It’s sad. It’s even absurd. But it was totally predictable. We realize today that our culture, the one we all pay for together, ultimately does not belong to us. And it spanks in thedashsolid.
In an article entitled “After the closure of Seville Films, a blow to Quebec cinema”, journalist Étienne Paré reported that many today fear that part of our cinematographic cultural heritage is passing into the hands of the Americans.
When closing its doors, the distributor Les Films Sevilla will necessarily sell its assets to a larger size. That’s how it works in the cultural world. We accumulate works in a catalog that we resell to another when retiring. Thus, cult Quebec films like Good cop, bad cop, The great seduction, Fires, Starbucks or other famous works by Xavier Dolan and Denys Arcand will soon pass into the hands of “Monsieur Cigare Inc. in the USA”.
Why ? Because at the time of writing our cultural policy in 1991, in the wake of the report of the Advisory Group on Cultural Policy chaired by Roland Arpin, politicians had not thought to ask themselves this simple but vital question: “To who will ultimately belong to the culture we are paying for? This is why large multinational companies “made in the USA” reap 30 years later the fruit of our creativity, our labor and our collective cultural enhancement. Our asset.
Public money, private culture
Here is a short Film Industry 101 course, to briefly remind us how this wonderful world works: 1. A creator creates an attractive story; 2. A producer is working on financing the making of this story; 3. Our governments subsidize, mainly through Telefilm Canada and SODEC, the producer up to 90%, for his work of materializing the story; 4. The producer provides the 10% missing from the financial package, but if he knows how to do “accounting creativity”, he will invest almost 0%…; 5. The film rights are assigned by the producer to a distributor, who will promote and distribute the product to cinemas, platforms and TV broadcasters at his own expense; 6. The distributor exploits this cultural “product” exclusively for a period of at least 50 years after the work is made available to the public; 8. And you are paying to watch this movie… a movie that you have already paid for, in large part, through your taxes. And 9. The distributor shares the profits with the producers and the various rights holders, if there are profits.
In summary, Quebec taxpayers pay 90% for a cinematographic work which, in the end, will fall 100% into the hands of an Inc. company. And the latter will retain and exploit exclusively—and for a very long time—a film that it will be able to sell in the long term, in a larger size, and this, just before jumping in a golden parachute towards its retirement in Florida. Same as in the world of real estate!
This culture that we all buy together is no longer ours.
To offer a very concrete analogy: it’s as if we all paid for the construction of a section of motorway which, at the time of its inauguration, was completely ceded to the private contractor who built it. And even allowing it to install toll booths there. Note: this principle applied to the third link would just not pass… Opinion radio stations in Quebec City would instantly burst into flames, shouting “O scandal”!
But with culture, it’s totally abstract. It’s zero tangible. And then… copyright, “intellectual property”, is so complicated for ordinary mortals. Complicated enough for our politicians to have overlooked the fact that two comedians from Master key were able to co-produce, on their own, the sale of at least 175,000 DVDs of the first 126 episodes, when we had all — collectively — paid between $14,285 and $78,700 per episode between 1977 and 1990 , with our public money.
By the way, Master key shouldn’t it already belong to everyone? To ask the question, is to answer it. In the meantime, the Passe-Partout generation thanks those who have illegally “ripped” a few episodes available on YouTube, accessible for their own children. Pay it forward.
When does culture cease to be a commodity?
It is high time that Pablo Rodriguez, Nathalie Roy and our parliamentarians really ask themselves the question “When does culture cease to be a commodity? Because to listen to the lawyers and lobbyists of the multinationals, one would say that the answer will always be “as late as possible”. The ministers of our culture or our cultural heritage have a duty to question the legitimacy that a single person (or a company) can come to own 100% of a piece of our culture, having been paid in part, almost entirely, by everyone’s money.
In my opinion, the only way that our culture will not be condemned to being sucked up by Americans is if our granting policies require that works be made available to the public so that, in the short term, they are d at first considered as a commodity to be exploited, but that in the long term, like an open-air museum work, they become accessible to all.
To all of us, who are Quebec culture. All of us, through whom culture is cultivated, shared, reproduced, animated, transmitted, multiplied and fulfilled.
Because having collective access to our own culture will always generate more value, more than the profits made by any Mr. Cigar Inc. listed on the stock exchange.