Nordicity is assessing the Whistler Film Festival (WFF) economic and human capital impact

Nordicity participated in the Whistler Film Festival between November 29th and December 3rd through a variety of content and industry events, meeting filmmakers from across Canada and the world. Notably, four out of five films presented at this year’s event were Canadian films - with A Colony taking home three awards, including the Borsos Award for Best Canadian Feature Film.

In addition to the films being presented over the course of the four-day festival, an industry-focused content summit was held. Similar to 2017, the summit included significant programming on women in the film industry. This year’s Women on Top: Making Media Equitable series featured a keynote speech from Madeline Di Nonno, CEO of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Geena explained the research her organization is doing, especially on the positive impact that can be generated for young girls when they see women in with leading film roles.

While each presenter took different approaches to the research, the findings were widely agreed upon –here is a long way to go in order to make media equitable, and now there is important data to prove it. For example, according to a Women in View report to be released in 2019, women are only receiving 20% of all funding from Telefilm Canada, despite recent commitments to get to gender parity by 2020 (as have the CMF, CBC and NFB). As one speaker expressed, continuing to increase female participation in the Canadian film sector will increase international market attractiveness to create movies in Canada.

The content summit also included a variety of programming aimed at providing skill-building opportunities for (mainly young) filmmakers in important areas such as learning the art of pitching ideas, and digital and international distribution tips. There were also numerous opportunities to form important partnerships and collaborations between filmmakers and industry leaders.

The activity and energy throughout the village made it clear that the WFF creates significant economic impact on the Whistler community. However, WFF’s dedication to “furthering the art of film by providing programs that focus on the discovery, development and promotion of new talent” also creates significant human capital impacts. Nordicity looks forward to working with the festival in the coming months to better understand and quantify contributions, both to the local community but also to the growth of the broader Canadian film. The work will be analysis will be done by developing and analyzing an online survey targeting both public attendees of the film festival as well as industry participants.