Distinct perspectives are molded on the East Coast. Director John Walker, one of the founders of the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) who now lives in Nova Scotia, cites many driving factors for our independent ways: a spirited storytelling tradition, a density of educational institutions, and a diversity of cultures including Indigenous peoples, Black Canadians, Acadians, Gaelic settlers, and the exponential rise of immigrants in recent years. To Walker, a seasoned filmmaker, these factors are advantages: “We have a real leg up in terms of our possibilities for storytelling here.”
Despite its assets and being home to documentary titans like Walker and Sylvia D. Hamilton, the region is usually treated as an afterthought. This isn’t unique to the documentary landscape: Atlantic Canadians are perpetual underdogs in every field of endeavour. It’s a situation that breeds resourcefulness and innovative spirit (more ideal filmmaker traits!). And admittedly there’s freedom in being on the fringes: “I’ve never felt like I have to fit into someone else’s version of how this is done,” says director Millefiore Clarkes (The Song and the Sorrow) from her home in PEI. But the associated isolation can have its downsides. “What is your superpower can also be your Achilles heel,” adds Clarkes, who won DOC Institute’s Vanguard award in 2019.
Prior to the pandemic, through advocacy efforts, a flurry of documentary commissions arose on the East Coast. But a backlog of productions and nationwide economic decline have since resulted in decreased funding. The types of commissions have changed, too, with programming priorities favouring feel-good fare and doc series. The shift concerns acclaimed director and Sea to Sea Productions co-founder Teresa MacInnes (Conviction): “Economic downturns are when people are exploited, and we need to document this period.” Though filmmaking tools are more accessible in the digital age, the sheer popularity of documentaries makes funding even more competitive. “It’s kind of a perfect storm,” says Walker.
Atlantic Canadians are used to weathering rough conditions. But struggles of the broader industry are intensified here. The decrease in one-off or feature documentaries, which typically offer directors more creative freedom, artistic growth, and time with the subject, is especially concerning for the East Coast, since it’s obvious that, when features do manage to be commissioned, the bulk of the funding lands in epicentres such as Montreal and Toronto.
That’s partly why MacInnes’ recent DOC Atlantic advocacy work with Screen Nova Scotia was so important. She helped demonstrate the need for changes in their Content Creator Fund, which hadn’t differentiated between documentary formats in its initial draft guidelines. Receptive to the feedback, Screen Nova Scotia assigned a 20% top-up contribution to qualifying documentary features and one-offs—a marked improvement from the proposed 5%. In 2024, the organization is boosting that amount to 25%.
Advocacy is an intrinsic part of documentary culture in the Atlantic region. Recently, it’s spurred on “Atlantic Conversations,” a series of panel discussions designed to help local filmmakers. In the decade prior to the panel on Telefilm, only one Atlantic production had received financing from the Theatrical Documentary Fund, partly due to a lack of submissions. In the recent round, however, 10 productions applied and two were funded in what’s an upwards trend.
The fight for recognition has been a long one. Years ago, after repeatedly having no local films at Hot Docs, DOC Atlantic suggested the festival present a series of Atlantic Canadian work. Hot Docs programmers have since become conscious of their previous blind spot, inviting more films from the region and without pigeonholing filmmakers. “Sometimes the only films they showed were about lobster traps and lobster fishermen,” jokes long-time DOC Atlantic president Chuck Lapp. “So, the social-issue documentaries from the region were somewhat ignored. But not now.”
Beyond the NFB and CBC, which both still carry the torch for social justice and perspective-driven docs, many East Coast filmmakers have had to seek out alternative funding sources. Established directors such as Ariella Pahlke and Ann Verrall have turned to acquiring money from arts councils, while others make use of SSHRC grants and crowdfunding. (Award-winning 2023 feature Celestial Queer: The Life, Work and Wonder of James MacSwain raised money through IndieGoGo, for example.) Since these resources rarely provide sustainable income, resulting films are mostly passion projects.
Sobaz Benjamin is another filmmaker whose projects embody the power of documentary. His first forays into the form served as a way to heal internalized racism and exorcize trauma he’s experienced as a Black man. After moving to Halifax, he was approached by the provincial Department of Justice to make a film addressing the over-incarceration of Black men. But Benjamin wanted to create something more long-ranging. “One of the things that was kind of difficult for me was the idea of parachuting in, extracting what you need, and then parachuting out,” says Benjamin. “So, I really began to craft alternatives to that: a context where storytelling would require sustained, mutually beneficial relationships.”
And so, with funding from various sources and provincial departments including Justice, Benjamin founded In My Own Voice (abbreviated as iMOVe). The organization strives to heal and empower racialized and otherwise marginalized people through art, storytelling, and film. In fact, one of iMOVe’s programs is called the Kintsugi Monologues, referencing a Japanese ceramics repair technique that embraces wounds, transforming them into something beautiful.
Melding therapeutic efforts with concrete industry skills, iMOVe has evolved into a production company. Benjamin likens it to a training hospital. He’s a package deal: if he’s approached to produce something, the employer knows they’re also recruiting iMOVe trainees. “A lot of the organizations that have hired us see its social purpose,” says Benjamin, who will be working soon with Arcadia Entertainment.
Just as iMOVe equips filmmakers of colour with tangible skills and opportunities, there have been other efforts to diversify the East Coast documentary community. Most notable is DOC Atlantic’s recently implemented Breakthrough program. According to a press release, the program “helps fill the gap for emerging talent” from BIPOC communities by providing workshops, mentorship, networking opportunities, and, for this year’s participants, a trip to Hot Docs.
Part of last year’s inaugural cohort, Inuk filmmaker Jessica Brown says Breakthrough played “a significant role” in shaping her career. She’s currently producing Here to Stay, a docuseries highlighting the urban Indigenous community in St. John’s. Brown has also founded Northern Film Initiative (NFI), a non-profit organization that aims to amplify Indigenous representation in the industry and, through a partnership with DOC, provides mentorship and training to Indigenous youth. In a full-circle moment, the NFI became a sponsor of Breakthrough in 2023.
With an NFB feature currently in production, local legend Cathy Martin, Atlantic Canada’s first-ever Mi’kmaw filmmaker, thankfully remains active. But emerging Indigenous voices like Brown are also stepping up to the plate. Charlottetown-born Mi’kmaw director Eliza Knockwood is another prolific Breakthrough alum with promise—her recent work includes Ice Walk (2022) and Gina’matimg: A Time of Learning (2023). The two-spirit documentarian earned Telefilm support for Rite of Passage, an upcoming doc feature based on the childhood of her mother, who grew up when Indigeneity was treated with extreme prejudice. (It’s rare to see a project from Atlantic Canada, much less Prince Edward Island, earn support from Telefilm, making Knockwood’s accomplishment especially noteworthy.) Meanwhile, Membertou’s Dawn Wells co-directed Songs of Unama’ki, which won best short documentary at this year’s Atlantic International Film Festival. Next, she’s making Creepy Cape Breton, a Bell Fibe series exploring Mi’kmaw ghost stories.
These boosts of diversity have been encouraging and much needed, yet the work isn’t done. Filmmakers with a disability, for example, remain few and far between, with Josh Dunn, director of 2021’s Our Hearts Aren’t Disabled, being a notable exception. And then there’s the issue of retention and career mobility. “We’re doing better, but it does seem like there’s plenty of room for more,” says Benjamin, who stresses the need for meaningful long-term support over a focus on numbers. “You don’t want to just say, ‘Oh, we have X amount of Black people, People of Colour in the industry,” he says, asking the relevant questions: “Is it a healthy industry for those people? Are they staying there? Are they bringing more people in? Are they moving up?”
Sustainability is admittedly a universal concern for documentarians. And challenges feel heightened in the Atlantic, where cost of living has skyrocketed and tax rates are among Canada’s highest. Throw in a lack of adequate funding and, despite the promising talent in the region, the state of the industry feels precarious. In fact, if national agencies and funding bodies don’t support more Atlantic productions, MacInnes’ suggestion is to advocate for the CBC to receive more money and possibly a CMF envelope: “Either things have to be more evenly distributed or we need more resources locally,” says MacInnes, whose aim is for the art form to provide livable incomes.
For all of her advocacy work, MacInnes refuses to adopt a victim mindset: “People are incredibly creative and resilient here. I think powerful culture comes from resilience.” MacInnes adds that she takes pride in the fact that, instead of chasing money, Atlantic Canadians prioritize community and family. Indeed, three of the filmmakers interviewed for this piece—MacInnes, Walker, and Benjamin—were born elsewhere but moved to the Maritimes to be with their partners (there’s a joke in there somewhere about how Atlantic Canada is for lovers). And that value system, coupled with a hard-earned scrappiness, often translates on screen.
Like MacInnes and Benjamin, Renée Blanchar worries whether the industry will offer the next generation of documentarians what they need—funding, time, creative freedom—to do good work. The acclaimed New Brunswick director admits that she herself has taken a temporary step back from film. The pause is mainly to focus on her fictional TV series Le monde de Gabrielle Roy (2021–), but also because documentaries can be so draining. Her recent work A Love Letter to Léopold L. Foulem (2022) boasts a healthy festival life, but took eight years to make, relying on funding from arts councils as well the NFB’s Aide au cinéma indépendent du Canada program for post-production. Still, Blanchar believes there’s power in a labour of love: “It’s never easy to make a film, but that makes it fun.” To her, constraints can encourage creativity.
Blanchar, who studied at La Fémis in Paris, doesn’t believe her home of Caraquet, New Brunswick isolates her, but it does influence her topics and perspective—and that’s a strength. Plus, thanks to her Acadian roots, when she makes a film, her community sees and supports it. Hailing from the country’s smallest province, Millefiore Clarkes has had similar experiences. “When it comes to impact on PEI, I know quite clearly that I’ve made a difference,” says Clarkes, whose documentary on organic farming Island Green (2013) remains a point of pride and conversation on the Island.
“In a world that’s getting ever more concerned with hits and international appeal and whatnot, we forget that sometimes preaching to the choir is okay,” says Clarkes. “Every place deserves to have itself reflected even if it’s just to itself. That’s a worthy endeavour.” It’s a good point, particularly when these communities are overlooked from the get-go. Documentaries shed light on the unseen and, when there’s now (valid) scrutiny over who tells whose story, it seems logical for Atlantic Canadians to be given more opportunities as creators. Plus, smaller or regionally specific films can still have global appeal or acclaim. Take Jacquelyn Mills’ Geographies of Solitude (2022) for example: the Cape Breton-born director won 27 awards during its outstanding festival run, which included the Berlinale, Hot Docs, and AFI Fest.
Walker also considers smaller, community-serving films as the ideal way forward, instead of big, high-budget international productions. He offers ancient Greek plays as a reference point, highlighting their timelessness and universality: “They’re very specific to a place and yet they speak to humanity. So, I think we can do that,” says Walker, looking to the future: “Make films that speak to the human condition, and they can be very specific to this place, but those stories can travel anywhere.”
For more perspectives on the state of documentary filmmaking across Canada, read more about the Winnipeg scene, Ontario, and Alberta, plus Quebec and B.C. in issue 120.
