Extending Canadian Film Distribution North of the 51st Parallel

August 21, 2006

 

Summary

Theatrical distribution of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen to northern communities is a commercial expansion of the Canadian box office, not a welfare initiative.

Isuma Distribution International Inc. (IDI) is the only Canadian distributor with the skills and experience to bring The Journals to Aboriginal audiences in over 200 remote communities with a total population of 400,000.

Expanding distribution of Canadian films to northern audiences creates a more equitable distribution system and fair allocation of Telefilm’s Marketing Assistance support.

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The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

 

• Dir. Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn (Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, Cannes Camera d’or, 2001, Best Picture, Genie 2002).
• Opening Night selection at Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Atlantic Film Festivals.
• Selected at New York and London Film Festivals.
• Canadian distribution: AAC-MPD (southern Canada); IDI (northern Canada).
• U.S. and International sales: IDI

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Northern Canada Market Projections

 

• Isuma Distribution P&A commitment: $493,000.
• Distribution to 236 communities north of 51st parallel: no 35mm theatre, no road access, est. total pop. 400,000, 90% Aboriginal.
• 2-3 digital-HD projections per community.
• 225 average total admissions per community.
• Gross box office @ $9.35 (taxes out): $496,000.
• See attached cash flow projection, Schedule A

Projections used in this business plan are based on results and experience gained from theatrical video projections in 25 remote Inuit communities during two separate pilot periods, in 2001 and 2006. In November-December 2001 Isuma Distribution organized public video projections of Atanarjuat The Fast Runner in eleven Inuit communities in Nunavut. In March-April 2006 IDI organized digital-HD projections of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen in 14 Inuit communities in Nunavut and Nunavik.

• Total admissions of 6938 for 25 communities in 2001 and 2006 averaged 276 admissions per community. The current marketing plan’s projections of 225 admissions per community is a conservative minimum estimate.


• Every community invited to participate agreed, offered some form of municipal support or assistance and provided access to a suitable screening venue, either a school gym or community hall.


• Like southern audiences, northern audiences responded best to active, imaginative advertising and marketing of the films. Communities where promotion and advertising were strongest produced the largest audiences.


• Audiences responded strongly to Inuit stars being present to introduce the films and answer questions. The scarcity of Aboriginal films makes the few visible actors into major celebrities whose achievements are inspiring to local audiences.


• The Coordinating Publicist organizes print traffic movement, national and regional advertising placement, bookings into communities, travel and lodging for the stars and direction of the overall campaign. This person also serves as liason with AAC-MPD and Film Circuit marketing staff to insure a coordinated campaign north and south.


• The Community Publicist travels to each remote community in advance of the film to conduct local promotion and marketing in each location. This includes meeting with municipal officials, school and youth groups, elders groups, local arts and culture organizations, doing local radio call-in shows, putting up posters and banners and advertising the upcoming event.


• The key to commercial viability of the campaign is sponsored airfares for Community Publicist and Stars from regional airlines like First Air and Air Inuit owned by Aboriginal development corporations. Telefilm’s Marketing Assistance provides strong leverage for obtaining sponsored airfares as a matching Aboriginal contribution.

Isuma Distribution International Inc.
Overcoming exclusion and bias in Canadian film distribution

Telefilm’s Marketing Assistance Program, providing recoupable advances to distributors for Prints and Advertising of Canadian films to Canadian audiences, currently excludes most Aboriginal Canadians and all national territory north of the 51st parallel.

Telefilm subsidizes the risk of selected distributors $13 million annually (2006-07) to show Canadian films to Canadian audiences. However, 80% of Inuit, Metis and First Nations Canadians live in remote northern communities not served by distributors, effectively excluding Aboriginal audiences from benefits of this subsidy program.

Denied access to films by distributors, Aboriginal audiences have little impact on the gross box office of Canadian features. This further disadvantages Aboriginal filmmakers who compete for national production funds awarded according to box office success.

Isuma Distribution International is Canada’s first distributor to address the regional and racial inequalities in the current system’s failure to serve the north. IDI’s goal is to expand Canadian box office to Aboriginal communities, which achieves several of Telefilm’s own core goals: improving social justice, building Canadian audience, film industry reform and innovation in new information technologies.

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen marks the loss of belief of Inuit who converted from shamanism to Christianity in the early twentieth century, the first major film to recognize, dignify and honour Aboriginal pain and loss. In announcing its selection as Opening Night film for the Toronto International Film Festival September 7, 2006, TIFF programmer Steve Gravestock set the stage for an event of national importance:

“The storytelling is daring and innovative in many ways - melding different planes of reality in a profoundly subtle and resonant manner, dealing with the supernatural and traditional Inuit beliefs as well as the collision between Christianity and Inuit culture. The film is also intensely poignant, suffused with an intense sense of loss. Beyond this, the subject of the film is fundamentally important for Inuit and western culture — enlarging our understanding both of the history and tradition of Inuit peoples and even, to a certain degree, the history and values of western culture.”

Opening one of the world’s most important film festivals in the Inuit voice, The Journals speaks to Canadians of an historic opportunity. On September 29, Alliance Atlantis-MPD brings that opportunity to theatres and audiences across southern Canada. What about the north? What about remote communities without 35mm theatres? Should Inuit and other Aboriginal audiences be the last Canadians to see this film?

 

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen is the second feature film by Igloolik Isuma Productions’ collective team. Isuma’s first feature, Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, won the Camera d’or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, six Genies including Best Picture, and went on to 300,000 admissions in France, a $3 million U.S. box office and a Canadian gross sufficient to justify one of Telefilm’s coveted Performance Envelopes.

Isuma Distribution International (IDI) was created out of a glaring deficiency in Canada’s conventional, taxpayer-supported distribution system: Atanarjuat, the first Canadian film ever to win the Cannes Camera d’or, couldn’t find a Canadian distributor back home willing to release it. In response, Telefilm recognized Isuma Distribution as a bona fide Canadian distributor for this film. IDI created prints, press and promotion materials, organized the winning campaign at Cannes and won nineteen other international film festival awards including Edinburgh, Flanders, San Diego and Toronto.

In October 2001 IDI booked Atanarjuat into a successful six-week run at Montreal’s Ex Centris, which qualified the film for the Genie Awards and selection as the first non- French film chosen to represent Canada in the Academy Awards Foreign Language Film category. IDI screened Atanarjuat by video projection in eleven remote Nunavut communities; sold 1000 video copies through Northern Coop stores in Nunavut and Nunavik; and after four years of negotiation finally obtained a $300,000 TV license from CBC. In December 2001 IDI sold Canadian distribution rights to Alliance Atlantis-MPD.

As a full-time distributor/sales agent filing semi-annual reports to Telefilm, IDI achieved $1 million gross sales of The Fast Runner to Canada, France, Netherlands, U.K. and the U.S. IDI also is recognized by Telefilm as the Canadian distributor of the TV series Nunavut Our Land (13 x 30, Bravo!, APTN), and documentaries including Kunuk Family Reunion and Kiviaq vs. Canada (History Television, APTN), and others.

IDI’s mission envisions a new business model for content-based film distribution, integrating electronic multimedia platforms and High Definition digital filmmaking. Focusing on Aboriginal films, Isuma Distribution International uses nomadic distribution and creative entrepreneurship to build grassroots delivery systems. Distribution networks that are accountable to the films' primary audiances, the First Nations people of the Canadian north. IDI’s interactive website for The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (http://www.sila.nu/pub/swf/journal/en/) included Live From the Set, a continuing real-time window on the film’s production in the high arctic in April and May 2005, with blogs by embedded journalists, videos and interviews of the cast and crew, background on Inuit culture and lesson plans for teachers using Isuma’s Inuit Culture Kit.

The Inuit Culture Kit contains twenty-two videos, two books, a CD and a teacher’s guide for teaching Inuit culture to students Grade 7 and up. In Fall 2006 IDI will release its new Exploring Inuit Culture Curriculum, for teaching Inuit culture in Grades 4-6 using five films and a music CD distributed by IDI.

IDI currently is collaborating with the University of Toronto’s Blackwood Art Gallery and Edmonton Art Gallery on a retrospective exhibition of Igloolik Isuma’s multi-media practice in Toronto/Mississauga in September and Edmonton in December 2006. The exhibition will tour to other major museums in Canada and abroad during 2007-08, coinciding with The Journals’ worldwide theatrical release.

At the same time, IDI Publishing will release the screenplay of The Journals of Knud Rasmussenin Inuktitut, English and French, accompanied by a selection of international writings on the theme of History and Memory, and modern Aboriginal filmmaking’s use for recovering lost or effaced memories.

While today’s multi-layered information environment can enhance film distribution, most films frankly don’t leave much room for enhancement. IDI distributes films with content; that is, films actually about something important. This distinguishes IDI as a distributor and its catalog of Aboriginal films from most contemporary filmmaking, acknowledging the particular needs of Aboriginal audiences to use films to improve their lives.

IDI is independently incorporated in Quebec as a co-venture of Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc. (Nunavut) and Kunuk Cohn Productions Inc. (Quebec). IDI’s current list includes feature films, short drama and documentaries by Igloolik Isuma Productions, Arnait Video Productions (Igloolik women’s filmmaking collective), Inuusiq Artcirq (Igloolik youth filmmaking collective), Girls from the Backroads Productions (Shirley Cheechoo, Cree) and Aarnuaa Productions (Kenneth Rasmussen, Greenland). While IDI seeks more feature films by other Aboriginal filmmakers it will remain difficult to find them until Telefilm designates a bona fide distributor eligible to trigger and distribute more Aboriginal films.