Ladies and gentlemen, I am passionate about documentary film. I defend the cinema of the real, mine and that of my brothers and sisters from Quebec and Canada, from coast to coast.
Our kind of documentary film enables viewers to reflect, and question appearances, prejudices and injustices, but especially to glimpse pieces of our humanity, those that bind us regardless of our colour, language or religion. That humanity stems from our immense diversity, but also from our singularity, as a result of which documentary filmmakers at times manage to create universal stories that can touch Africans as well as Europeans.
Documentary film enables us to give a voice to visionaries, scientists, artists and famous people, but also to those who are excluded, marginal, without a voice, to the Saskatchewan farmer abused by Monsanto, to the fisherman from Nova Scotia weeping for the sea and his family boat because the cod is gone, to the lost street kid who spits out his pain and to the disabled youth who overcomes a missing chromosome to stun us with his magnificent drawing and smile.
Documentary, when we take the time to do it, enables us to reveal the transformation in living beings: to see the street kid turn his life around, to hear the clear mind of the farmer and fisherman, and so on. Viewers can also imagine their own transformation, the possibility of changing the course of things, of putting an end to barbarism and hailing the emergence of a just society that respects life.
This kind of documentary, which stems from an exemplary tradition, that of the NFB, is now under threat. A political-economic system appears to want to promote only the viewer side, what I would call entertainment. To do what exactly? To compete with the United States or to fill the addicts' pockets with money that seems to flow in the early years of the 21st century? To give consumer citizens bread and circuses, to clear their minds of their stressed lives, to put them to sleep in order to sell them more Coca-Cola, fattening snacks and useless objects?
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you recognize your role in the evolution of the society of tomorrow. The present government has already signed the death warrant of one of the building blocks of independent documentary film, the CIFVF, the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund. That fund made it possible to produce works of quality that were screened in colleges, church basements, NGO meeting rooms and so on, and just as easily in the comfort of our living rooms, in front of the television. These are films that enable us to evolve as individuals and as a society.
Please don't put the last nail in the casket of independent documentary production. A number of producer-directors are rightly concerned that independent production may disappear in Canada.
Thank you.