Unless you were on hand at Meridian Hall in Toronto on Thursday night, you haven’t seen Charlotte Le Bon win the Canadian Screen Award for Best First Feature Live for Falcon Lake.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, which oversees the Canadian Screen Awards, has finally found the solution to combat public disinterest in televised galas: it no longer televises its gala. Or rather its galas. It was enough to think about it.
Canada On Screen Week, which kicked off Tuesday at noon with the Sports Programming gala and ends this Friday at 4 p.m. with the Dramatic and Comedy Arts gala, features seven awards ceremonies dedicated to Canadian cinema and ROC television (the Gémeaux awards gala exclusively rewarding French-Canadian television).
The majority of these ceremonies with improbable names took place in the afternoon. Glamour, you say? We’ll come back for showbiz, champagne, rhinestones and sequins.
The most prestigious gala, that of the Cinematographic Arts – the Canadian equivalent of the Oscars or the Césars -, took place Thursday evening, in almost absolute indifference. And for good reason ! Not only was the ceremony not televised, but it was not broadcast at all. Like all the other price reductions of the Week.
No live webcast over lunchtime, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, for relatives and friends of the finalists on the Academy’s website, nor delayed broadcast for the teams of the films and programs in the running on its Facebook page.
There are elementary school graduations that seem to have more regard for their graduates.
Instead of its traditional televised gala, the CBC will broadcast the pre-recorded show on Sunday at 8 p.m. Canadian Screen Awards with Samantha Bee (who shot all her interventions two months ago). An hour of well-packed TV during which we “will bring together many stars, exclusive interviews and a return to the highlights of the week”, according to the press release from the Academy.
Call me piss-vinegar, but it seems ambitious to me for a program of about forty minutes (without advertisements) to summarize seven galas rewarding winners in 157 categories. The Cinematic Arts gala alone had 141 finalists in 27 categories on Thursday. Either way, the suspense of Sunday’s show will be unbearable…
Far be it from me to turn myself into Pierre Poilievre, but who, according to the CBC, will be the “stars” of Samantha Bee’s pre-recorded show? That is to say, in addition to Ryan Reynolds, who was attracted thanks to a special prize and who, like the majority of Canadian stars, lives and makes a career in the United States. We bet that the definition given to the word star is not quite the same in Saskatoon and Trois-Rivières.
Without wanting to encroach on the playground of Yves-François Blanchet, what place will French speakers have in this one-hour program?
The question arises: if the Quebec finalists did not dominate, year after year, the categories devoted to cinema, would the live telecast of the gala have been terminated?
I want to be lucid. Canadian cinema does not interest Canadian audiences, nor do Canadian TV shows. The TV series most often cited at the Dramatic and Humorous Arts gala, The Porterwas not renewed for a second season.
The Canadian Screen Awards gala is weighed down by the bastardy of all the pan-Canadian award ceremonies where the two solitudes meet without ever meeting. Brother by Clement Virgo, which won 12 Canadian Screen Awards on Thursday night – including Best Picture and Best Director – hit theaters in Quebec for the blink of an eye last month.
PHOTO CHRIS YOUNG, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Clement Virgo holding one of the prizes won for BrotherThursday evening
The fact remains that countries comparable to Canada that support their cinema still broadcast galas worthy of the name. Not variety shows trying to replace it. We still do not know what formula Radio-Canada will adopt to replace the Gala Québec Cinéma on its antenna. “Preparations are well underway and we will make announcements to this effect in due course,” a spokeswoman for the public broadcaster assured me on Thursday.
It is of course necessary to energize and shorten the price reductions, which are too often endless. But that public television completely abandon the televising of the galas of our national cinemas seems to me to be symptomatic of the little importance given to our culture, in Quebec as in the rest of Canada. We would like to be sure to condemn our cinema to obscurity, which we couldn’t do better.
While the public is inundated with American series and films on digital platforms, while Canadian and Quebec content is struggling to be discovered and to shine, we voluntarily bury events dedicated to highlighting the works and talent of our artists. And we are surprised that the public shuns our films…