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The Soapbox: There’s a very good reason you likely don’t watch Canadian film

And that reason, argues Sudbury Indie Cinema programmer Beth Mairs, is the movie theatre monopoly that keeps Canuck flicks off most big screens
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Beth Mairs is the lead programmer at Sudbury Indie Cinema. (File)

On April 10 at 9 p.m., the Canadian Screen Awards was televised. Once again, most Canadians who watched likely experienced a profound disconnect between themselves and the latest in Canadian film.

While the spectacle of an awards ceremony for national excellence is on display, the average Canadian — if they tuned in at all — may have felt bewildered by a list of titles and showreels, by a parade of film professionals and actors, whose names and faces are completely unfamiliar to them — because these films never came to their community. 

What earning my chops as a film programmer here in Sudbury has taught me over the past several years is: it's not that Canadians don’t care about Canadian cinema; it’s that most Canadians simply don’t have access to it. 

When our country’s best films are relegated to festival screens only, then only those who can afford to take a week off possibly have the chance to select a Canadian screening, as if it were a special event. Even then, those Canadian film screenings are likely competing with other films playing simultaneously, narrowing the audience further. 

By contrast, theatrical releases typically allow for a run over the course of a week or two, at different times of day allowing for everyone from the unwaged to a shift worker to experience Canadian cinema in their own community. Theatrical runs also put money back in filmmakers’ pockets.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not arguing against film festivals. I’m just saying that’s not where access to Canadian cinema should start and end.

That we have a monopoly issue in terms of movie theatre screens in this country is a serious part of the problem. Estimates vary, but it’s thought that in Canada one company owns 85 per cent of the big screens. That company is publicly traded on the stock market and its aim is profitability. 

Hollywood blockbusters have a mass appeal, which drive numbers and sales, and “bums in seats,” which exhibitors like to tout as the top consideration in film selection. Here we see a feedback loop reinforcing more of the same: big budget, American entertainment is a surer bet than a micro-budget Canadian film with no recognizable actors. 

Herein lies the role of community-based movie theatres — whether for-profit entities or not-for-profit — to shore up these gaps in representation. 

For example, here in our community, Sudbury Indie Cinema, which specializes in independent film, is screening 15 unique Canadian titles this month alone. These Canuck films include: five feature documentaries; four fiction features by Indigenous or people of colour artists; three fiction features from Quebec in French. The diversity of stories being told is at a break-through point where Canadian filmmaking is no longer the exclusive domain of white privileged males from Toronto.  

This shift didn’t happen magically: the institutions supporting Canadian film have, with intention, made investments to expand opportunities on the production side for lesser-heard voices, including those of woman directors. 

All five Canadian films up for the CSA’s Best Motion Picture category are playing or have played this past in Sudbury at The Indie. “Les Oiseaus Ivres” played on our big screen this past fall, and “La Nuit des Rois” played in our virtual cinema during an extended lockdown. Top contenders this year — “Scarborough”, “Wildhood”, and “Night Raiders” — are playing this month. 

It may be an odd thing for a little single screen movie house with a tiny annual budget such as Sudbury Indie Cinema, and other cinemas of similar mind and purpose, to hold the torch for Canadian film.

As a film programmer, it’s a hill I’m prepared to die on. Perhaps as we head into the future, the same planful approach given by Canada’s film institutions to ensure the production of Canadian cinema could surely be extended to guarantee more Canadians can celebrate — with knowledge, enthusiasm and some sense of personal investment — our nation’s great talent and phenomenal story-telling as reflected at the Canadian Screen Awards in years to come. 

Beth Mairs made some films that only Sudburians saw before becoming the Lead Programmer at Sudbury Indie Cinema.


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