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Cinépix
Cinépix Inc., once doing business as C/FP Distribution and Cinépix Film Properties, was a Canadian film production and distribution company. It was established in 1962 in Montreal, Quebec, by John Dunning, who soon teamed up with André Link. A key player in the development of commercial Canadian cinema, it is perhaps best known for the comedic Meatballs franchise, the thriller My Bloody Valentine and the controversial Ilsa series of sex and violence films. In the mid-1990s, the company became an important distributor of independent films in the U.S., before being acquired by the newly formed Lions Gate Entertainment and morphing into Lions Gate Films in 1998.
Cinépix started as the successor company of Amerivision, a Montreal film distributor specializing in prestige French imports, which it sold to Télévision de Radio Canada (the Francophone equivalent of CBC). When Amerivision's parent Niagara Films was abruptly shut down by its founder Fernand Séguin in 1962, one of his partners, John Dunning, established Cinépix to take over its catalogue and pay their creditors. Dunning put the films in local theatres, but it was not enough to make the company viable. After a few months, he brought in theatrical booker André Link to help. The latter would become his lifelong friend and associate. To make ends meet, they expanded into exploitation films of wildly varying origins and quality, often tweaking titles to make them appear more salacious than what was allowed at the time. Among audience favorites were European imports concerning prostitution. Around 1968, Cinépix opened an office in Toronto, headed by industry veteran Orval Fruitman, who would remain with the company until 1979.
Also in 1968, the company signed up director Denis Héroux for its first production, Valérie, which retained the tried-and-true prostitution theme. To placate Quebec's harsh censorship, the filmmakers purported to showcase a gentler, more politically aware view of sex. Nonetheless, Dunning and Link used the collective pseudonym "Julian Parnell" in the credits, which would become their go-to alias. Valérie was the first Quebec film to top $1 million at the box office. Its sole profits were enough to finance two quick follow-ups iterating on the softcore formula, Here and Now (Cinépix's first color production) and Love in a Four Letter World (its first English-language production). For the most part, Dunning was the creative half of the duo, while Link was the businessman. Other producers followed suit, and this trend was coined as "Maple Syrup Porn" by U.S. trade magazine Variety. In late 1970, Dunning hired lawyer Alfred Pariser to assist him as director of production. He would stay until 1975.
The commercial success of Cinépix's films initially trumped their risqué nature in Quebec media and, to some extent, in other provinces. Several local celebrities including Donald Lautrec, Serge Laprade and Chantal Renaud, and even Boston Bruins player Derek Sanderson, appeared in them. Valérie and some of its successors were supported by the CFDC (later Telefilm Canada), whose president Michael Spencer understood the need for commercial product to strengthen the country's burgeoning film industry. Saturday Night critic Marshall Delaney wrote: "What is so beautiful and so historic about Valérie is the way it defines, in 1969 terms, the traditional morality of Roman Catholic French Canada." However, reviewers typically had little to say about the film beyond its sociological novelty.
Between 1969 and 1970, Kalvex, the parent company of Allied Artists, built a majority participation in Cinépix, which was supposed to help it reach a broader market. Although Here an Now and Love in a Four Letter World were nominated for the 1970 Canadian Film Awards, bad buzz ahead of the event convinced Dunning and Link to withdraw them from the competition. Calling it a publicity stunt, jury member and Loyola teacher Marc Gervais nonetheless welcomed their decision and dismissed Cinépix's work as "candy coated skin trash". Dunning and Link opened a distribution office in New York called Cinepix-U.S.A., and produced Keep It in the Family, a virtually non-nude sex comedy starring former American heartthrob John Gavin. But Kalvex's support proved limited. The pair bought back their controlling stake in early 1973 and repatriated operations to Canada. The Cinepix-U.S.A. label was retained for some bookings south of the border, although it was effectively operated from Montreal.
The company kept mulling options to find better financing, such as a stock market introduction, and a sale to Montreal-based TV station Télé-Metropole, but nothing came of them. Instead, Cinépix announced a two-film joint venture with Pierre David's Films Mutuels in 1973, which saw them distribute the documentary Wrestling Queen and produce yet another sex comedy, The Apple, the Stem and the Seeds. Also that year, Cinépix was one of ten companies who set up the Association of Canadian Independent Motion Picture Distributors, of which Fruitman was named the inaugural president. In its home province of Quebec, it claimed to distribute up to 100 films a year.
As a distributor, Cinépix helped bring many more artistic films to the screen. A 1973 Montreal Gazette article assessed that "last year [Dunning] handled almost every acclaimed Canadian feature in both French and English." In 1974, it took over the distribution of two projects from Canada's leading helmers, Claude Jutra's For Better and for Worse and Denys Arcand's Gina, when their competitor, Société nouvelle de cinématographie, backed out of their financial participation. However, their practice of misrepresenting their films' contents in promotional materials occasionally extended to the more artistically oriented product they carried.
By then, the liberalization of film content had only exacerbated Cinépix's dual profile, which Dunning once described as "schizoid". While courting acceptance from the mainstream entertainment industry, it relied on less savory language to peddle more explicit wares to exploitation film exhibitors. Although Link was Jewish and a holocaust survivor, the company dabbled in the controversial Nazi exploitation subgenre, distributing the pioneering Love Camp 7, before commissioning the infamous Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. Link and Dunning typically went uncredited for these fringe activities.
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Cinépix
Cinépix Inc., once doing business as C/FP Distribution and Cinépix Film Properties, was a Canadian film production and distribution company. It was established in 1962 in Montreal, Quebec, by John Dunning, who soon teamed up with André Link. A key player in the development of commercial Canadian cinema, it is perhaps best known for the comedic Meatballs franchise, the thriller My Bloody Valentine and the controversial Ilsa series of sex and violence films. In the mid-1990s, the company became an important distributor of independent films in the U.S., before being acquired by the newly formed Lions Gate Entertainment and morphing into Lions Gate Films in 1998.
Cinépix started as the successor company of Amerivision, a Montreal film distributor specializing in prestige French imports, which it sold to Télévision de Radio Canada (the Francophone equivalent of CBC). When Amerivision's parent Niagara Films was abruptly shut down by its founder Fernand Séguin in 1962, one of his partners, John Dunning, established Cinépix to take over its catalogue and pay their creditors. Dunning put the films in local theatres, but it was not enough to make the company viable. After a few months, he brought in theatrical booker André Link to help. The latter would become his lifelong friend and associate. To make ends meet, they expanded into exploitation films of wildly varying origins and quality, often tweaking titles to make them appear more salacious than what was allowed at the time. Among audience favorites were European imports concerning prostitution. Around 1968, Cinépix opened an office in Toronto, headed by industry veteran Orval Fruitman, who would remain with the company until 1979.
Also in 1968, the company signed up director Denis Héroux for its first production, Valérie, which retained the tried-and-true prostitution theme. To placate Quebec's harsh censorship, the filmmakers purported to showcase a gentler, more politically aware view of sex. Nonetheless, Dunning and Link used the collective pseudonym "Julian Parnell" in the credits, which would become their go-to alias. Valérie was the first Quebec film to top $1 million at the box office. Its sole profits were enough to finance two quick follow-ups iterating on the softcore formula, Here and Now (Cinépix's first color production) and Love in a Four Letter World (its first English-language production). For the most part, Dunning was the creative half of the duo, while Link was the businessman. Other producers followed suit, and this trend was coined as "Maple Syrup Porn" by U.S. trade magazine Variety. In late 1970, Dunning hired lawyer Alfred Pariser to assist him as director of production. He would stay until 1975.
The commercial success of Cinépix's films initially trumped their risqué nature in Quebec media and, to some extent, in other provinces. Several local celebrities including Donald Lautrec, Serge Laprade and Chantal Renaud, and even Boston Bruins player Derek Sanderson, appeared in them. Valérie and some of its successors were supported by the CFDC (later Telefilm Canada), whose president Michael Spencer understood the need for commercial product to strengthen the country's burgeoning film industry. Saturday Night critic Marshall Delaney wrote: "What is so beautiful and so historic about Valérie is the way it defines, in 1969 terms, the traditional morality of Roman Catholic French Canada." However, reviewers typically had little to say about the film beyond its sociological novelty.
Between 1969 and 1970, Kalvex, the parent company of Allied Artists, built a majority participation in Cinépix, which was supposed to help it reach a broader market. Although Here an Now and Love in a Four Letter World were nominated for the 1970 Canadian Film Awards, bad buzz ahead of the event convinced Dunning and Link to withdraw them from the competition. Calling it a publicity stunt, jury member and Loyola teacher Marc Gervais nonetheless welcomed their decision and dismissed Cinépix's work as "candy coated skin trash". Dunning and Link opened a distribution office in New York called Cinepix-U.S.A., and produced Keep It in the Family, a virtually non-nude sex comedy starring former American heartthrob John Gavin. But Kalvex's support proved limited. The pair bought back their controlling stake in early 1973 and repatriated operations to Canada. The Cinepix-U.S.A. label was retained for some bookings south of the border, although it was effectively operated from Montreal.
The company kept mulling options to find better financing, such as a stock market introduction, and a sale to Montreal-based TV station Télé-Metropole, but nothing came of them. Instead, Cinépix announced a two-film joint venture with Pierre David's Films Mutuels in 1973, which saw them distribute the documentary Wrestling Queen and produce yet another sex comedy, The Apple, the Stem and the Seeds. Also that year, Cinépix was one of ten companies who set up the Association of Canadian Independent Motion Picture Distributors, of which Fruitman was named the inaugural president. In its home province of Quebec, it claimed to distribute up to 100 films a year.
As a distributor, Cinépix helped bring many more artistic films to the screen. A 1973 Montreal Gazette article assessed that "last year [Dunning] handled almost every acclaimed Canadian feature in both French and English." In 1974, it took over the distribution of two projects from Canada's leading helmers, Claude Jutra's For Better and for Worse and Denys Arcand's Gina, when their competitor, Société nouvelle de cinématographie, backed out of their financial participation. However, their practice of misrepresenting their films' contents in promotional materials occasionally extended to the more artistically oriented product they carried.
By then, the liberalization of film content had only exacerbated Cinépix's dual profile, which Dunning once described as "schizoid". While courting acceptance from the mainstream entertainment industry, it relied on less savory language to peddle more explicit wares to exploitation film exhibitors. Although Link was Jewish and a holocaust survivor, the company dabbled in the controversial Nazi exploitation subgenre, distributing the pioneering Love Camp 7, before commissioning the infamous Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. Link and Dunning typically went uncredited for these fringe activities.