Hello!
My name is Surge Levin.
For a year and a half my wife and I (both professional artists) have been battling the National Film Board of Canada, which we have come to know as a Soviet-type bureaucratic swamp in dire need of perestroika. We have created a website to document our struggle with the Green Eye, more precisely with its opaque leadership. If you care about the state of Canadian animation, please visit our website (www.zelenovsky.com) and tell us what you think. We promise you an entertaining read. What we need is support of like-minded individuals.
Thanks a lot!
Surge.
You wrote me last year in an attempt to rally my support for your anti-NFB crusade simply because I'd been critical of the NFB in the past. I refused you then and I encourage others to ignore your blowhard hyperbole.
Your anti-NFB rant carries the stench of sour-grapes. Yes...like any large organization, the NFB can be a tad bureaucratic. They can take forever to make decisions..and sometimes those decisions are the wrong ones. I'd be the first to argue that they sometimes make films that should never have been made in the first place... BUT I also know many of the producers and filmmakers there (including Svend-Erik), and they are not cold-hearted Soviet drones. The NFB also produces many fine films that have won the NFB and Canada wide-acclaim (just this year, Michele Cournoyer's Accordion is in competition at Cannes...and the NFB co-produced Chris Landreth's great film, Ryan.) Given their track record, I'd say the NFB is doing a decent job (especially in the past few years).
I've read the correspondence on your website and I see NOTHING that warrants your public attacks. Jacques Bensimon is absolutely right when he says :
"You want to point to problems and allready have prejudiced what the outcome should be. And if matters do not go your way, the Canadian parliamentary system and the press should be called in for support. Quiet a unique way to do business amongst civilized Canadian cititzens!"
For you to go around publicly slandering the NFB simply because they DIDNT like your project is absolutely assinine.
All this time and energy spent attacking the film board that could have been spent finding another producer or making your damn film.
Stop this nonsense and get on with your fugging life.
You deserve a bitchslap and I'd be happy to oblige.
Chris Robinson
Yeh. No one says one has to only go to the NFB for funding and support and it's not a lawthat the NFB have to support anyone.
The NFB isn't what it used to be anyway. Government funding for the arts esp film are the lowest on the food chain. Remember last year in Canada the cuts to Canadian productions?
BTW.
Yes the opening with the Soviet anthem(?) and the logo was funny, your illustrations are kick-ass, you should find an off switch for the Children Of The Revolution song and I stand by previous post /comment. The "run-around" hot/cold attitude is not unusual no matter what producer you approach. But I stress the NFB does not have access to the funding they once had (60s, 70, 80s) and it is a bureaucarcy. I know of no organization that isn't.
This is a reply to Chris Robinson's rebuke.
Let me get some facts straight, Chris. You did not refuse to support me when I asked you to. You just ignored me. I never received any reply from you back then. I'll probably get kicked out of this forum for contradicting the Boss, but what the heck.
I never said that Eriksen was a cold-hearted drone. Perhaps he's a nice guy, pity-inducing, but nice. However he absolutely has no idea of what he's supposed to do. He's a wrong man for his job, as my correspondence with him clearly shows. If he's a producer, fine, but he should not stick his nose in creative stuff since he has no education and/or background to help him understand these things. It is obviously not up to you, Chris, to make any judgements here since you are too deeply involved with the NFB. You've worked with these people, you have friends among them, you depend on them, and your vehement tone betrays that you are personally hurt by my criticism. You are president of the Ottawa Animation Festival, are you not? But that alone makes you part of the same structure as the NFB, the structure that functions awfully, but tries to convince everyone that it's doing just great. No wonder you found NOTHING on our website to justify our criticism of the system. You cannot find a blinder person than the one who refuses to see.
Thanks for your advice, but it's up to me to decide on what I spend the time of my life. You use a lot of angry words, but there's no substance behind them. What I am trying to get from your friends are answers to four legitimate questions I'm entitled to as a taxpayer (I'm not repeating them here, you can find them on the website on page 4 or 6). The main goal of my so-called crusade is to make your friends accountable. That's why I'm championing the idea of creation an ombudsman's position at the Board (or, borrowing the other guy's idea, a panel of established artists) to solve problems between the bureaucracy and the creative artists. If we cannot live without bureaucracy, at least we must make them housebroken.
All of this is being repeated over and over on our website, but it keeps going over the heads of people in charge. All we hear is Slander! Stop this nonsense! Turn your faces to the wall! Shut up or else! One needs an awful lot of patience when talking to deaf people.
Your sour grapes metaphor is completely uncalled for. I don't knock something because it's out of my reach. Whatever the NFB is able to provide is not worth wishing for anyway. I just want them to do their job competently, which they are unable to do, apparently, since they are completely uncompetent. And it has nothing to do with shortage of funds. They find money to produce the junk they produce.
As to the fact that they do produce good movies, we readily acknowledge it on the site. But a handful of good ones does not excuse the amount of rubbish they disgorge annually. If our proposals were worse than the average level of the NFB productions, we would have understood. But this average level is so depressingly low that they need a very good reason to turn us down. We are still waiting for this reason to be articulated.
Sorry I upset you, Chris.
But I will not rest until I get those answers from your buddies.
Best,
Surge.
PS. Slander is defined by the Webster Dictionary as: the utterance of false charges or misinterpretations which defame and damage another's reputation. The NFB did threaten us with a libel case. The fact that they have not followed through on their threat is not a testimony to their kind-heartedness. It is rather a testimony to the fact that no matter how their lawyers try, they cannot find any grounds for that on our website. We are simply exercising our freedom of speech. And everything we say on the site is true, no matter whether you like it or not.
S.
PPS. While we are on the Webster, there's a few words in your epistle I could not find in my volume. E.g. assinine, fugging, bitchslap - what exactly do they mean? I can feel they mean something malevolent, but what?
S.
A quick note to Graphiteman.
There is no law that the NFB has to support anyone, but there must be a law stating the minimal requirements for the people they employ: a certain level of education and some basic intelligence. In my many travels down the NFB labyrinth I haven't encountered any 'civilized Canadian cititzens' who would remotely meet these requirements.
You can turn the music off by clicking on the STOP button on your browser, or just turning off the speakers. And thanks for your kind words.
Best,
Surge.