UniversalCinema Magazine had the pleasure of interviewing Yanick Létourneau, a Montreal based producer and head of Peripheria Productions at the Red Sea International Film Festival (Red Sea IFF).
Cara-Lynn Branch, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you tell us about yourself and your company?
Yanick Létourneau (YL): I co-founded Peripheria, 22 years ago with the Diego Briceño, who is now [the Senior Manager, Diverse Community Content at the Canada Media Fund]. And together, we wanted to create a company because we didn’t feel we belong to the film industry. We wanted to create our own company to do our own films because nobody wanted to produce us. So that’s how we started basically. And the goal was to make films from the periphery and try to reach bigger audience.
(UM): What do you mean by periphery?
(YL): Marginalized group of people who feel outside of the system: Black Arab, Latino filmmakers in Canada, that don’t have support. So, it was really about us, and giving – bringing those voices forward.
(UM): I know right diversity is very important for everyone, but I imagine it was very different when you started trying to raise funds.
(YL): It was the difficult because we didn’t know anyone but little by little, we managed to, you know, doing hip hop music videos and more like commercial stuff at the beginning and then switch to documentary in about 2002-2003 and then continue. Then around 2009-2010, we really switch to feature film, doing mostly international co-productions and that allowed us to take on projects and find money outside of Canada, but also outside to work with filmmakers like Juan Andrés Arango, who’s a Canadian-Colombian, very famous director in Latin America but not really well-known in North America.
And what’s her name? Uh, Zaynê Akyol, who’s a documentary filmmaker, Kurdish background based in Quebec. We did her first feature. She has now another feature that’s doing really well. So, you know we’re doing these kind of films that I think didn’t have that much attention in Canada or much support from broadcasters because I think the main problem in Canada we have is the broadcaster. We’re very conservative and they are the trigger for Canadian financing, you know, and because they’re not supporting local filmmakers to have different types of stories from different backgrounds. Well, it’s harder. Sorry.
(UM): I feel it’s very difficult to make independent films in Canada.
(YL): Yeah. It is very difficult, especially for an English-language Canadian filmmaker. I think it’s really difficult to get into the game. You need to start doing a film with basically no money like a hundred, two hundred thousand that you basically work for free and everybody works as slave for free.
And it’s just not viable, you know? But that’s the only way to slowly get recognized. There are some interesting examples in the last few years. But I wish that there would be much more support from Canadian broadcaster who are so conservative that they’re pushing a very narrow version of what Canadian identity is.
And that’s unfortunate because Canadian identity is complex, is multiple, is diverse. And it’s out of that there’s all these stories are not being told that I think could reach broader audience, but the broadcasters are just so scared. So, thankfully, there are parallel ways. And I think international co-productions, film festivals, international sales agents are always to counter and find other ways to make films and get known outside of Canada.
… I feel that we’re so inhibited, you know, we’re scared of- we’re not in touch with the- what is being done around the world. We’re very like inward-looking or just looking to the U.S.
(UM): Yeah.
(YL): And so our cinema is a bit generic, whether it’s artsy, more festival or we’re- we need to invest in the development of stories.
We need to invest in more diverse, more- broader filmmakers to generate new content that will reach global audience and Canadian audience.
And this is just not the case right now, you know, and even like big projects are being made in Canada, too often it’s by the same people with the same production company. We’ve been there for the last 20 to 30 years, and these films are not going anywhere. They’re not finding any audience whether in Canada or at the international level. It’s really the smaller companies, people like us, who do things alternatively, that do manage to get little films, get seen by much many people like, Night of the Kings is a good example. Again, small movie, all Black cast, made in Ivory Coast, that reaches the highest recognition you can have, which is the Oscar. Wins all the major Black awards during Oscar season in Hollywood for Best International Feature, and that gets sold to Hulu in about 15 territories.
(UM): You mentioned Hulu, I’ve heard from some independent filmmakers that they didn’t get anything when they give their project to biggest streamers. So, they sometimes feel that they’re getting abused and it makes life more difficult. I want to know your experience of dealing with streamers, the global ones.
(YL): It’s true that it’s really difficult. We got on Hulu because we had a major U.S. distributor called NEON. But if I myself tried to approach a Netflix US and others, it’s very difficult and thankfully, now, they’ve opened an office in Canada, same for Amazon. So that’s a good sign, but I feel that again, they’re kind of looking for the same thing as before. And it’s unfortunate because I really believe that it’s by investing in new talent producers that are edgier, that take risk, that have a cap on what’s going on in the country and around the world and bring new types of stories that will be able to interest audience in Canada. And right now, like, who watches Canadian film?
(UM): No one.
YL: Who watches Quebec films even today? The only films that people watch in Quebec are the big comedies, okay? The good and little feature… they are not seen by anyone, so there’s really a discrepancy between what is being funded and what people want to watch and we need to get out of there, you know? I hope that- I put a lot of hope in Netflix and Amazon for Canada, and I hope that they will take risk because without taking risk, we’re just gonna replicate the same system and the same problem and keep the status quo as is.
We need to break the status quo if we want things to change, and if we want really Canadian cinema to emerge because the way we’ve been doing things, it’s not emerging. It’s not- it doesn’t exist unfortunately. At the global scale, it doesn’t exist.
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