The Canadian Film Awards were the leading Canadian cinema awards from 1949 until 1978. These honours were conducted annually, except in 1974 when a number of Quebec directors withdrew their participation and prompted a cancellation. In the 1970s they were also sometimes known as the Etrog Awards for sculptor Sorel Etrog , who designed the statuette .
24-742: The awards were succeeded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema 's Genie Awards in 1980; beginning in 2013 the Academy merged the Genie Awards with its separate Gemini Awards program for television to create the contemporary Canadian Screen Awards . The award was first established in 1949 by the Canadian Association for Adult Education, under a steering committee that included the National Film Board 's James Beveridge ,
48-493: A field of four other much stronger nominees, with some writers later declaring that the film's victory, over enduring Canadian film classics such as Kamouraska and Réjeanne Padovani , essentially confirmed that the boycotting directors were correct in their beliefs. In the final years of the Canadian Film Awards, the dedicated festival was discontinued, and instead the eligible films were screened as part of
72-495: A job as chief operating officer of the Toronto International Film Festival . Since December 2023, the chair of the board of directors] is Thomas Santram and the vice-chair is Solange Attwood. The previous chair of the board of directors was John Young of Boat Rocker Media . Jean Pierre Lefebvre Jean Pierre Lefebvre ( French: [ʒɑ̃ pjɛʁ ləfɛvʁ] ; born 17 August 1941)
96-408: A number of shorts were produced within a year before the initiative was terminated, and Lefebvre left to form his own production company, Cinak, with his wife and editor, Marguerite Duparc . He writes and produces all his own films. Lefebvre was one of the first Canadian filmmakers to receive international acclaim for his work; his film Don't Let It Kill You (Il ne faut pas mourir pour ça) (1967)
120-534: A replacement for the formerly distinct Genie Award (for film) and Gemini Award (for television) ceremonies. The Prix Gémeaux for French-language television remains a separate awards program. The organization also administers the Prism Prize for music videos. The chief executive officer as of October 2022 is Tammy Frick . The organization's previous CEO was Beth Janson , who left in April 2022 to take
144-479: A short drama, then three independent features. He joined the National Film Board of Canada and made two films, including the 1968 feature My Friend Pierrette (Mon amie Pierrette) , co-starring Raôul Duguay and produced by Clément Perron . Lefebvre was then asked to head the NFB's French-language fiction studio. He began its Premières Oeuvres series, designed to make low-budget shorts and features. Four features and
168-655: Is a Canadian filmmaker. He is widely admired as "the godfather of independent Canadian cinema," particularly among young, independent filmmakers. Jean Pierre Lefebvre studied literature at the University of Montréal and taught for two years at the Jesuit-run Loyola College in Montreal (now part of Concordia University ). He began writing as a film critic, first for Quartier Latin , then for Séquences and Objectif . He directed his first film,
192-482: Is a listing of all Canadian Film Awards Ceremonies. Academy of Canadian Cinema %26 Television The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television is a Canadian non-profit organization created in 1979 to recognize the achievements of the over 4,000 Canadian film industry and television industry professionals, most notably through the Canadian Screen Awards The mandate of the Academy
216-484: Is to honour outstanding achievements; to heighten public awareness of and increase audience attendance of and appreciationпа of Canadian film and television productions; and to provide critically needed, high-quality professional development programs, conferences and publications. Since 2012, the Academy's primary national awards program is the Canadian Screen Awards , which were announced that year as
240-477: The 1st Genie Awards in 1980. A separate award for Best Feature Film was instituted in 1964. Acting awards were introduced in 1968, and then expanded into separate categories for lead and supporting performers in 1970. In 1968, the consortium of organizations that presented the awards up to that point discontinued their involvement, and the awards were reorganized into their own independent organization with their own board of directors. A new bronze award statuette
264-642: The Canadian Film Institute were also brought in as sponsors of the awards. The first presentation was held on April 27, 1949 at the Little Elgin Theatre in Ottawa. With only a handful of Canadian films released each year, they were generally a small affair. Unlike the eligibility rules for the contemporary Canadian Screen Awards , which are based on the film having already been screened theatrically in either commercial release or
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#1732765376419288-634: The Festival of Festivals lineup after that event was launched in 1976, with the ceremony taking place at the end of the festival. After 1978, the awards were taken over by the new Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television , and reorganized into the new Genie Awards . Despite the renaming, Etrog's statuette was initially retained as the design of the Genie statuettes; they later underwent a modernized revamp, but were still based on Etrog's original design. The Genie Awards continued to be presented until 2012, when
312-548: The Gemini Awards were launched in 1986 to replace the ACTRAs as Canada's primary television awards. When Academy publicist Maria Topalovich was preparing a history of the awards for publication in the early 1980s, she found that even the Academy itself had not received complete documentation of the awards' past winners and nominees in the takeover, and instead she had to undertake extensive archival research. The following
336-525: The francophone film industry in Quebec . This began in 1970, when filmmaker Jean Pierre Lefebvre threatened to withdraw his film Q-Bec My Love from the competition if the Ontario Censor Board did not withdraw its demand for the film to be edited. Several other filmmakers were also prepared to withdraw in solidarity, although provincial cabinet minister James Auld intervened to dissuade
360-580: The Academy merged them with its Gemini Awards program for television to create the contemporary Canadian Screen Awards . After launching the Genies, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television created the Bijou Awards , which were presented in 1981 as a new home for several award categories that were being dropped from the Genies, although the Bijous were never presented again after 1981, and instead
384-605: The Canadian Foundation's Walter Herbert, filmmaker F. R. Crawley , the National Gallery of Canada 's Donald Buchanan and diplomat Graham McInnes. The initial jury consisted of Hye Bossin , managing editor of Canadian Film Weekly ; M. Stein of Famous Players; CBC film critic Gerald Pratley ; Moira Armour of the Toronto and Vancouver Film societies; and Ian MacNeill from CAAE. The Canadian Foundation and
408-526: The awards for Best Short Film or Best Amateur Film instead constituting the highest honour given to a film that year. Even the award for Film of the Year, when presented at all, often also went to a short film. The awards were also almost totally dominated by the National Film Board, to the point that independent filmmakers sometimes alleged a systemic bias which was itself a contributing factor to
432-423: The awards returned in 1975, the eligibility period covered the entire two-year period since the previous ceremony in 1973; however, the awards committee revived the defunct Film of the Year category alongside the ongoing Best Feature Film award, so that two Best Pictures, one for each of 1974 and 1975, could be named. The 1973 awards were also criticized for the jury's choice of Slipstream as Best Feature Film over
456-403: The board from insisting on the cuts. In 1973, a number of Quebec filmmakers boycotted the 25th Canadian Film Awards , out of a perception that the organization had a systemic bias against francophone films. This protest resulted in the last-minute cancellation of the 1973 awards ceremony, with the winners announced only at a press conference, and the complete cancellation of the 1974 awards. When
480-622: The difficulty of building a sustainable commercial film industry in Canada. Particularly in the 1960s, television films were also eligible for the awards; in 1969, in fact, no theatrical films were entered into the awards at all, and the nominees and winners at the 21st Canadian Film Awards consisted almost entirely of television films. Despite the creation of the ACTRA Awards in 1972, the Canadian Film Awards continued to present selected "non-feature" awards, inclusive of television films, until
504-412: The film festival circuit, in the Canadian Film Awards era films, even if otherwise unreleased, were eligible for nominations or awards based solely on their submission to a dedicated Canadian Film Awards screening festival. In 1957, The Globe and Mail columnist Ronald Johnson criticized the awards' publicity efforts, noting that even Bossin was not actually receiving the press releases and that many of
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#1732765376419528-409: The releases which were going out were being sent to journalists not involved in covering or reporting on film. The paper's film critic Jay Scott later described them as "honours given by presenters no one knew, to recipients no one recognized, to films no one had seen." With very few feature films made in Canada at all prior to the 1960s, in some years no Film of the Year winner was named at all, with
552-580: Was designed by sculptor Sorel Etrog , and thereafter the award was often referred to as an Etrog , although the name of the ceremony itself remained the Canadian Film Awards. Two special awards, the John Grierson Award for outstanding contribution to Canadian cinema and the Wendy Michener Award for outstanding artistic achievement, were also added in later years. In the 1970s, the organization frequently faced crises related to
576-833: Was the first Canadian film to be invited to the Cannes Film Festival . He proved to be successful again at Cannes when he received the International Critics' Prize for Les fleurs sauvages (1982) and his film Le jour S... (1984) was screened in the Un Certain Regard section. His 1973 film The Last Betrothal (Les dernières fiançailles) won the prestigious Prix de l'Organisation catholique internationale du cinéma in 1974. Il ne faut pas mourir pour ça (1967), Le Vieux pays où Rimbaud est mort (1977), and Aujourd'hui ou jamais (1997) make up his Abel Trilogy ; three feature films starring
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