Why CSAs fail to connect with him

Re A night of national self-mockery, March 2 While I congratulate all the winners — and the other nominees — at the Canadian Screen Actors awards, I must admit that I didn’t watch the show. I enjoy films, and have attended TIFF for the past 16 years. But when it comes to the CSAs, I don’t feel connected.

The main reason is that the big winner this year, as in so many other years, was made in what, for the majority of Canadians, is a foreign language. I have nothing against subtitles; in fact, during TIFF, I seek out international films as opposed to North American films.

But it’s very hard to compare a subtitled (or dubbed) film against one in your native language. Furthermore, I don’t know what kind of distribution Mommy had, but I suspect it was limited to one or two “art house” cinemas. The film simply wasn’t on my radar.

When the Genies and Geminis were merged a few years ago, only the English-language television awards were included; the French-language awards were kept separate, as the two markets were essentially mutually exclusive.

The same logic should have been applied to the film awards.

By virtue of its linguistic difference, Quebec continues to foster a thriving filmmaking industry and produces some very high-quality films — many of which vie for, and win, the CSAs. But they are rarely distributed widely in the rest of Canada, and so go largely unnoticed. That’s why the CSA awards will continue to be irrelevant to the English-speaking population of Canada. Ronald Weir, Thornhill