Worried and angry about the downward trend in funding for documentary production granted by the Société de développement des entreprises culturelle (SODEC), filmmakers and artisans in the field are sounding the alarm and demanding an increase in envelope intended for this cinematographic genre.
“We lack love, we lack support. […] There are companies that are closing, tons of craftsmen who can no longer do it with so little means, young people who can’t find a production company and give up. That’s enough, it has to change and quickly! says documentary filmmaker Denys Desjardins, one of the instigators of the Pour la suite du doc movement, on the phone.
He signs a letter published on the website of the Homework Tuesday, alongside some 600 people, including big names in cinema – all genres combined – such as Fernand Dansereau, Claude Fournier, Marie-José Raymond, Miryam Charles, Denis Villeneuve and Philippe Falardeau.
With one voice, they denounce the underfunding that documentary cinema has suffered for the past twenty years, seeing it as a form of “contempt” on the part of SODEC, whose total budget to help film productions increases year by year. after year.
According to the calculations of the gathering – based on SODEC annual reports – documentary cinema received only 3.4% (1.4 million) of the budget allocated to film production for 2020-2021 (41 million). The average for the past 18 years is 8.7%. The lion’s share therefore goes to fiction films. “We want this situation to change drastically and quickly. We ask that the envelope allocated to documentary cinema henceforth represents 15% of the funds allocated to production”, they write.
On only one occasion, since 2003, has SODEC’s share of funding for documentaries crossed the famous 15% threshold, namely in 2004-2005. This is also the year in which the greatest number of documentaries saw the light of day thanks to funding from the government corporation, ie 56 productions, in the space of 18 years.
In 2020-2021, the number of documentaries funded fell to its lowest level, with only 17 films produced. This number has particularly decreased since 2015-2016, with a maximum of 21 films selected per year, while SODEC financed an average of 40 from 2003 to 2015.
For the signatories of the letter, SODEC is not fulfilling its mission of “supporting the development of Quebec cultural enterprises”. “To maintain its participation in documentaries at such a negligible level, it is neither to its development nor to its influence that[elle] contributes, but to its suffocation in the very short term”, we lament.
Essential role
For her part, the president and chief executive officer of the state corporation, Louise Lantagne, assures us that “never, at any time, has there been a shadow of contempt in any form whatsoever over SODEC. it be… on the contrary, the noble profession of documentary filmmaker has always aroused our admiration and our desire to support their essential work”.
Without “wanting to get into a fight of figures”, SODEC nevertheless wanted to rectify the calculations of the movement For the rest of the doc. In an email sent to Homework, she explains that the amounts shown in the annual reports represent the projects that have materialized, and not those that have been accepted. Thus, for the year 2020-2021, SODEC says it initially offered 2.19 million to documentary cinema and not only 1.4 million.