Canadian Bacon - History of Canadian Filmmaking (Part Six)

“To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Beginning of The End of The Golden Years

While Sparling planned for a cinematic future, the market shifted. In the late 1940s and 1950s, traditional markets such as newsreel production declined as newsreel producers themselves declined, as the major American studios sought to consolidate their control over all aspects of international film production. Hollywood was consolidating, tightening its grip on production from sea to sea.

Then the Canadian Cameos began to lose their luster. The public was tired of the same formula, the same flag-waving nostalgia. Viewers were tired of the same formatting the reels repeatedly used, and Sparling and Norrish were detached and resistant to any change. The plot and premise of the post-war Canadian Cameos differed little from those produced before the war. Even going so far as to repeat the filming of one Canadian Cameo, Making Mounties(1950). The reels felt like relics from another era, filled with dated values and tone-deaf portrayals that were 20 years out of date. Bill Singleton, a salesman for ASN, was one of the many voicing his complaints to Sparling that this new type of Canadian Cameo was “impossible to sell”.

The nail in the coffin? Television. Television arrived in the early ‘50s, offering French Quebeckers programming in their language at home, for free, without having to go to the cinema. In 1952, Alex McKie, a forward-thinker on ASN’s staff, tried sounding the alarm—and wrote a report that he gave to Sparling and Norrish, documenting the opportunities for Associated Screen News in producing films for television. Norrish was stubborn and refused to consider the television option until it had developed further in Canada. Sparling was also not enthusiastic about producing for television because the broadcasts were live, and Associated Screen News (ASN) lacked the facilities or expertise to do so. Frustrated by the lack of response, McKie left ASN shortly thereafter and headed to the CBC in Toronto, which was willing to listen. ASN would continue to make film productions despite the difficulties in distribution and the decreased demand for sponsored films, except for producing 30-second commercials for Lowney’s (ice cream, candy bars).

In March 1953, Norrish stepped down as President of the ASN, and William (Bill) J. Singleton was made president. When Singleton assumed the presidency, the sales department declined. For many years, Singleton had been the driving force behind Associated Screen News(ASN)’s sales. Still, now that he was occupied with the President’s office, Singleton’s replacement, Norman Hull, was the only salesman employed with ASN. After this, Sales of the Canadian Cameo series and sponsored film production reached their lowest levels since ASN's formation.

Few new projects were undertaken, and production facilities could not be appropriately maintained without an inflow of capital. No new equipment was acquired, and much of the existing equipment required replacement. Many of the staff members left to work for the National Film Board. The last episode of Sparling’s Canadian Cameo series, Spotlight No. 6, was released in November 1953.

In January 1954, the CPR terminated operations. Now disappointed by the falling profits, it sold its share in Associated Screen News to a group led by Paul L. Nathanson. Nathanson was the son of Nathan L. Nathanson, a businessman who had started the Famous Players Canada Corporation in 1920.

In April of that year, Maxwell Cummings was elected President and George Beeston Vice President of the newly reorganized Associated Screen News. It was revealed in his appointment that Cummings was a partner with Nathanson in acquiring the CPR shares in ASN. The new owners' priority was to break up ASN by selling off the Benograph Company, the distribution division of Associated Screen News of Canada, and the valuable land holdings it controlled. ASN owned several acres of prime industrial land where Norrish had intended to build a facility for manufacturing film equipment. The new owners had no such intention and only wanted to recoup as much of the purchase price as possible as soon as possible. The profits from these sales were not returned to ASN; instead, they were paid as dividends to the shareholders, Nathanson and Cummings.

From there, Cummings hired Murray Briskin as his executive assistant and charged him with developing a television series for Associated Screen News. Briskin had previously worked in New York City for the Music Corporation of America (MCA). When Briskin came to Montreal, he maintained strong ties with MCA, to whom the new owners of ASN wished to sell the completed television series. He had no interest in legacy, nor in Canadian cinema. He wanted to produce a cheap, fast, American product for the masses. Nathenson and Briskin were only interested in turning a quick profit from ASN. They were uninterested in its long-term potential and unwilling to write off any short-term losses.

Briskin quickly set about developing a television series, even though none of the staff writers at ASN had any experience in writing for television. Facing this issue, the MCA arranged for one of its staff writers, who lived in Vermont, to commute to Montreal to develop the story of a young man who was an apprentice store manager for the Hudson’s Bay Company. The series was to be called McLean of Hudson’s Bay. The idea was to tell the story of John McLean, the Hudson Bay’s chief trader. Fox had made a successful film titled Hudson’s Bay in 1940, and this series was seen as a way to further popularize his story.

Bye Bye Sparling

The new owners of ASN also did the unthinkable: they started ignoring the department's best filmmaker, Sparling. Under the new owners, Sparling had remained the executive in charge of production at ASN; however, when filming began on McLean of Hudson’s Bay, the MCA executives in New York sent one of their directors to produce the pilot, thereby reducing Sparling’s role.

This decision was disastrous, leading to numerous budgetary issues and production setbacks.
The pilot was to be situated on Canada's west coast. Originally, Sparling arranged for Ross Beasley, an ASN cameraman in Vancouver, to film coastal scenes. Beasley shot the required footage and sent it to Montreal for processing. This footage had been intended for use on rear-projection screens in the studio. Upon viewing this footage, which Sparling called excellent, the American director determined it didn’t look like the West Coast and commissioned a painted backdrop. Teh attitude of the new owners was that only an American-style production could air on television and be successful.

The MCA then sent an unknown American actor (Frank Mathias) from New York to fill the lead Canadian role, since the MCA executives thought “Canadians couldn’t act.” The pilot's plot concerned a young white girl kidnapped by the natives and rescued by McLean. Sparling and the Hudson’s Bay advisor complained bitterly about the story's direction and the misrepresentation of facts; however, their complaints fell on deaf ears. McLean of Hudson’s Bay was destined for failure.

ASN spent approximately forty thousand dollars in 1955-56 to produce the pilot episode of McLean of Hudson’s Bay. The pilot would be untelevised and was the last production undertaken at Associated Screen Studios. Associated Screen News ceased operations in 1957. The lights dimmed. The studio went quiet. All that remained was the echo of what could’ve been.

In January 1958, ASN was sold to Du-Art Laboratories of New York. After the acquisition, Du-Art changed its name to Associated Screen Industries. No new production was undertaken as Du-Art intended to operate ASI simply as a laboratory. The dubbing of American features into French was the studio's only source of employment.

After 1954, the feature film industry in Quebec collapsed. Television and the collapse of ASN dealt a fatal blow to the industry. Throughout the next decade, feature films and private production were virtually nonexistent. A few semi-professionals produced work for the Quebec government, and the only place where Quebec film survived was within the National Film Board of Canada.

In 1967, Du-Art sold ASI to Bellevue-Humphries, a Canadian consortium that, during the late '60s, intended to establish laboratories in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Further expansion plans were made; however, the expected boom in Canadian film did not materialize, and Humphries sold the Montreal laboratory to Pathe.

Bellevue-Pathe continued to operate the laboratory and was the Canadian distributor for small American studios, such as Walt Disney Studios. During the 1920s and 30s, Pathé's Bellevue laboratories were used to dub numerous films and television shows. In the late seventies, Astral Films, a Canadian company involved in still and motion pictures, merged with Bellevue-Pathe, changing the name to Astral-Bellevue-Pathe. The company is currently known as Astral Communications.

ASNs’ legacy quickly faded and was forgotten as the newsreel industry declined. However, not everyone has forgotten the achievements of Canada’s most unified film effort. The disregard for ASN’s legacy would bother some of the remaining crew and former employees still alive. One man in particular whom it would irk is Gordon Sparling.

In a letter dated October 28th, 1982, addressed to film collector and former police officer Jean-Bélanger, director Gordon Sparling expressed his concern regarding the lack of willingness to preserve Canadian film heritage 25 years after the closure of Associated Screen News: “It was only a couple of decades ago since nobody seemed to give a damn about preserving our motion picture history. For a long time, I was one of the few small voices crying in a large wilderness. You were one of the pioneers who not only said ‘save our old pictures’ but did something about it.”

At the time, Bélanger held Canada's most extensive private film collection. While most film collectors of the era were interested only in fiction and feature films, Bélanger had amassed thousands of government-sponsored, industrial, and commercial films, travelogues, newsreels, amateur films, home movies, and professional short films intended for home exhibition. a chunk of Canadian history that no one else cared to claim. Many titles produced by Associated Screen News were among the reels salvaged by Bélanger. In a choice of dumb luck, personal perseverance, pure chance, or maybe undiagnosed autism, Bélanger single-handedly saved what would have been a forgotten era of Canadian history. Part of this collection would be
salvaged as one of the few remaining fonds of ASN today.

Alongside Bélanger’s collection, Library and Archives Canada preserves materials documenting the company's history that Bellevue-Pathé and Astral Média donated. However, the collection is small, and no complete company filmography has been compiled.

After the collapse of ASN, Canada's cinematic production was severely limited and stalled overall. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the industry was almost nonexistent.

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Except at The CFI

In 1935, amid the golden glow of Hollywood's dream factory and the dying breath of Canada’s own Motion Picture industry, a small group of Canadians came together to preserve the little that remained of their national film medium. They called themselves the National Film Society and were headed by CBC/NFB director Donald Buchanan and a passionate group of film enthusiasts.

The Society would produce independent films based in Ottawa and with provincial branches in Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver. It would also raise awareness of issues in the Canadian educational film market. The NFS’s formation coincided with a low point in Canadian film production and with Hollywood's golden era from the 1920s to the 1960s. It provided support that had previously been nonexistent to the national film community.

Established as an independent, non-profit, federally chartered organization whose primary purpose was "The encouragement and promotion of the study, appreciation, and use of motion and sound pictures and television as educational factors in the Dominion of Canada and elsewhere." The NFS wasn’t just a club. It was a last-ditch effort to prove that Canadian stories were worth protecting. The NFS was concerned about the American film industry's dominance in Canada and global markets, the decline of the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau, and the bureau's inability to advocate for Canadians. Its first report was highly critical of the state of film in Canada and recommended measures to address the lack of opportunities for Canadians to see films from other countries.

The first five years of the National Film Society( NFS) were marked by success, and the organization created a network of film societies and screenings for Canadians across the country, including partnerships with the American and Swedish Film Institutes. The NFS encouraged the preservation of a wide range of films, not just those relevant to Canadians. Their archival program aimed to collect, preserve, and document films and film-related materials from Canada and around the world. They established a publication program that produced books, catalogs, and research papers on or about film, filmmakers, and television. Up until now, there weren’t many film libraries in Canada. The University of Alberta established a film library in 1917, and Quebec was the first province to use film in schools. However, public access to film resources and history was limited. The institute provided a distribution library of educational, artistic, or historical films for rental or loan to individuals, schools, groups, and universities.

Sensing that the National Film Society could not support the preservation of Canadian film alone, Donald Buchanan convinced Prime Minister Mackenzie King to invite future NFB founder John Grierson to evaluate government-funded film production. This trip led to the founding of the National Film Board of Canada.

The only significant obstacle to the National Film Society's activities was funding. Most of the organization's support came from non-governmental organizations and groups not affiliated with the Canadian government or located outside the country. In its early years, the Society was partly supported by grants from the American Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, organizations heavily influenced by American politics. Grant money also came from the British Imperial Trust, an arm of the British government. This proved problematic in later years, when their sponsors ceased funding, thereby reducing the NFS's international reach.

Still, they pressed on. During World War II, the National Film Society collaborated with the National Film Board. The war effort stimulated an increase in Canadian film production and distribution, greatly benefiting the NFS and its reach across Canada, and temporarily expanding the organization's size. The National Film Society accompanied missions across Canada with the NFB and used these opportunities to promote and educate others about the film industry. The distribution of the NFS film libraries expanded significantly, and, according to its 1947 pamphlet, the Society was advancing in all the "traditional" institute fields: a library, research, catalogs, rental services, film society branches, and information services.

In 1950, the National Film Society was renamed the Canadian Film Institute(CFI). The organization maintained its independent, "voluntary," non-governmental status despite the name change. However, in the 1960s, it began experiencing significant financial and credibility problems. Executive Directors Roy Little and Peter Morris revived the organization’s archival department to neutralize these concerns. The CFI expanded to include five additional sites, including the first university-based film society at the University of British Columbia in the early 1960s.

Executive director Peter Morris was an iconic figure in the Canadian film industry and the most influential pioneer of Canadian film studies. Born in Blackpool, in the United Kingdom, in 1937. He was the author of Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema 1885-1939 (1978), the first detailed history of Canadian cinema, and The Film Companion (1984). He translated and edited Georges Sadoul's Dictionary of Films and Dictionary of Film Makers (1972) into English. He wrote many articles and monographs on Canadian and world films and published his book David Cronenberg: A Delicate Balance in 1994. He is the sole reason Canadians can look back and understand the origins of our film industry.

Morris relocated to Ottawa in December 1963 to establish the Canadian Film Institute (CFI) and the Canadian Film Archive. This archive was the country’s first professional film archive recognized by the International Federation of Film Archives (FIA). The extensive collection of the CFI Film Archives was maintained out of its operating budget for the first few years. Despite the suboptimal conditions, Morris persevered and assembled what would eventually become a valuable collection of films and documents. Morris would oversee these archives and its executive committee from 1966-69 and again from 1973-74; from 1967-68, he was FIAF's treasurer.

Unfortunately, the Canadian Film Archive's 35 mm holdings were stored in a large nitrate vault in Beaconsfield, Quebec. Due to a lack of funds, the nitrate film was not properly stored or air-conditioned, as required by the National Film Act of 1953. The National Film Board had assisted the CFI in properly disposing of and preserving its collection. Still, in 1952, rising construction costs for the NFB's headquarters in Montreal led the Department of Public Works to cancel plans for additional film vaults and funding for the CFI archives.

The CFI, sensing an impending disaster, urgently applied for a $65,000 government grant. However, it was too late. In 1967, in Kirkland, Quebec, in a storage house, a piece of nitrate stock self-ignited on a hot day, and the ensuing fire destroyed 13.1 million meters of archival footage valued at $4.8 million (equivalent to $37,551,381 in 2021), reducing a lifetime of Canadian memory to ashes. It was a blow to the Institute and its curators, and angry statements were made to the press, blaming the government for its lack of support. This fire was a catastrophic loss not just for film lovers but for the nation as a whole.

Nitrate is highly flammable and often starts incredibly uncontrollable fires. Remarkably, even when fully submerged underwater, nitrate continues to burn. This was common knowledge, even to government executives overseeing the film industry. Until 1951, 35mm motion pictures were published on nitrate film stock. Collections of Canadian films often had their owners dispose of the remaining items out of fear that the fires would start. Surviving films would also deteriorate rapidly if not stored properly. Most nitrate-based color film would also fade very quickly and had a 5- to 7-year lifespan. Kodachrome, a popular color format of the time with surprising color stability, eventually exhibited uneven fading across the cells.

Despite this, the Archives did survive. By 1973, under Gordon Noble's executive directorship, the collection had somewhat recovered and expanded to include 5,000 conserved films, 140,000 indexed films, 150,000 collected stills, and an extensive library of film books and rare periodicals.

By December 1972, the Canadian Film Institute (CFI) was described as a vibrant organization with an extensive 16mm film library, which generated revenue for the organization's non-profit operations. It ran a series of National Film Theatres nationwide, the largest being the National Library Auditorium at 395 Wellington Street, Toronto. Its Film Study Centre had a specialized film book and periodical library, which included a collection of 100,000 photographs and an archival storage facility for preserving Canada’s film heritage. The CFI also published a series of film monographs, focusing primarily on Canadian cinema, Film & Video Canadiana, a published index/guide to all productions nationwide, and a weekly Cablevision program called The Film Scene.

The CFI had carefully developed a framework to ensure it met its organization's preservation goals. Specific requirements were established to determine which films could be retained and which would not. These required that the movies and programs fit into one or more of the following categories: Sociological, Historical, and cultural (including aesthetic). The Canadian Film Institute’s “acquisition priorities” also included foreign material for reference purposes if it had significantly impacted Canadian culture.

Unfortunately, the Canadian Film Institute (CFI) experienced its most severe financial crisis just as its archival collection was being rebuilt, a crisis compounded by the organization's increasing reach. Forced by their lack of funding and with no other resources to turn to, the board of directors and Noble arranged to avert the financial crisis by "donating" the Canadian Film Archives to the Public Archives in exchange for the support of $50,000 a year in various areas of Institute activity if they wanted any chance of survival. In 1976, the CFI archives official became the National Film Archives of the Public Archives of Canada. In the coming years, saving and preserving television programs became its most significant activity, while preserving and discovering lost historic films fell to the wayside.

The internet and “online viewing storage were not options during this time period. The only way to preserve something was through physical means. The new National Film Archives recognized this, and its recommendations suggested that it did not have time to wait for new technology to be developed for film preservation. Therefore, they had to make some hard decisions. The National Film Archives Advisory Committee established vague, broad criteria for preserving film and its history, as there weren’t enough resources to save everything. Their procedure consisted of five steps. The first was by trying to prioritize nitrate films of cultural importance. Then, the films would be tested to assess the degree of deterioration and reprinted. These priority films would be remastered and reprinted on ester-based stocks, and the nitrate originals would be destroyed. By following these practices, the National Film Archives was able to preserve a large number of films.

The downside of the government's possession of the National Film Archives was that it hollowed out the Canadian Film Institute. Morris, now with no archive to oversee, left to become a film professor, and Gordon Noble went to a job in the Secretary of State's office. The Institute split into three departments to maintain its original mandate: the distribution library, publications, and the National Film Theatre.

The CFI would hold on and stumble through the turn of the next decade. By 1981, the CFI was on life support. On January 13, 1981, an article appeared in The Globe and Mail with the headline, "Film Institute May Die From Lack of Funds." Continuing: "The Canadian Film Institute is facing a drastic cutback of services and possible extinction unless it can persuade the government sources that provide approximately half of its budget to release an emergency appropriation of $106,000." The executive director, Frederik Manter, quoted, "to avoid termination, we will have to cut back on our publications and our National Film Theatre. To do that would mean that we are no longer an institute." This was the first main piece of press coverage the institute had gotten in 20 years. The CFI was the world’s second-oldest film institute, and people barely cared that it was on its last legs.

In 1998, in an effort to introduce new initiatives into the CFI, the CFI founded Café Ex in Montreal. Café Ex was founded to present artist-curated evenings of independent experimental film and video at Club SAW, an artist-run exhibition center. The series featured Canadian experimental cinema, with guest filmmakers presenting their work for a "pay-what-you-can" admission. Some of the artists featured at Café Ex included Clint Enns and Leslie Supnet (Toronto) (2014), Theodore Ushev (Montreal) (2014), Monique Moumblow (Montreal) (2013), Bridget Farr (Ottawa) (2013), and Phillip Hoffman (Toronto) (2013).

The Canadian Film Institute, based in Ottawa, remains active and organizes and stages various festivals throughout the year, notably the International Film Festival of Ottawa and the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF). The OIAF is the CFI's largest annual festival. Founded in 1976, it attracts filmmakers from across Canada and around the world.

In collaboration with non-profit community organizations, the institute also organizes several specialist film festivals devoted to international films from various world countries or regions, including the European Union Film Festival, the Latin American Film Festival, the Israeli Film Festival, the India Film Festival, Bright Nights: The Baltic-Nordic Film Festival, the German Language Film Festival, and the Portuguese Language Film Festival.

Despite this, the organization is not widely credited within the film community for its groundbreaking work in Canada, as other organizations have assumed many of its initiatives. One of its rarely logged contributions is the formation of the Canadian Screen Awards. Under the Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE) umbrella, 44 organizations, including the NFS/CFI and Donald Buchanan, launched the Canadian Film Awards in 1949. The ceremony was held in Ottawa for the first three years. The first prizes were works of art by Canadian artists rather than statues.

CFI was also responsible for the nation’s first post-secondary film courses. CFI's Peter Morris organized “The Art of Film,” a week-long intensive seminar McMaster University’s Extension Department offered in 1963, and another course by Carleton University the following year. Peter Morris also became the founding president of the Film Studies Association of Canada, an editor of the Canadian Journal of Film Studies (1989-93), and a member of its advisory editorial board. Mentoring the next generation of young film students, his career would change the course of film exhibition in the country. Several of his mentees would blossom across the film industry, including Wayne Clarkson, who founded the Film Expo, expanded the Festival of Festivals (TIFF), and concluded his career as the CEO of OFDC, CFC, and Telefilm. Morris would continue to spread the infectious joy of filmmaking until his retirement in 2002 and death on February 2, 2011, after a brief but intense battle with cancer.

toward the end of his life, Morris was perplexed by why Canadians turned away from their historical roots in film. "It might be interesting to speculate why we, as Canadians, have ignored our history; why, in the case of film, we have even assumed that there is no history worth considering," he wrote.

There is no Canada without French Canada.

There is no Canada without French Canada. Quebec, sitting in the heart of Canada, has had the luxury that the rest of the provinces have not, shelter from American influences in film, a kind of cinematic immunity. This immunity shaped the industry into a distinctive, defiant film culture with a thriving filmmaking community, fostering a strong cultural identity and resistance to assimilation.

However, Francophone filmmakers were often at a disadvantage—experiencing fewer opportunities and resources than their anglophone colleagues, which significantly separated them administratively and financially. As a result, various Canadian film institutions would create a distinct francophone studio for French filmmakers, and provincial television networks would begin to demand large amounts of material, particularly French-language material, to be produced for Quebec residents using local resources. This sparked the beginning of Quebec’s modern film boom and the first television productions made for French audiences. Some of these include the Passe-Partout series (1955–57), the 26 dramatic episodes of Panoramique (1957–59), a landmark for Quebec fictional cinema, and the Temps Present series of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The 1960s marked a new decade of cultural revolution in the country. Quebec’s premier, Jean Lesage, from 1960 to 1966, had just led the province through a highly social, political, and economic transformation, dubbed the Quiet Revolution. This was a rejection of the previous government's traditional value systems and economic systems. The goal was to protect the province's culture by making French its official language. The quiet revolution led to a boom in French Canadian filmmaking. It also made the province a political and cultural anomaly in North America. It created a distinct culture within Canada to secure legal and political rights.
There was also increased pressure to produce feature films on Canadian subjects. The industry became more structured during this period, and films of the time reflected these changes. A more nationalistic, politically engaged, and distinctly French-Canadian spirit was echoed in films like Gilles Groulx’s Le Chat dans le sac(The Cat in the Bag) (1964) and Denys Arcand’s 1970 documentary On est au coton( We are in cotton), as well as the 1971 drama Mon Oncle Antoine(My Uncle Antoine), which is regarded as one of the best Canadian films in history.

Canadian film director Pierre Perrault dominated direct filmmaking of this period with his saga of the people of Île-aux-Coudres, an island in Québec, beginning with his film Pour la suite du monde (1963) from the National Film Board. With his cinematographers Michel Brault and Bernard Gosselin, who often co-directed, he wanted to observe and record the awakening of the Quebec nation and to play a part in it. Cinema wasn’t just an art form to Quebec—it was resistance against Anglophone culture overruling their own.

Some French filmmakers explored direct cinema for social action, using the medium to amplify the voices of those long ignored. Several of these efforts occurred within the National Film Board program Société nouvelle (the francophone equivalent of Challenge for Change). It involved filming members of marginalized communities, often with their participation. The program debuted in 1968 with Fernand Dansereau’s St-Jérôme and lasted over a decade.

Behind the scenes, the industry organized Quebec producers to create their professional association (Association des producteurs de films du Québec) in 1966. Post-processing and film Technicians founded their union (Syndicat national du cinéma) in 1969. Shortly after them, the Association professionnelle des cinéastes, formed a few years later, would publish the radical manifesto Le cinéma: autre visage du Québec colonisé (1971). However, the organization folded in 1972. The following year, the directors founded the Association des réalisateurs de films du Québec.

The Quebec government followed suit, transforming its censorship bureau into the Bureau de Surveillance du cinéma and its film board into the Office du film du Québec in 1961. After the creation of the Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC) in 1967 (now Telefilm Canada), Quebec filmmakers lobbied the provincial government to enact legislation on cinema and to establish a similar film-funding corporation. From there, the Institut québécois du cinéma (IQC) was founded in 1975.

In 1977, the Institut Québécois de Cinéma—now SODEC—launched four separate aid programs to protect its industry. The Institute aimed these four initiatives at investment in the production, distribution, exhibition, and restoration of old theatres, as well as in cultural funds. For production projects that wished to distributed, films had to be written and directed by people legally residing in Quebec. Most actors and technicians had to be from the province, and the production house and equipment had to be Quebecois. The idea was that the more art houses there were, the more likely Canadian films were to be shown to Canadians. They succeeded. The more art houses there were, the more French Canadian stories found an audience. It was a homegrown blueprint for survival. This system handled projects for French Canadians at every stage of the filmmaking process. It ensured consistent funding and resources at each level, rather than granting large sums to filmmakers and hoping for the best, more or less what English Canada would do for the foreseeable future.