24 Toronto’s 700-seat Bloor Hot Docs Cinema Theatre is the only venue of its size and scope in the world dedicated to the documentary. This groundbreaking Canadian venture has long been recognized as pioneering social documentary and cinema vérite. It was the National Film Board of Canada’s first filmcommissioner,JohnGrierson,whoreportedly coined the term “documentary,” in a film review published in theNew York Sun in 1926. So Canada—with its Bloor Cinema— is a good place to start when talking about the current state of the feature-length documentary. Located in downtown Toronto, the Bloor was a tired movie theater playing second-run feature films until it was recently re-purposed into a documentary venue. The initiative was undertaken by Blue Ice Group producers Neil Tabatznik and Steven Silver, who financed the makeover out of love for the art form, and a sense that there was potentially a strong enough audience base in Toronto to support it. The idea of a cinema house devoted to documentaries was treated with much skepticism when it was first announced, but the theater has defied doubters, becoming a Mecca for documentary lovers since it opened last spring. It has tripled its conservative break-even expectations and continues to grow its audience. Oscar winner Searching for Sugarman had its Canadian premiere at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema last year. The feature-length documentary has been a runaway success in Canada and other countries around the world. Like several other popular 2012 feature-length documentaries — Marley, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, andDetropia— it exemplifies the words of Montreal producer and distributor Daniel Cross, president of Eyesteelfilm: “Presenting quality documentaries to the audience in a theatrical setting validates the genre.” Robin Smith is the cinema programmer for the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. He sees growing interest in the genre helped by festivals, but also by a desire of the viewing public to educate themselves. He paraphrased Bloor founder Tabatznik, saying that if you go to see a bad fictional film, you feel you’ve wasted two hours of your life, but the beauty of seeing a documentary — even a not-so-good one — is that you always walk out feeling informed at some level. The Bloor is run by the management of Hot Docs, the annual public documentary screening and forum event, now one of the largest of its kind. It will celebrate its 20th anniversary April 25-May 5 and has been housed in the Bloor venue for many years. The success of its refurbished home indicates the potential for an expanded marketplace for feature-length documentaries. According to Smith, distributors are beginning to recognize this as bigger and better buyers for the genre start to emerge. Hussain Amarshi, president of Mongrel Media, a Canadian film distribution company specializing in art house, foreign, and independent films and documentaries, says feature-length documentary is very much alive and kicking. His company is releasing close to 10 a year and so are other distributors. “Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival show a significant number of docs, there is year-round programming at the Bloor Cinema. These all indicate the health of this genre,” he said. “Funding for these films, though, is precarious.” Cross’s Eyesteelfilm deals in those productions “difficult to distribute,” whether his own or others — titles such as The Artist is Present and Five Broken Cameras. He says his is a difficult business to grow, given the cost of prints and marketing in relation to the limited audience potential. Canada, particularly Quebec, is his main marketplace, but Cross has been able to place films such as Last Train Home and Up the Yangtze in the U.S. in PBS’s POV slot. (Ai Weiwei, after its theatrical release, was also broadcast in the PBS Independent Lens slot.) Veteran Montreal distributor Jan Rofekamp, president of FilmsTransit, says for a longform documentary to do well, there has to be a reason — some extra motivation — to spark public interest. If, for example, they are celebritydriven, adds Eyesteelfilm’s Cross, they are more acceptable to theaters, get a proper audience, and tend to make a splash. Serious documentaries don’t find homes as easily. Kevin Wright, SVP Programming, Astral Television Networks, offered a similar perspective. He said Canada’s TMN (The Movie Network) pre-buys and acquires a select number of feature-length documentaries every year. “We are specifically interested in highly entertaining pop culture docs with broad audience appeal and potential for theatrical release. We also have an interest in entertainment-related docs about film andmusic. We are not interested in socio-political or current affairs style docs,” he said. Peter Raymont, president of WhitePine Pictures in Toronto, has produced a significant slate of feature-length documentaries, most recently Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould and West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson. He sees a growing public interest in the genre, fueled by festivals, television, and exposure in small community theaters across Canada — theaters attended by people who care about the genre and like to see it on thebig screenwithgoodprojection. The replacement of the 35mm projector with new digital technologies has facilitated this. For Canadian producers like WhitePine’s Raymont, the challenges involve accessing production funds via a broadcaster, and getting themtopickupanythingthatdoesn’tfittheone-hour slot. “It’s a classic case of the public being ahead of the broadcaster,” said Raymont. “With virtually no exceptions, no mainstream broadcaster anywhere will play a long-form documentary in primetime,” said FilmsTransit’s Rofekamp. March to the Top, commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Documentary Channel, had its world premiere on that specialty channel at 90 minutes. A day later, on the main CBC network, it was in a 60-minute slot. Yet, generally, the climate for making documentary films has improved since 20 years ago, says FilmsTransit’s Rofekamp. There is now a strong international infrastructure for filmmakers, helped by thematic conferences and forums, a proliferation of film courses, and new platforms for exhibition. Canada is like Europe in that there are agencies for financial support, unlike in the U.S., though the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms aims to support “courageous filmmakers” making sociallyconscious films. And on the television front, HBO has for years been a large scale and consistent supporter of a certain type of documentary for a populist audience, which, said Eyesteelfilm’s Cross, has helped change the perception of the genre. Despite the fact that marketing filmhas become more complex, new distributors are appearing, both internationally and in Canada, noted FilmsTransit’s Rofekamp. Toronto-basedBAMDistribution isone, recently acquiring the feature-length entertainment documentary B.B. King: The Life of Riley. “In selecting documentaries,” said BAM’s Iain Taylor, “a key part of the process comes down to the ability to market them in a crowded, tight space, so they need to be differentiated by a well-known entity or issue, with a well-known presenter and testimonials from well-recognized sources.” A case in point would be its acquisition of Canadian rights toHow toMake Money Selling Drugs, the socalled “war on drugs” exposé that had its debut at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. Another new Canadian entrant is Indiecan Entertainment, picking up Canadian rights to the music-based feature-length documentary The Sheepdogs Have At It for a planned spring and summer theatrical release across Canada. Short documentaries may be stretched out, because the feature-length variety is considered more prestigious. Long-form documentaries may be cut down for expediency. But despite market vagaries, feature-length documentaries will continue to be made as long as producers have stories they want to tell, whatever length fits them best. IB Feature-Length Docs Take Flight at Toronto’s Bloor March/April 2013 Canada’s Docs Robin Smith, cinema programmer for the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
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