The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

This was the year the Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) was finally going to claw its way out of the red and into financial sustainability. And it was looking like it was going to happen until CIFF was dealt a one-two financial punch, leaving it short more than $100,000 in cash it was promised.

The first blow came when the festival’s ticket provider, RepeatSeat Ltd., failed to hand over revenue from last year’s ticket sales. Last year was the first in a five-year contract between CIFF and the Calgary-based ticket retailer.

RepeatSeat Ltd. was supposed to sell festival tickets online and at box offices, take a cut and give the rest to CIFF in weekly payments. It’s at that last step the partnership went awry.

The company made one payment to CIFF early last September, and the festival believes RepeatSeat used the rest of the revenue to pay debts to other secured creditors. CIFF pursued RepeatSeat Ltd. hoping it would be able to refinance and eventually pay up. When the festival still didn’t see any money nearly a year after it was due, CIFF filed a legal claim against RepeatSeat Ltd. over the summer.

“It’s really our only method of recourse to try and obtain some of the funds,” says CIFF executive director Jacqueline Dupuis. Despite this, she says she’s not hopeful CIFF will see any of the money. “Given that RepeatSeat Ltd. is a public company and is insolvent, any disposable cash it has will probably go to the secured creditors before it would go to CIFF. You can’t get blood from a stone.”

In addition to the RepeatSeat debacle, the festival was burned by one of its major sponsors, Arcus Developments. The corporation made headlines last year with its swanky Astoria on Tenth condominium tower that was supposed to include two $10-million penthouses. Riding high on the buzz it generated, Arcus promised to bankroll CIFF’s 2008 Breakfast at Tiffany’s gala screening. While CIFF declined to state how much Arcus pledged to the festival, Dupuis described it as a “major sponsorship.”

The gala was a success, but Arcus never paid up, and construction of Astoria on Tenth has since stalled. Arcus claims it has financing in place to continue with its Astoria project eventually, but CIFF says it is unsure when
it will recieve the money it’s owed.

Like many arts groups, CIFF’s sponsorship situation in general, is both vital to its operations and by its nature, precarious. For every dollar in ticket sales, the festival has
to generate two more in other funding just to keep afloat.

This year, sponsorship is far below expectations, which were high coming out of the 2008 festival. In fact, sponsorship inquiries were up 40 percent over the previous year. But those inquiries never turned into contracts. Instead, almost all of CIFF’s broadcast funding evaporated, along with some commercial sponsorship. And the festival still hasn’t been able to convince corporate Calgary to pony up in significant numbers.

“We look sort of glitzy and glamorous, and I think corporate Calgary thinks we are a private entity or part of the film industry,” Dupuis says. “They might not understand that we are a not-for-profit arts and cultural organisation, just like the ballet or the opera.”

All of this comes as CIFF heads into the final year of the three-year strategic plan that was supposed to make it financially sustainable, institutionalize the festival as a cultural icon in Calgary and turn it into an international destination. Without money, none of these goals are possible.

“It has put a very serious cash-flow crunch on the festival and put a great deal of strain on our relationships with our suppliers,” says Dupuis, who worries about damage to the festival’s reputation. But she is optimistic CIFF can come out of this year and move forward, albeit at a much slower pace than initially anticipated.

The festival is trying to minimize the financial impact of the RepeatSeat and Arcus situations by tightening spending and generating revenue through new festival membership and group sales programs, as well as formalizing its corporate events program. And several major sponsors have continued their support, including American Express, which provided prize money for the Mavericks project — a part-film contest, part-branding initiative that CIFF hopes will attract more sponsors. The festival will go on as planned this year with CIFF feeling more pressure than ever to provide quality programming that draws crowds.

“The future is bright,” says Dupuis, weary from a rough year. “It’s just a little clouded at the moment."

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