Good evening.
My name's Sylvie Van Brabant. I've been the founding President of Productions du Rapide-Blanc since 1984. It's a documentary production company that has received numerous awards here and elsewhere, recognized for the quality of its works and for its undeniable social impact on the movie theatre market and the institutional and educational sector.
We take part in many viewings followed by question and answer sessions. We also sell our films to consumers and the educational and institutional sector.
For example, in 2010, we distributed the film Chercher le courant, a film with Roy Dupuis that questions the development of the Romaine River and that presents solutions for green energy in Quebec. The film was sold in the educational and institutional sector 146 times for a total of $23,150. That was before the Harper government bill killed the educational market for us in Canada.
Four years later, in 2014, we distributed the feature film by Dominic Champagne, Anticosti, la chasse au pétrole extrême. The film had the same potential of being of interest to educational institutions in Quebec and Canada, but the market wasn't the same. That film saw 17 institutional sales for a total of $3,325, representing a loss of $20,000, an amount that would have been very beneficial for an SME like ours. It's no longer possible for us to hire a full-time person for distribution work.
Other equally important films from an educational perspective, such as Le Nord au coeur, with geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin, and Le chantier des possibles, which follows the evolution of a building being erected in Pointe-Sainte-Charles that is much discussed these days, suffered from the same phenomenon.
The sales are no longer there. Teachers buy the films at Archambault for $25 instead of the institutional licence of $250.
In 2016, I attended a workshop on distribution with the American group BOND/360, located in New York, which distributes about forty of the best documentaries produced over the last few years. They're documentaries like ours, examining societal issues, and that are just as important to the educational and institutional sector. They confirmed that a third of their income is from the institutional educational sector in the United States, a market that must be available again in Canada.
Thank you very much for listening.