By Bill Roberts
BANFF – From touchdown at Calgary International Airport, there were strong hints that this is going to be a different Banff World Media Festival (BWMF).
Climbing aboard the Banff Airporter transit to head into the Rockies, the group chatter was not about who won at the Sundance Film Festival or who had landed a Netflix series deal – it was entirely about upbeat Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) collaboration, building positive relationships, and to quote one Canadian 30-something producer on our bus, now living in Los Angeles, “literally decolonizing Hollywood”.
After two years of delivering the BWMF online due to the pandemic, early projections for in-person attendance this year had been in the 500 to 1,000 range.
But, according to festival boss Jenn Kuzmyk, in-person delegates are numbering closer to 1,500 – the largest ever BWMF since it’s inauguration back in 1980 as the Banff World Television Festival.
In her opening remarks, Kuzmyk referenced the Treaty 7 lands upon which the conference is being held and noted this area has been inhabited by Indigenous Peoples for over 10,000 years.
She noted that earlier in the day, the Indigenous Screen Summit Pitch session, the first in-person version the BWMF has held, had seen 15 good projects.
Kuzmyk was also quite clear in saying, “I’m just glad that after this, I don’t have to close my laptop and go empty the dishwasher!”
In his own opening remarks, Ron Orr, the Alberta Minister of Culture also gave a giddy thumbs up to real people meeting in a real place. He told a nice story of how Jeanne Lougheed, former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed’s wife, had been instrumental in the creation of what is now the BWMF and (perhaps in her honour) he committed to growing Alberta’s cultural industries by 25% over the next few years.
Orr also pumped the advantages of producing screen content in Alberta with up to 30% tax credits, no provincial sales tax, 70 cents on the U.S. dollar, word class studios and sets, plus expert crews and post production.
Noteworthy is that this in-person 2022 version of the BWMF Rockie Awards boasts entries from 45 countries and involved roughly 150 international jurors: with 28 Rockie categories plus the new emerging talent prize.
Getting back to my Banff Airporter anecdote, the BWMF then returned to why entertainment matters in terms of human rights and democracy.
Our kickoff panel session was to feature Lionsgate founder, Frank Giustra and dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, Ashish Jha and was billed as “a discussion of the responsibility of media to combat disinformation and misinformation… and the power media have to change minds and policy around the world.”
Unfortunately, due to his recent appointment by President Joe Biden to the role of White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, Jha (who grew up in Toronto) was unable to attend but he did send a crisp video message.
The President’s “Covid Czar” was adamant that the entertainment industry has a vital role in assuring “information integrity… across a range of pressing issues facing humanity, such as democracy, climate change, and the pandemic.”
Jha also challenged Banff delegates with “Why does misinformation spread and stick? Because it plays to our emotions… but we need a shared set of truths and we need storytellers… and no one is better than all of you… just ask yourselves the question when creating… ‘How can I make the situation better?’… and you have precedents like drinking and driving… the entertainment industry made designated drivers real and saved hundreds of thousands of lives around the world.”
Giustra, now president and CEO of Fiore Group, was then joined by Kevin Beggs, chairman of Lionsgate Television Group and recently named chair of the festival’s board of directors.
Between them, Giustra and Beggs have made serious contributions to (and received numerous honours for) addressing children’s rights, homelessness, poverty, refugee crises, climate change, education deficits, and much more. Both of these philanthropist media moguls are eminently Google worthy.
Beggs opened the duet panel worried about the current “fight for democracy”, especially now in Ukraine.
Giustra offered that “all wars are unpredictable” and he was struck by how 80% of the world (he cited India within this), has “sat on the fence… including the Middle East which sees the U.S. more focused on China… and because of our (U.S.) double standards… we need to change our approach to global affairs”.
When Beggs asked how all this will end, Giustra predicted that “we’re heading into a global food crisis… Ukraine produces 50% of the world’s wheat and Russia is the largest exporter of the world’s fertilizers.”
In tandem, they also asserted that mainstream media have (so far) failed at reining in “the lies and misinformation… and Fox conspiracy theories… Fox News started this and it keeps getting worse… they have no shame.”
Giustra has taken the personal approach however, and is now suing Twitter for the weighty sum of $1 in our Canadian courts for postings that accused him of “drinking pigs blood and pedophilia.”
“Why sue in Canada?” you might ask. Well, in the U.S., section 230 of the Communications Decency Act “actually shelters social media” and provides immunity for website platforms, which Canada apparently does not.
Big oil did not go unscathed either, with Giustra lamenting that, “the problem in America is the lobbying firms… the five big oil companies spend over $200 million a year lobbying Washington and preventing good things from happening” and even the U.S. food industry coughs-up $20 million a year to keep carcinogenic food additives in their products (including children’s cereals), which countries like the U.K. and Canada have long-ago banned.
Two final thoughts wrapped up this session. First, a call to action for the entertainment industry to “create outrage and educate… build this into your scripts… do what “Roots” did (the 1977 drama mini-series that garnered precedented viewer ratings and was showered with Emmy, Peabody and Golden Globe awards for its depiction of slavery)… and think seriously about documentaries… since people have (unfortunately) stopped reading.”
Second, take a sober look at what is happening with cancel culture, since according to Giustra, “while only 19% of the entertainment industry thinks it has gone too far, more than 62% of your viewers think it has now gone too far.”
I had a wee bout of cognitive dissonance about the mixed messaging in that ending, but I think I get what they were trying to convey.
Bill Roberts is a contributing editor at Cartt.ca.
