by Guy Quenneville Why the Northern film industry (the Yukon aside) needs some serious direction
First Act
Here’s the pitch: It’s the wee hours of January 18, 2000. A musher living near Tagish Lake in southern Yukon is feeding his dogs, same as every day. But suddenly, something quite out-of-the-ordinary happens: a 4.5-million-year-old meteorite comes hurtling out of the cosmos, its blinding light transforming the early morning sky into afternoon. Travelling at 108 kilometres an hour, the ancient rock begins spewing some 500 fragments. A smoldering four-metre chunk smashes headlong into the frozen lake.
Naturally, the musher investigates. As he takes the softball-shaped fragment into his hands, we cut to a southern TV crew disembarking a bush plane in Whitehorse, cameras in tow. “And slowly, as they start to encounter more and more people who have come in contact with the meteorite, they start to see an infection spread through the town and begin to document the chaos that follows.”
So begins the story of Fragments, a feature film under development by Whitehorse-based filmmaker Neil Macdonald, in partnership with his high-school buddy David Hamelin. Based on a real-life meteor crash, the film is a passion project for Macdonald. The self-admitted sci-fi geek and aspiring Stanley Kubrick began his odyssey into moviemaking in, no joke, 2001. That year, he left the North to study film at the University of British Columbia, later working at various below-the-line jobs in Vancouver’s thriving film industry. His first paid gig? Working as a production assistant on the Superman series Smallville. More recently, he toiled as a lighting technician on the sets of such high-profile Vancouver-shot films as Hot Tub Time Machine and Tron Legacy. Last year, however, Macdonald decided to stop making movies for other people so he could write and direct projects of his own. A $10,000 short-film treatment of Fragments, largely funded by the Yukon Film and Sound Commission, is now in the can and waiting to serve as Macdonald and Hamelin’s calling card at film festivals. It is, in business terms, his means of raising cash for his dream: a feature version of Fragments, coming to a theatre near you.
None of it would have happened without the film comission, which, since its creation in 1998, has managed to attract big-name productions – most recently, a film starring Owen Wilson and Steve Martin – while also managing to get local filmmakers trained during the course of these productions. The end result? Visiting guest productions don’t just pump considerable money into the territory (nine dollars for every dollar of support to the industry), but nurture Yukon filmmakers, too. “It’s very healthy here,” says Macdonald. “There’s a lot of support monetarily, but there’s also a fairly vibrant community.”
The same thing has not happened in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. In the NWT, a place built and run by mining, the idea of a viable film industry has, until just recently, been laughed off the screen. Nunavut saw the release of the most high-profile indigenous film to come out of Canada’s North, The Fast Runner, but the following 10 years have made for a weak middle chapter.
What gives?
Second Act
It’s getting warm inside the fire-heated cabin where James Bond is seducing a cold blonde dish who, as so often happens, is a Russian double agent. But just as 007 is about to score, he’s tipped off, via a wristwatch pumping out plastic telegrams, about the Soviet-assassins-on-skis lurking outside his cabin. Armed with deadly flare guns and Olympic-level skiing abilities, the henchmen give downhill chase to our hero down a breakthaking , twin-peaked, Russian mountain. With no other means of escape, Bond plunges off the top of the snow-capped monolith and free-falls more than 1,800 metres towards the seemingly-bottomless abyss of the Russian tundra. Luckily, though, he’s packed a parachute, and one bearing the emblem of the British flag. Cue opening credits.
This death-defying opening scene from the 1977 James Bond blockbuster The Spy Who Loved Me has, as far as the film’s story is concerned, nothing to do with Nunavut. But it was filmed there, on Mount Asgard, near the tiny community of Pangnirtung, and it still stands as the most high-profile production that has ever visited the territory. Maybe it’s unrealistic to expect another film of its magnitude to come to Nunavut. After all, James Bond remains one of the most successful film franchises in history, which can afford to film anywhere. And besides, these days they’d probably green-screen or computer-generate the backdrop, given the considerable cost of travelling there. And there’s the high Canadian dollar. And the territory’s late start in actively attracting producers from outside Nunavut…
But still. The Fast Runner, made entirely in and around Igloolik, employed some 60 Inuit who managed to make a film impressive enough to win its director, Zacharias Kunuk, the Best First Feature prize at Cannes. That event found Kunuk walking the star-studded red carpet. Now, with his production company, Igloolik Isuma, gone bankrupt, he’s working out of a run-down house in Igloolik, preparing for his next film about the Inuit experience. Which will be shot in Quebec, by the way.
The Fast Runner led to expenditures of over $1.5 million in Nunavut. When you count the film’s two companion pieces, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen and Before Tomorrow, about $12 million was pumped into the territory, according to the films’ producer, Norman Cohn.
So there’s no question that Nunavut is home to talented filmmakers, or that the industry can generate some serious buck. The first-ever economic impact study of the Nunavut’s film industry, prepared in 2009 by Toronto-based Nordicity, confirms as much. During the 2008-09 fiscal year alone, $13 million was spent between locally-produced films ($6.7 million) and guest productions ($6.3 million). More broadly speaking, in the four years leading to 2008-09, production activity in Nunavut generated total annualized GDP of $9.8 million, including $4.7 million in direct GDP and $5.1 million in spin-off GDP – all of which created 176 full-time-equivalent jobs. That’s pretty impressive when you consider that the arts and crafts sector is said to generate more than $30 million every year but that roughly 4,000 residents count arts and crafts revenue as their main source of income.
The main impediment to growing the film industry, according to Cohn, is the Nunavut Film Development Corporation NFDC), which was created in 2003 after much lobbying from Ajjiit, Nunavut’s media association. While some of Igloolik Isuma’s projects received support from various NFDC funds, it was never enough to grow the territory’s film labour force because of funding caps that remain in place to this day, says Cohn. “The labour rebate is the single most successful subsidy that allows films to be made all over the country,” he says. “Nobody else caps the amount you can claim. Everybody else says, ‘You want to make $10 million worth of jobs here? We’ll find the money.’ Nobody says, ‘We only want $400,000 in jobs this year. Don’t make any more jobs.’ It’s like saying to Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation, ‘We’ll subsidize 10 jobs. We don’t want you to create 12.’ It’s insane.”
What’s worse, continues Cohn, is that recent changes to Nunavut Film’s funding mechanisms make it less likely that visiting companies will hire Nunavummiut. Before, under a program entitled the Nunavut Labour Program (capped at $300,000 a year), productions could receive a rebate covering, at minimum, 40 per cent of their spending on local labour. Last year, the program was shelved in favour of an incentive program open to productions in which Nunavut producers partner with southern ones. The Nunavut Spend Incentive covers 17 per cent of a production’s overall costs in Nunavut, provided the spending falls under a list of ‘eligible Nunavut expenses,’ including Nunavut labour.
The problem, Cohn says, is that this list covers a whole gamut of expenses in competition with Nunavut labour – categories like air travel, which are more likely to gobble up a company’s Nunavut expense sheet than, say, the hiring of an Inuit on-set technician. According to the Nordicity report, which measured the film industry prior to the new spend incentive program, 20 per cent of spending in Nunavut went to Nunavut labour, while the remaining 80 per cent was taken up by goods and services. “That translates to bringing more foreign filmmaking personnel and getting your rebate on their travelling costs…” says Cohn. “(It’s) poison for the development of an actual, local, indigenous film industry.”
Derek Mazur, the current CEO of the development corporation, has shot projects of his own in Nunavut. He brushes Cohn’s concerns aside. “I think that’s nonsense, to be honest. Labour is still part of your expenditure costs in Nunavut, so that hasn’t changed,” he says. More importantly, he adds, the spend incentive program has a major advantage over the previous labour rebate. “In order for you to qualify for the expenditure, you have to be shooting in Nunavut. Under the labour rebate program, you didn’t actually have to film in Nunavut. You could use Nunavut crew to shoot in Quebec, for example. Now we’re saying, ‘We want that money.’” As a further means of enticing foreign shoots, the NFDC is also scouting every Nunavut community for indoor locations suitable for weather cover.
Still, Mazur admits, the absence of a tax credit (available in B.C., Newfoundland and Manitoba, to name only three jurisdictions in Canada) will continue to discourage industry to film in Nunavut. And the competition is only growing. Alaska, in particular, is aggressively pursuing guest productions by offering a transferable tax credit ranging from 30 to 40 per cent on qualified expenditures. Among its most recent acquisition: The Frozen Ground, a $27-million thriller starring Nicholas Cage and John Cusack that will begin shooting in Anchorage next month. “It would be great if Nunavut could develop some kind of situation that allowed that to happen, but I think the only way that would happen is if, over the long term, we developed a non-capped fund,” says Mazur.
So what’s stopping that from happening? “Government policy, essentially,” he continues. “The money is coming through money granted by the [Government of Nunavut]. In the tax credit scheme, it comes out of the whole tax system, which is totally different. For example, the Government of Manitoba doesn’t have to allocate a certain amount of money to [supporting productions]; it just happens automatically through people filing tax returns.”
Nunavut Film will gradually call on the Government of Nunavut for more money to fund filmmakers, but the local industry needs to grow its ranks first, says Mazur. Indeed, as the Nordicity report points out, Nunavut has a film industry; it’s just not big enough to support sustained growth. “In film, the currency that you need is actual work on a set,” says Iris Merritt of the Yukon film commission. “You need to have experience on the set to get work in the business. That’s your street cred, for want of a better description.”
Faced with the difficult task of luring productions up North, the NFDC and other media organizations in Nunavut have come up with another solution: embedding Nunavummiut trainees with southern-based production companies. Last June, Cynthia Pitsiulak, an Iqaluit-based staffer at the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC), was lent out as a guest director to the CBC children’s program What’s Your News. The show filmed an Iqaluit-set episode over the course of two weeks. “It gave her the opportunity to work on a larger-scale production – a production with a lot more resources than we usually have,” says Debbie Brisebois, IBC’s executive director. In the same vein, Mazur says the film development corporation’s next goal is to develop a professional development program. “In other words, bring them down to the production as opposed to the much more difficult task of bringing the productions to Nunavut.”
So just what type of productions are coming to the Eastern Arctic, costs be damned? Nowadays, according to both the film development corporation and one of two Nunavut logistics companies that cater to the film industry, documentaries account for most of the production activity in Nunavut. But given the comparatively small scales of these productions, it’s doubtful much film training is going on. A recent documentary, shot near Pangnirtung, returned to the very site where James Bond made his daring alpine escape. The resulting short film followed a top world climber as he conducted a free ascent of Mount Asgard’s North face. “It’s amazing, absolutely amazing. But to what extent was Pangnirtung as a community involved? Probably very little,” says Dave Reid, owner of Polar Sea Adventures.
When it comes to his own company, which ushers film crews to remote Arctic locations from his home base in Pond Inlet, Reid hires several Inuit as help. But not everybody who wants a job can get one. Many residents, he says, lack the skills suited to working on documentaries like The Asgard Project – skiing, hiking, kayaking. Not to mention customer service – a must when catering to high-end clients footing million-dollar bills to shoot in the remote North, he says. “We have a policy to try as (we) can to hire locally, but the reality is, if the expertise does not exist within the community … the overriding factor is the satisfaction of the client and the delivery of the product,” says Reid. “If it means spending $2,400 to get an extra guide up from the south, then I will do that.”
On top of a skilled labour shortage, Nunavut simply doesn’t have the type of infrastructure film companies need during and after filming, namely, indoor studios and professional post-production facilities. In the Yukon, the private sector offers a number of editing suites and post-production services to visiting productions. “It’s not as deep as Vancouver, but it’s there,” says Merritt.
But only now are such facilities being planned in Nunavut. IBC is currently trying to raise $13 million for a media arts centre in Iqaluit. The facility will contain a large editing space set aside for visiting producers and a 900-square-foot studio – one far enough from the airport that soundmen won’t have to worry about the roar of a Boeing 737 cutting through the walls. While it’s planned for a 2013 opening, less than $2 million has been raised so far. Says Cohn, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Nunavut’s chances of receiving a film festival – where films made in the territory can be screened to a wider audience – don’t look any better. The Yukon, Newfoundland and Iceland all host at least two fests a year, and Nordicity recommends Nunavut consider one, too. But the owner of Nunavut’s only movie theatre, in Iqaluit, has other designs. “The idea of our festival would not be Northern films but in fact southern films,” says Bryan Pearson. “A film festival made up of tropical films would be unique and it would give the locals a very different opportunity to see things from other places. We in the North, we’ve seen enough bloody polar bears. I know I have.”
Third Act
Nunavut’s film industry has suffered some considerable bumps, but at least it has a recognized film industry that receives dedicated financing, criticized though it may be. Until just recently, the same could not be said for the Northwest Territories, where the territorial government has awakened from a long slumber. Prompted by NWT filmmakers and members of its legislative assembly – and no doubt enticed by the world-wide attention (read: tourists) sparked by series like Ice Road Truckers and Ice Pilots NWT – the GNWT has finally set about establishing a formal film commission with one full-time staff member fielding calls from southern production companies and working to support local talent. “Things are definitely moving and changing in a positive direction in terms of support for the industry,” says Camilla MacEachern, the newly-installed and first-ever full-time associate NWT film commissioner, working under the auspices of the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment (ITI).
And it’s about time, say critics. As with Nunavut, the NWT’s film industry has also received a recent assessment of its potential. According to a report by Yellowknife-based Outcrop Communications, the sector pumps approximately $9 million into the territorial economy. Maybe that’s peanuts compared to mining, but “it helps circulate money in the north,” says Glen Abernethy, one of several MLAs who helped bring the GNWT and several Yellowknife filmmakers together in March to discuss what could be done.
That $9 million cited by Outcrop includes $5 million in wages between more than 100 full-time employees. Among this group are film and video artists often commissioned by the GWNT and other companies to complete corporate assignments – tourism ads and public service announcements. But many of these same people also possess a desire to pursue more creative endeavors that require more funding in order to get the NWT noticed. Jay Bulckaert is one of them. “Nothing was actually happening within the film industry from a government level,” says Bulckaert, a film- and ad-maker who once pitched a numchuck-wielding elf as a potential spokesperson for Northwestel, the NWT’s dominant telecommunications provider. (It wasn’t for them.)
To be sure, there were three small funds NWT film and video artists could apply to: one under ITI, and two with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. But in the case of the ITI fund, stringent requirements demanding projects be economically viable essentially closed off many contenders, while those applying to the education programs were vying for limited dollars against artists working in a multitude of platforms. The funding Bulckaert did once receive from ITI – a mere $5,000 – just wasn’t enough, he says. “If you wanted to do a feature film that would be awesome and that would put Yellowknife on the map, $5,000 would cover your catering bill.” To make matters worse, nothing substantial was done to actively attract outside productions to the North.
So you could say that the NWT has some catching up to do. But as MacEachern says, quoting Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” A lifelong Yellowknifer with contacts throughout the territory, MacEachern is currently working to launch a new film commission website armed with up-to-date information on the NWT’s various regions and local businesses and filmmakers. “It’s really important that you provide as much precise information as possible because these production companies don’t have a lot of time, and they’re not just contacting you – they’re fishing around,” says MacEachern. And for local talent, there is new money on tap: the GNWT has launched a fund set aside for NWT filmmakers, though it is capped at a modest $100,000.
Promising steps, for sure, but there are signs that the support may have come too late for the project that, as its creator put it, “was the flagship for a lot of frustration that a lot of filmmakers had with the Northwest Territories.” Celebrated author Richard Van Camp, from the NWT’s Tlicho region, has been working for five years with Toronto-based production company First Generation Films to bring his first novel, The Lesser Blessed, to the big screen. More than anything, Van Camp wanted the film to be shot in the Northwest Territories. “Five years ago, I think the mistake we made was we were assuming that we would receive help from the GNWT,” says Van Camp. “It was nobody’s fault, but there simply wasn’t any infrastructure or an NWT Film Commission that had the resource to help us financially.”
Thanks in part to a recent $350,000 contribution from the Tlicho Government, The Lesser Blessed is finally set to begin principal photography on October 31 – but not in Fort Smith, Yellowknife or Behchoko, where the story is set. While producer Christina Piovesan says there will be some exterior shots captured up North (what’s referred to as a “skeleton shoot”), the vast majority of the film will be lensed somewhere in Northern Ontario. A relentlessly cheerful person, Van Camp refuses to see the out-of-territory shoot as a compromise. “We can honestly say that we did our very best to shoot up here in the Northwest Territories,” he says.
To be sure, The Lesser Blessed will hardly pass by the NWT. The film’s casting call will be extended to NWT residents thanks to webcam submissions. Adds Van Camp, “We’ve asked for money (from the GNWT) to be set aside where Northerners – possibly two, possibly three – will have funding to come to the Northern Ontario set.” And The Lesser Blessed is only one of three Van Camp adaptations currently under development: the short stories The Uranium Leaking from Port Radium and Rayrock Mines is Killing Us and Dogrib Midnight Runners (about streakers in Fort Smith) have attracted directors intent on filming up North.
Which leads us to the million-dollar question: is the GNWT considering rebates or tax incentives to visiting productions, as the Outcrop study recommends? “Right now? No,” says MacEachern. “Our focus is on building the commission, building bridges with industry, and with our sister department, Education, Culture and Employment, which also supports film.”
So it could be a while yet before Yellowknife filmmakers get to rub shoulders with Steve Martin, as Whitehorse craftspeople got to do earlier this year. For now, they’ll have to settle for Adam Beach. The Manitoba-born thespian has been tapped to headline a new one-hour CBC drama, Arctic Air, about bush pilots toiling in the wilds of Yellowknife. The company producing the show, Vancouver-based Omni Film Productions, was slated to visit Yellowknife this month to shoot footage of “exteriors and landscapes” to be used throughout the show’s 10-episode first season, according to Omni president Michael Chechik. Mr. Beach would be in town, too. More importantly, “there will be some potential for people in the Yellowknife film industry to get employment,” said Chechik.
Not a bad first act, but it needs some work.
