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Backlot<br />
production team — between a male or female<br />
applicant, is favoring projects directed and/or<br />
written by women.<br />
“We want to create a path to success,” says<br />
Telefilm executive director Carolle Brabant.<br />
“We want to reward the success of the first<br />
features by having emerging directors make<br />
their second film.”<br />
Take Werewolf, writer-director Ashley<br />
McKenzie’s debut feature about youth and drug<br />
addiction in a small Nova Scotia mining town.<br />
<strong>The</strong> indie received microbudget financing<br />
from Telefilm and became a critical hit on the<br />
film festival circuit after bowing at Toronto<br />
and screening at Berlin.<br />
Now McKenzie is eyeing possible Fast Track<br />
financing as she develops her second feature.<br />
“<strong>The</strong>re’s a gap for filmmakers to take<br />
the next step after their first feature,” she<br />
says, adding that Telefilm has helped to<br />
shorten the time she and her producer Nelson<br />
MacDonald need to secure financing for their<br />
sophomore effort.<br />
Brabant says Canada’s push for gender parity<br />
has helped alter long-standing perceptions<br />
in an industry where female filmmakers have<br />
become accustomed to discouraging barriers<br />
to the industry. “It has made women realize,<br />
‘Well, it can happen,’ ” she says.<br />
“It’s comforting to know you can get your<br />
foot in the door,” adds Sonia Boileau, who<br />
leveraged Telefilm investment for her debut<br />
feature, Le Dep, to develop her second film,<br />
Rustic Oracle, about an 8-year-old Mohawk girl<br />
searching for a missing sister.<br />
<strong>The</strong> push for gender parity has implications<br />
beyond Canada. Jordan Canning, who<br />
HOW CANADA’S GENDER-<br />
EQUALITY INITIATIVES<br />
ALREADY ARE PAYING OFF<br />
In a little over a year, female-led projects<br />
backed by Telefilm have more than doubled<br />
50<br />
45<br />
40<br />
35<br />
30<br />
25<br />
20<br />
15<br />
10<br />
5<br />
44%<br />
17%<br />
Films directed<br />
by women<br />
Canada<br />
Spotlight<br />
46%<br />
22%<br />
Films written<br />
by women<br />
2017<br />
2015<br />
In November<br />
2016, Telefilm<br />
introduced<br />
its initiative<br />
to improve<br />
gender parity.<br />
Source: Telefilm<br />
Canada, Women in<br />
View on Screen<br />
directed more than a dozen short films before<br />
completing her first and second features, We<br />
Were Wolves and Suck It Up, respectively, says<br />
Telefilm’s Talent to Watch and Fast Track<br />
programs can help open doors in the U.S. and<br />
other foreign markets.<br />
“Once you have two features, you’re hopefully<br />
at a level where you can access funding<br />
in different countries and team up with international<br />
co-producers,” she says.<br />
With the various gender-parity initiatives<br />
gaining steam, insiders say the lure of financing<br />
is also leading filmmakers to rethink<br />
projects from the conception point. “In the<br />
general community at large, people are just<br />
hungry to attach women to projects and slates,<br />
because it’s smart from a tactical viewpoint.<br />
I’d do the same,” says Molly McGlynn, whose<br />
debut feature, Mary Goes Round, was produced<br />
through Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program.<br />
Toronto-based director Michelle Latimer says<br />
the initiatives help female filmmakers avoid<br />
“going up against the old guard.” After the<br />
success of her documentary short film Nucca,<br />
which screened at Sundance and Toronto,<br />
Latimer nabbed a yearlong filmmaking<br />
fellowship with Laura Poitras’ (Citizenfour)<br />
documentary unit Field of Vision.<br />
“[Telefilm] is democratizing the way we<br />
secure film financing, and it’s particularly<br />
good for younger filmmakers who can’t go<br />
the regular financing route,” Latimer says.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Canadian film sector is also focusing<br />
on hiring more women in key positions<br />
throughout the industry. Jane Tattersall,<br />
senior vp at Sim Post Toronto, who supervised<br />
the sound editing on Hulu’s <strong>The</strong><br />
Handmaid’s Tale, says she’s hiring more women<br />
as mixers and editors in a traditionally maledominated<br />
business.<br />
“I’m not being idealistic or doing favors,”<br />
she says. “It’s much more selfish — the workplace<br />
is more interesting and more normal<br />
when you have a mix of women and men.”<br />
Marjolaine Tremblay, VFX producer and<br />
supervisor at Rodeo FX, insists that the<br />
Canadian industry needs to allow women to<br />
move from management and backroom jobs<br />
to active creative roles, including overcoming<br />
technical VFX challenges.<br />
“I have a great employer now that believes<br />
in all of my skill sets and supports me all the<br />
way,” says Tremblay.<br />
Another point of emphasis for Minister<br />
Joly is creating a healthy environment in<br />
the Time’s Up era. To that end, she says the<br />
Canadian industry now has a zero-tolerance<br />
policy for workplace harassment.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> #MeToo movement for us is clearly a<br />
fundamental change of culture,” she says. “It’s<br />
changing the way people will interact with<br />
each other and make sure there’s more respect<br />
between men and women, and ensuring the<br />
entertainment-sector workplace, as all workplaces,<br />
is much safer.”<br />
T<br />
he Baltimore of 1962 is<br />
meticulously re-created<br />
in Guillermo del Toro’s<br />
multi-Oscar-nominated sci-fi<br />
romance <strong>The</strong> Shape of Water.<br />
From an iconic, neon-lit diner<br />
to an ornate movie theater, the<br />
film revels in Americana from<br />
another age, making the fact<br />
that it was shot in and around<br />
Toronto all the more<br />
impressive. <strong>The</strong> film<br />
marks del Toro’s<br />
third collaboration<br />
Dale with producer —<br />
and Toronto native<br />
— J. Miles Dale and is the director’s<br />
fourth consecutive feature<br />
to be shot in Canada. Dale talked<br />
to THR about why the Mexican<br />
auteur now calls Toronto home<br />
and the Oscar odds for Shape<br />
of Water.<br />
Toronto hosted shoots for earlier<br />
Oscar best picture winners like<br />
TURNING A<br />
TORONTO SUBURB<br />
INTO STOCKHOLM<br />
<strong>The</strong> Ethan Hawke thriller Stockholm<br />
chronicles the real-life 1973 bank heist<br />
in the Swedish capital that produced the<br />
term “Stockholm Syndrome” — shorthand<br />
to describe when captors and captives<br />
form an unusual bond.<br />
With a modest budget of $10.5 million,<br />
Canadian co-producer Nicholas Tabarrok<br />
effectively cobbled together numerous<br />
BTS: COURTESY OF FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES. SHAPE: KERRY HAYES/TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. DALE: BARRY<br />
KING/GETTY IMAGES. STOCKHOLM: COURTESY OF DARIUS FILMS. WAPEEMUKWA, FOROUGHI: COURTESY OF<br />
SUBJECT. MCLEOD: COURTESY OF JIVE PR + DIGITAL. ENGLISH: COURTESY OF GAT PR. SANCHEZ: LAURENT GUERIN.<br />
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER<br />
78<br />
FEBRUARY 7, <strong>2018</strong>