Title : 4 Indigenous feature films get $3M in funding from Telefilm Canada
link : 4 Indigenous feature films get $3M in funding from Telefilm Canada
4 Indigenous feature films get $3M in funding from Telefilm Canada
Four Indigenous feature films will receive $3 million in production funding from Telefilm Canada thanks to its new Indigenous production funding stream.
In 2017, the Crown corporation made a commitment to increase the feature film production and marketing financing made available for creators from Indigenous communities in Canada.
This includes setting aside funding specifically for Indigenous productions, budgeted at approximately $4 million annually over five years.
"This is a long time coming," said Laura Milliken, an Ojibway filmmaker who has been working in and creating Indigenous films for 20 years.
"As much as we have diversity of voices programs and have a focus on Canadian content in our funding system, it's still a challenge to make sure that Indigenous-created and -produced content gets financed," she said.
Milliken is the producer for Running Home and Tales of an Urban Indian, two of the four films to receive funding. Running Home, by writer/director Zoe Hopkins, is described as a magical romantic dramedy about a single mom who takes up running as a way to heal, and Tales of an Urban Indian by Darrell Dennis and Katya Gardner is a dark comedy following a man's life from the reserve to the big city.
Funding 'vital' to productions
The other two features were Monkey Beach and Forgotten. Monkey Beach by Loretta Todd is about a woman with supernatural powers and Forgotten by Michelle Latimer, based on true events, is about Canada's only female dangerous offender.
Milliken said getting support and acknowledgement for Indigenous films has been a persistent challenge through her years in the industry and initiatives like this will help foster a growing venue for Indigenous cinema.
"Having grown up seeing so little of ourselves reflected on screen, I knew that I needed to this from a young age," said Milliken.
"This is vital and I think it's going to mean an injection of some really fantastic voices in the screen-based community."
The funding selection process involved a number of steps including clearly defining what constitutes an Indigenous film project, and the selection of an Indigenous jury for the creative assessment of applications.
"In order to respect the commitments made with the community we made sure that the jury would be made up mostly or only of Indigenous representatives so they could better assess the sensitivity of the script and the director's vision," said Michel Pradier, director of projects financing for Telefilm Canada.
Indigenous jury made selections
The five jury members were selected in consultation with ImagineNATIVE and represent Indigenous communities from across Canada.
A group of Indigenous filmmakers and those involved with the industry decided that to qualify for the funding, a film project had to be 51 per cent owned by a production company whose majority shareholder is Indigenous and at least two of the three key creative partners (producer, director, screenwriter) had to be Indigenous.
"We're here to support all the voices of Canadian creators, that is inclusive of Indigenous creative talent," said Pradier.
"We're more than happy to work with the community and to set up those new parameters to help these things to happen."
Prior to this funding commitment, there was no Indigenous production funding stream, although Telefilm Canada did have a specific "Feature Aboriginal Stories Program" that focused more on development.
The films are expected to begin production over the next year.
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