Thirty years ago, I organized two film screening series in Toronto at the Bloor CInema called Toronto Film Now and later Film Can.

What was my motivation? My thoughts at the time were:

“In a sense, it’s a radical thing to see Canadian films on a Canadian screen. So it has to been done slowly. But ideally we would have Canadian films on Canadian screens, and the people that are making these films would be able to work with larger budgets and do films that they’re interested in doing in Canada for Canadians.”

See Steve Grant interview me on Maclean-Hunter‘s Community Link cable TV show on February 25, 1986.

Are we better off today?

The Canadian film industry has always found it difficult to exhibit films in Canada. Even Telefilm has given up on shooting for 5% of the box office, though we now have an annual National Canadian Film Day.

My take: I wonder where we’ll be in thirty more years. Will we still be going to the movies? While the majority of tickets are purchased by heavy moviegoers, one third of Canadians just don’t go to the movies at all. Cinema attendance peaked in 2002 and is down almost 20% since then. By the way, that’s the date when approximately 10% of the world got online; today it’s more than half. Coincidence? I think not.