’s Diary (written and directed by actor, comedian, co-creator of the infamous McKenzie Brothers and quintessential “hoser” Dave Thomas) follows the daily grind of an intern at a fictitious hospital, St. Michael’s. Each scene is an entry in his diary and, together, the scenes tell Dale's story of his first year of internship. The stress of the Emergency Room, the unbearable hours, his crazy fellow interns, the crazy doctors who supervise them, and, most crazy of all, the patients who come into the ER. Simultaneously with this, Dale's account covers the grind of his class work and studies, the political minefield in a large trauma centre that all the interns must navigate, and how this changes and affects them all. Thomas has brought onside the manic energy of many current and past members of the famed Second City Toronto comedy troupe for this project including appearances by Martin Short, Matt Frewer, Colin Mochrie, Dave Foley and Joe Flaherty.
LES BELLES SOEURS
Director : John N. Smith
Producer: Lorraine Richard (Cité-Amérique Cinéma Télévision Inc.)
Distributor : Films Seville Inc.
Les Belles Soeurs is a social comedy. Meet Geraldine, her family and her friends: they are a playful lot. The clueless, arrogant Geraldine provides an uneasy centre of gravity to a highly unstable constellation of eccentric characters such as her two sisters Rose and Greta, her friends Marilyn, Diede and Tina, as well as the appropriate assortment of milquetoast husbands, impertinent daughters and, last but not least, Tina's zany mother-in-law Olive. Les Belles-Soeurs is the most popular and frequently produced of Michel Tremblay’s plays. This English language movie version will be directed by John N. Smith, lauded by critics for his direction of the powerful drama The Boys of St. Vincent. Les Belles Soeurs promises laughter and pathos amidst a cast of screwball characters.
GREAT GOOSE CAPER
Director: Nicholas Kendall
Producers: Wendy-Hill-Tout (Voice Pictures Inc.) Colin Neale (Les Films Colin Neale)
Distributor: Odeon Films Inc.
Great Goose Caper is a family film directed by Nicholas Kendall, known for Mr. Rice’s Secret and Cadillac Girls. Starring Chevy Chase and British actress Joan Plowright, the film tells the story of a clever 8-yr-old boy, WILL, who has moved with his father and older sister EMILY to Calgary from Montreal following the untimely death of his mother at the hands of a drunk driver. Devasted, Will refuses to speak and has withdrawn into the fantasy world of a favourite storybook that his mom used to read to him. However, when Will meets RANDALL, a goose that Will's selfish grade-school principal is fattening to serve at a gourmet cooking contest, Will begins to come out of his shell.
EATING THE BONES
Director: David Sutherland
Producer: Jennifer Holness (Eating the Bones Productions Inc.)
Distributor: ThinkFilm
Eating the Bones is a racy, risqué, urban sex comedy. It’s a love story about two young black Canadians who are stuck in their own romantic dead ends until they find each other. The stunning Montreal actress and VJ Marlyne Afflack (one of Quebec’s highest profile black television personalities) is paired with rising American star Hill Harper, star of Spike Lee’s On the Bus and He Got Game, along with a strong supporting cast of young comedians and performers. David Sutherland, brilliant director of My Father's Hands and other acclaimed documentaries, directs this hilarious reflection on modern courtship in downtown Toronto.
BLEEDING
Director: Stephen Surjik
Producer: Harold Harold Tichenor, Christine Haebler and Howard Dancyger (Crescent Entertainment Ltd) and Michael Cowan (UK Co-producer)
Distributor: Les Films Seville Inc.
Written by Angus Fraser, Bleeding is the latest film by multi-talented Canadian director Stephen Surjik. The film examines a vicious act of violence and its effect on family and friends linked to the victim. Told through four interlocking and interweaving narratives, it chronicles the "Brave New World" that these characters enter – a world driven by cravings, fantasies, laughter, and nihilistic desires that surface from the depths. Surjik first made his reputation as director of some of the biggest hits in Canadian episodic television, including Da Vinci’s Inquest, Due South, Road to Avonlea and Kids in the Hall. In 1993, he made his feature directorial debut with the Hollywood blockbuster, Wayne's World 2.
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