By pulling the plug on the film gala, Radio-Canada is once again demonstrating that the ratings are its real concern.
It’s ironic that the public broadcaster’s decision comes the same week that its film critic for a quarter of a century, Michel Coulombe, launches a book on the 7e titled art Quebec in the cinema. What our films say about us. Radio-Canada’s untimely decision says a lot about how little it values its cultural mandate, which it relegates almost entirely to ARTV, a specialty channel to which you must subscribe. As if the hundreds of millions that Radio-Canada receives each year only served to better compete with private television.
Radio-Canada’s decision comes at a time when cinemas are desperately trying to recover from a pandemic that has left them exhausted. Movie theater owners aren’t the only ones struggling through the turmoil COVID has brought. All show producers, including the directors of our oldest theaters, are having a hard time bringing in pre-pandemic audiences. The long closures, last-minute cancellations of shows, the obligation to wear a mask and the fear of the virus have cooled the cultural ardor of the boldest. Subscribers are coming back in dribs and drabs.
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THE SRC EMPIRE THE PROBLEM
Instead of being part of the solution, Radio-Canada chose to make it worse by removing from the schedule the gala intended to promote cinema. The discomfiture of the last two galas at the helm of which we found the “non-host” Geneviève Schmidt, provided him with a golden excuse. Just as Radio-Canada can authorize itself from the disorganization of the environment and the frictions experienced by its self-proclaimed spokespersons. I carefully read all the columnists who commented on the death of the Québec-Cinéma gala, both those who dance on his grave and those who mourn his disappearance.
If several galas, that of the cinema like that of Gémeaux, were not always with the height, Radio-Canada cannot play Pontius Pilate. Its variety managers have always weighed heavily on the creative decisions of the galas, leaving only a limited place to representatives of the Academy of Cinema and Television and Quebec Cinema.
A THREATENED SPECIES ?
Despite the faults that I have often mentioned in this column, such as the shortcomings of many screenplays, for example, Quebec cinema is better than being handed over body and goods one week a year to “small talk”, so as not to write to the insignificance of the summer show Good evening ! For half a century, there have been few years when a Quebec film has not distinguished itself in the race for the Oscars and the Césars or in international festivals such as Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Venice and Sundance.
Radio-Canada’s decision is unacceptable. It is in clear contradiction with the more considerable resources that the governments of Ottawa and Quebec are granting to Telefilm and SODEC. The feature films and documentaries that these funds will make possible will need visibility and this is precisely the role that the galas play. Even the inane galas of last June and the year before, which were more pensums than celebrations, were tolerated by half a million people. That’s too many viewers to claim galas are an endangered species.