When was the last time you settled into a theatre seat with a bag of popcorn to watch a Canadian film?
I don’t mean Deadpool, or Star Trek Beyond, or any of the Hollywood productions that film up here only to transform our iconic bridges and parks into battlegrounds and alien planets during post-production.
I mean a Bloody-Caesar-chugging, ketchup-chip-eating, polite-as-the-day-is-long Canadian film: cinematic stories that are written, directed, performed and otherwise brought to the screen entirely by our fellow Canadians — films such as The Road Forward, Black Fly, Hello Destroyer, Vancouver: No Fixed Address and Window Horses.
My (educated, after many years covering the homegrown film industry) guess is that the majority of Canadians aren’t actively making Canadian feature films a significant part of their entertainment diets, but with good reason: Canadian films are harder to find in local multiplexes than the Hollywood films that shoot here.
And this is no shade to Hollywood films. The service side of the Vancouver industry feeds thousands of local families (including mine) and is an essential part of our economy.
But homegrown cinema — feature films reflecting the complex, fractured, challenging, profound, effed up and beautiful narrative of the people who inhabit this land — should be considered just as essential, if not to the economy, then to the culture.
Luckily for the culture, there are individuals who are committed to building that bridge between Canadians and Canadian films.
They don’t get more committed than Anita Adams. It’s been 15 years since a single movie-going experience spurred Adams to found the First Weekend Club.
It began when Adams learned a Vancouver-shot film starring Gabrielle Rose, one of her favourite actresses (“In my opinion, she’s the Meryl Streep of Canada”) was premiering at a local theatre. She excitedly bought tickets for opening night and arrived early, expecting a packed house buzzing with excitement.
What she encountered was something far less festive. “By the time the curtains pulled back and the lights went down, there was me, my mom and three other people, and I was so surprised and disappointed and I thought, ‘What the heck’s going on?’” Adams recalls.
Adams (who’d worked as an actor and ran a monthly script-reading series out of the Alibi Room) began asking questions and was shocked by what she discovered. Most Canadian films disappeared from theatres within a few days because of low ticket sales during that critical first weekend. “I thought, ‘Maybe I could do something about this,’” Adams says.
And what she did was form First Weekend Club, now a national non-profit organization dedicated to spreading the word about Canadian films and the talent behind them.
There’s no single reason why Canadian films don’t perform well (and no villain), but a lack of marketing funds is a biggie. “Exhibitors aren’t charities — they want to know that the films they’re going to be programming will have money behind them to get audiences into the house to buy their popcorn, and Canadian films don’t have the marketing money,” Adams says.
Thus, First Weekend Club’s original aim: to promote Canadian films in advance of that critical first weekend so that they’ll have a shot at longer runs.
To date, the organization has promoted more than 750 films (including 250 sold-out or near sold-out opening nights), hosted upwards of 300 special events and grown to reach more than two million people annually via its mailing list, social media channels and community partners.
First Weekend Club is also the driving force behind Canada Screens, a curated VOD service that currently has 240 films, including 38 shorts, 37 French language films and 34 films directed by women.
There have been commercial successes in the Canadian screen scene in the last 15 years, including The Delicate Art of Parking, which Adams says ran in theatres for an eye-popping 16 weeks, and most recently, Entanglement, an inventive rom-com from local filmmaker Jason James that turns the manic pixie dream girl trope upside down and sideways. The Vancouver-shot dramedy — which stars Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch — entered wide release (12 theatres in Canada and 12 in the U.S.) Feb. 9.
That’s success worth celebrating. Still, more work needs to be done to combat the stigma associated with Canadian films, says Adams.
“If you say ‘Canadian film,’ some people automatically assume that it’s not going to be a high quality,” says Adams. “You and I know that’s so wrong, but we have work ahead of us to change that attitude and get people excited about Canadian films.”
Let’s get to work.
First Weekend Club celebrates its 15 birthday this month by encouraging audiences to screen a great Canadian film, either in a theatre or via CanadaScreens.ca. Sign up to receive updates from First Weekend Club at firstweekendclub.ca.
Sabrina Furminger is an award-winning entertainment columnist and editor-in-chief of YVR Screen Scene, a digital magazine celebrating the Vancouver film and television industry. @yvrscreenscene. What are your favourite Canadian films? Where and how do you watch homegrown cinema? And if you make a point of avoiding Canadian films, why? Tweet your thoughts to @sabrinarmf.
