Canadian Dreams: The Making and Marketing of Independent Films

David Kimmel is a Ph.D. candidate in history at York University.

Despite the sanguine tone of journalist Michael Posner’s introduction
and Norman Jewison’s breezy foreword, the bulk of Canadian Dreams is
excellent reading for Canadian movie buffs. For film students it is
essential. Furthermore, its case-study approach makes the book entirely
suitable for the reading list of any progressive MBA program.

According to Posner, the “core problem of Canadian cinema is not the
talent to make the movies, but the expertise to market and promote them.
Marketing and promotion is, anatomically, the Achilles heel of Canadian
cinema.” In 10 engaging studies of commercially successful films, he
finds that the challenge can be met.

Written “in association with the Canadian Independent Film Caucus,”
the book’s stated purpose is to be “instructive” or
“inspirational.” But don’t let the title fool you. This book is
not about dreams, it’s about what success in the Canadian film
business really requires: talent, hard work, good connections, and
(especially) good luck. In a book about film marketing, it seems a touch
jarring to suggest that Canadian filmmakers are “impelled by their
dreams.” This ingenuous remark, found in the introduction, will be of
little comfort to aspiring artists who may never achieve the box-office
success of Arcand’s Le Déclin or cult status а la Gimli Hospital,
let alone the Critics’ Prize at Cannes. Success in the Canadian film
business may have much to do with flights of fancy, but good fortune is
often far more consequential. For example, even Posner would grant that
the felicitous casting of Geneviиve Bujold partly explains the success
of Brault’s Les Noces de Papier.

Still, this is a serviceable book, complete with lists of creative
credits, synopses, and descriptions of films’ origins, development,
casting, financing, pre- and postproduction, festivals, marketing and
distribution, ancillary sales, and theatrical releases (domestic, U.S.,
and foreign). It is modestly but attractively illustrated, and a list of
distributors’ addresses has been appended just in case the titles
cannot be found in your local video store (not even in the “foreign
films” section).