Montréal

Evokative Films is a brand-new Canadian film dis­trib­utor founded in early 2008 with a fresh per­spective on the dis­tri­bu­tion busi­ness. With a strong online pres­ence (a bilin­gual blog, YouTube channel and Facebook page), its mis­sion is “to bring clever, enter­taining and ori­ginal inter­na­tional genre fea­tures to film enthu­si­asts across Canada.”

I con­tacted founder Stéphanie Trépanier, based in Montréal, to find out a little bit more about this exciting new player in the Canadian market.

James McNally (JM): Stéphanie, can you tell us a little bit about your­self and your back­ground and what brought you to start Evokative?

Stéphanie Trépanier (ST): Ah, where to start. Well, I’m a French-Canadian born and raised on the south shore of Montréal. Having par­ents who trav­elled, I was raised to be curious about the world and other cul­tures. From as far back as I can remember, I was always inter­ested in cinema and inter­na­tional film. The small­ness of the inter­na­tional sec­tion of the local video­club always depressed me. My little brother was an avid film-watcher too, but more on the horror side. During my teenage years my interest in inde­pendent cinema and anim­a­tion grew and I started going to the Fantasia Festival in its second year. That fest­ival was such a relief, bringing to the screens so many films that we would just never see otherwise.

My par­ents started their own busi­ness in pack­aging machinery dis­tri­bu­tion when I was eight years old, in our house’s garage. Over the past 20 years, it has grown to become one of the most important com­panies in its sector in Canada. Evidently I learned a lot from watching them work and the com­pany grow. I was also involved in the com­pany for a number of years and learned about the many aspects of its admin­is­tra­tion. But after a while, I real­ized I needed more pas­sion in my work and that what I really wanted to do was to work in film.

So I quit the day job and went back to school to get a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations, with a minor in Marketing and some Film classes. I figured PR was going to be my foot in the door of the film industry. While I was still in uni­ver­sity I started working for the Fantasia Festival, which was then in its 9th edi­tion and had grown to become one of the major cine­matic events in the country. People who don’t think there is an audi­ence for inter­na­tional genre film need to go to Fantasia and see the line-ups of people excited about what they’re about to exper­i­ence. It made me see how much the genre film audi­ence is curious, pas­sionate and loyal, which makes them the best “cus­tomers” there can be, if they are listened and catered to. Which is not always the case in the film industry.

I then went on to work for Christal Films, then a major film dis­trib­utor in Québec, where I mostly took care of the PR for the English releases. Eventually I got a pro­mo­tion to the DVD depart­ment, and it’s there that the Evokative seed got planted. I was never too sure of the the­at­rical poten­tial of inter­na­tional genre film, but in DVD it can def­in­itely work. About a year ago, the com­pany started not going so well and I decided it was time I tried going on my own.

JM: Are you the only employee so far? What are your plans to grow the busi­ness in the next year, espe­cially in light of the looming eco­nomic recession?

ST: Yes, I’m the only person in the com­pany at the moment, save for my mother who lends me her accounting expertise. But it’s gotten to be too much work lately so I’m actu­ally in the pro­cess of hiring an assistant. Distributing films is a lot of work, much more than what can be expected, but I’ll try to keep the team as small as pos­sible. The small over­head is what makes Evokative pos­sible, not having to meet the same num­bers the other bigger dis­trib­utors need to keep things rolling. For sure the looming reces­sion brings some uncer­tainty and I’ve exper­i­enced the weak­ening dollar, but I think/hope the film industry won’t be too affected. We all need to be enter­tained when things are not going great!

JM: What’s the focus of the port­folio, other than “genre” films? Do you skew toward thrillers, or horror, or are there plans to cover other genres as well?

ST: The term “genre film” is one that has so many dif­ferent defin­i­tions. For a lot of people, it means horror and thrillers. For me, genre films are films that respond to the rules of a par­tic­ular genre, but also have an edge. I like diversity, so I intend to have just as many com­edies as horror films. I also like it when the genres are mixed. Le Tueur is a thriller, but also a psy­cho­lo­gical drama. Hansel and Gretel is a fant­astic film going towards horror. Adrift in Tokyo is a blend of walking road movie, comedy and human drama. My main focus, when it comes to choosing films for Evokative, is that the film has to be ori­ginal, clever and enter­taining. There will always be a char­ac­ter­istic that will be more important than the others, but the three have to be there. It also has to be a film that no other Canadian dis­trib­utors have been inter­ested in bringing here, but fans of the genre have been asking for, such as Crying Fist and Hazard.

JM: What’s your strategy for the­at­rical dis­tri­bu­tion versus DVD? I find genre films (and most other films) are more fun to exper­i­ence with an audi­ence, on a large screen. Have you been able to build rela­tion­ships with the cinema chains across the country, or are you focus­sing on the inde­pendent cinemas more?

ST: I totally agree that films are much better to see with an audi­ence, on a large screen. Everybody agrees with that, but fewer and fewer people walk the walk, in terms of actu­ally going to see a film in a cinema reg­u­larly. So screening films in a theatre has become less and less prof­it­able. Prints and advert­ising costs are so high that it’s very easy to lose money in the ven­ture. So it is under­stand­able that an increasing number of films are released dir­ectly onto DVD.

I’m just begin­ning, so I have to start a rela­tion­ship with the theatre owners. I’m going just as much for the chains as for the inde­pendent cinemas. What’s important for me is the loc­a­tion of the cinema, the quality of the screen and the com­fort of the chairs. For the Montreal release of Le Tueur (The Killer), I went with the Ex-Centris, an inde­pendent cinema, and the AMC Forum, a chain. In Toronto it will play at the AMC Yonge and Dundas, which is huge. But for Vancouver I’m looking into one of the Festival Cinemas.

I’ll have about a 50/50 ratio of films going to theatres or going straight to DVD. I don’t really want to get too involved in the high costs, the work and stress a the­at­rical release brings, but I also want to give the audi­ence a chance to see the film on the big screen. Also, the DVD needs to have some buzz and good reviews to get a proper career, and most of the reviews are obtained through a the­at­rical release.

JM: Tell us a little bit about Le Tueur (The Killer), the French thriller that was your first acquis­i­tion. What was the pro­cess of acquiring the film like? Were you nervous about nego­ti­ating? Were there other con­tenders for the Canadian rights?

ST: The com­pany only incor­por­ated in April, and by May I was at Cannes. I didn’t know anyone and all I had to rep­resent myself was the Evokative Manifesto printed on a post­card. I booked as many meet­ings as I pos­sibly could on-site and I just had to deliver the Evokative pitch con­vin­cingly. Some meet­ings were dis­astrous, with the sales agent clearly looking at me as if I came from another planet. But others got the Evokative vision and found it very refreshing. UGC was one of those. There were no other dis­trib­utors con­tending for Le Tueur and it was already pro­grammed at Fantasia, so it was perfect.

The first buy is obvi­ously the most dif­fi­cult, [because] you have nothing to show for your­self except your will­ing­ness to make it. Just a few months in, it is already much easier. The fact that a big dis­tri­bu­tion com­pany like UGC trusted a new­comer with Le Tueur opened doors. I have many more con­tacts from the fest­ivals I attended (TIFF, Pusan) and the films acquired. I also got some nice industry press in the last few months and the line-up I’ve cre­ated speaks for Evokative.

I’m not in the busi­ness of fighting with other dis­trib­utors for the rights to a film. Starting up, I don’t have the funds to get into bid­ding wars. Also, the goal of Evokative is to bring films that oth­er­wise wouldn’t get dis­tri­bu­tion in Canada.

JM: I love Evok, your “mascot”. Can you tell us a bit about his story, who designed him and what your plans are for him in the future?

ST: I dealt with Upperkut, a mar­keting agency here in Montréal, for the devel­op­ment of the visual iden­tity of Evokative. It was a long and arduous pro­cess, but I’m extremely happy of the result. I told them I wanted some kind of char­acter and Antonin Brault, one of their cre­ative dir­ectors, came up with Evok. He even made a real-life puppet for the pitch.

Evok brings a bit of comic relief in this very “ser­ious” busi­ness of dis­tri­bu­tion. He also trans­lates in a funny way the emo­tions that genre films bring about. He already has his own anim­a­tion and we’ll see what we can have him do in the future.

JM: Tell me how you’re using the web as a small company.

ST: I very much believe in the future of the web for film pro­mo­tion. It allows us to reach the audi­ence dir­ectly, much more than with the main­stream media. I founded Evokative for inter­na­tional film fans, so I want to get them involved and start a dialogue.

The last few months have been very exciting for me and I liked the idea of being able to share in the pro­gress of the busi­ness, as well as giving as much inform­a­tion on the films as soon as they’re acquired, to help start the buzz and word-of-mouth. A blog-based web­site like I have now and Facebook are great plat­forms for that. A new web­site, developed by Philosophy Factory in Toronto, will soon be launched. We will also have a web store so that inter­na­tional film fans can have access to the Evokative DVDs from any­where in Canada. Web-based dis­tri­bu­tion is also some­thing I want to look into as soon as possible.

For me Evokative is much more than just another film dis­tri­bu­tion com­pany. It’s about increasing the aware­ness and love of inter­na­tional genre films and also making a point that we are not pris­oners of the main­stream film system, that one can go and stand up for the pas­sion of a dif­ferent genre of cinema. Of course I’ll need the com­pany to become prof­it­able to keep run­ning, so hope­fully film fans across Canada will respond to Evokative’s mis­sion and will take it upon them­selves to spread the good word!

Tagged as: canada, distributors, genre, Montréal

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