We collectively invest millions of dollars each year to produce Quebec films that would not exist without public funds. Because we believe that our culture is not about the bottom line. However, we cannot see certain feature films among the most significant of our national cinematography, because it is not profitable for private companies, sometimes American. This is nonsense.
Our cinematographic heritage exists. He hasn’t disappeared. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it. Pearls of our seventh art are almost impossible to find; others, restored at great expense, are absent from digital platforms and rental sites on the internet. All this because the financing of Quebec cinema often resembles a dysfunctional public-private partnership.
The State injects essential millions into the production of feature films which, almost all of which, will never break even, but then invites distributors to dispose of them according to the rules of the North American free market. When they notice that making Quebec films available for rental on video on demand (on platforms such as Apple or YouTube) is not profitable, these works end up in distribution limbo.
The concern surrounding accessibility to our cinematographic heritage is not new, but it is a recurring debate which was relaunched last week on social networks by the filmmaker Myriam Verreault (Kuessipan). West of Plutothe cult film that she co-directed in 2009 with Henry Bernadet (Gamma rays), was restored a few years ago. However, this version is not available anywhere. The film is only available in its original DVD version in libraries.
« Je ne demande pas grand-chose, simplement que le film soit disponible à la location en copie numérique, m’explique Myriam Verreault. Je ne comprends pas pourquoi c’est si compliqué pour un distributeur de référer sa clientèle à un lien Viméo. »
La cinéaste souhaite qu’une protection soit ajoutée dans l’octroi de contrats de distribution, contraignant les distributeurs à exploiter un film, même après son cycle initial et habituel d’exploitation (salle, location, plateforme ou télévision). Actuellement, on s’en tient à la bonne volonté du distributeur et à sa décision de rendre ou non disponible le film à la location numérique, par exemple.
Myriam Verreault estime qu’À l’ouest de Pluton, un film à petit budget, fait les frais de la vente du catalogue des Films Séville au géant américain du jouet Hasbro, puis au distributeur californien Lionsgate. Elle n’est pas la seule à ne pas savoir où diriger les cinéphiles qui espèrent découvrir ou revoir ses œuvres.
PHOTO OLIVIER PONTBRIAND, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE
Myriam Verreault, en 2019
Je me suis rendu compte qu’il y a plusieurs cinéastes qui ont des histoires semblables à la mienne et qui ont envie de se mobiliser.
Myriam Verreault, cinéaste
Sa sortie a notamment inspiré Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette à rendre disponible sur ses réseaux sociaux un lien pour son film Le ring, absent du paysage numérique lui aussi, tout comme Un crabe dans la tête d’André Turpin, Mémoires affectives de Francis Leclerc ou encore Le violon rouge de François Girard.
La moitié gauche du frigo, brillant film qui a révélé Philippe Falardeau, a été restauré au même moment qu’À l’ouest de Pluton. Aujourd’hui, il est pourtant introuvable dans cette version en location numérique.
« Il y a plusieurs classiques de notre cinéma qui sont introuvables », rappelle Dominique Dugas, directeur général de Québec Cinéma et ancien dirigeant d’Éléphant, plateforme spécialisée dans la numérisation du cinéma québécois.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE
Dominique Dugas
Pouvoir intime [d’Yves Simoneau]we can’t see it absolutely anywhere, even though it’s perhaps the first major thriller that we produced in Quebec. Marsh by Kim Nguyen either, like several films by Léa Pool. There are large parts of our cinema that are not available.
Dominique Dugas
The current distribution economy will not be able to remedy this problem, believes Dominique Dugas. Quebec distributors are not strong enough to assume these costs and cannot afford to invest at a loss, even if it is sometimes only a few thousand dollars.
“The current model of financing productions, inherited from another era, no longer works. I will soon announce a project to review it so that our works travel better in the digital universe! » announced on X the Minister of Culture and Communications, Mathieu Lacombe, in reaction to a report from Duty on the difficulty of having access to our cinematographic heritage.
“It takes political will to tackle the problem,” says Dominique Dugas. I am happy to hear the minister, but between saying it and granting the sums necessary to be able to do it, when we become aware of the associated costs, the discourse can change. I’m waiting a bit before getting too optimistic! »
It cost on average $50,000 to digitize in 4K the approximately 200 films in the Elephant repertoire, recalls Dominique Dugas. He made special efforts, while leading the Quebecor platform, to make landmark works like Eldorado by Charles Binamé, who will soon see the light of day again. “The 1990s were a complete wasteland in terms of movie availability,” he says.
Costs linked, for example, to the negotiation of musical rights sometimes make the company unaffordable, emphasizes Dominique Dugas, giving the example of Dream years by Jean-Claude Labrecque, where the song appears Can’t Buy Me Love of the Beatles.
What solutions?
Could Éléphant become a Quebec equivalent of the Criterion Channel, a digital platform specializing in repertory cinema? Should we instead mandate the Cinémathèque québécoise to make accessible digitized copies of films that have finished most of their commercial exploitation? Or Télé-Québec, whose offering of Quebec films on its website is already interesting?
“It’s a complex question,” believes Dominique Dugas.
A unified platform where all Quebec content would be available seems very difficult to imagine, for all sorts of reasons, including fairly severe competition between current platforms.
Dominique Dugas
Each distributor has its own particular strategies, he says, and the Cinémathèque – where he worked before directing the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma from 2007 to 2018 – already has difficulty obtaining substantial budgets for its film preservation mission. .
Myriam Verreault, who also welcomes Minister Lacombe’s initiative, believes for her part that SODEC should react. “Taxpayers finance a film 90 or 95%. The distributors finance it at maybe 5%. Why do they have 100% exploitation rights if they abandon this mandate after a certain number of years? »
We will have to think about solutions. Because films disappear from the radar and are unknown to a young audience who, even if they wanted to, wouldn’t be able to get their hands on them. It is our cultural heritage, paid for by public funds, that we are talking about.
This recurring debate on the accessibility of our repertory cinema also raises the question of the “value” of a film, which is not based on its commercial potential or its appeal to a wide audience. Films have a resonance in our history, a weight in our culture, well beyond their box office receipts.
The fact remains, even if it means being accused of giving in to commercial logic, that we paid for these films. In a way, they belong to us. Would it be too much to ask to be able to see them?