What do we do with the four successors of the FFM?

Montreal is a city of great events. The JazzFest. The Francos. Just for Laughs, the largest comedy festival in the world. Osheaga. The National Bank Open which welcomes the best tennis players in the world.

But not for the cinema.

Since the heyday of Serge Losique’s World Film Festival (FFM) in the 1980s and 1990s, Montreal has not had an international film festival.

This is not a criticism, it is an observation.

We won’t rewrite history, but we will summarize it: the FFM was beaten by Toronto in the 1990s, the management of the FFM was deficient, SODEC and Telefilm Canada withdrew their marbles to give it a chance. at Spectra in 2005, it was a fiasco, the great cinephile Serge Losique was unable to hand over, we witnessed the sinking of the FFM in slow motion, and no festival took over.

After the FFM and Spectra fiascos, SODEC and Telefilm Canada adopted a new strategy: sprinkling. Instead of giving the money from the FFM (one million a year) to a single major festival, they redistributed it to all the other festivals in Quebec.

It’s less risky. It is fairer for all of Quebec.

But instead of having one major film festival, Montreal has four smaller festivals. They each have their specialty. But they don’t collaborate much with each other.

The Festival du nouveau cinema (FNC), which takes place these days, would have been the best candidate to succeed the FFM, because it is the only generalist festival. However, its growth potential is limited, as it takes place late in the year (and especially immediately after Toronto).

Fantasia is the second largest genre film festival (science fiction, black comedy, western, etc.) in the world. It is very popular (75,000 admissions), targets a younger audience and has a very effective professional section (meetings for producers). It’s a great success.

Cinemania specializes in French-language cinema, a fine niche for the second-largest French-speaking city after Paris.

The Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma aims to discover and promote Québec cinema, an important objective. It is also present in several regions.

Roughly speaking, our film festivals are funded approximately 30-35% by grants, 60% by sponsorships, and the rest by ticket revenue.

Why do we inject approximately 1.8 million per year in subsidies into our four main film festivals in Montreal? To distribute and promote our cinema. To give our auteur films a better launch pad, to help them find an audience. Some festivals also have a section for the industry, to promote creative and commercial exchanges.

This type of subsidy is expensive. It goes from $5 (Fantasia) to around $25 per ticket sold depending on the festival.

Except that if you are not American and you want to have a national cinematography, you must subsidize your cinema in a significant way. Film production like distribution and promotion. It’s not a Canadian phenomenon, all countries do it.

Now, what do we do with our four festivals, an atypical formula for a city like Montreal?

Forget the idea of ​​competing with major international festivals like Toronto. We missed our shot with the double FFM/Spectra fiasco in the 2000s. It would be a very bad decision to pump a million dollars a year into an avenue as risky as it is uncertain.

Force them to merge? In practice, this is difficult to achieve, their audiences being too different.

SODEC and Telefilm Canada are preparing to modify the grant criteria. We want to open up funding to multidisciplinary festivals. So there will be more competition for grants, which is always good business.

The movie industry is changing rapidly. The habits of moviegoers are upset with digital platforms. Even in this context, we must continue to support our film festivals.

But to receive this significant level of subsidies, festivals must improve on four points. Collaborate more (they would gain in particular on the administrative level, since they often share the same employees at different times of the year). Make more room for TV series, a rapidly expanding niche (the Berlinale has an impressive TV component, among others). Serve more as a meeting place to develop business ties (Fantasia does this very well). And finally, develop “general public” activities to get closer to more moviegoers.

The public component is particularly important. For the past two years, the FNC has presented free outdoor screenings over Labor Day weekend. Last month, 1200 people saw the film Dunesby Denis Villeneuve, under the stars in the Quartier des Spectacles.

These kinds of mainstream initiatives help justify the strong support our film festivals receive.