Modes of Production

In 2016, filmmaker Matt Johnson (BFA ’06, MFA ’16) – known for such genre-bending films as The Dirties and Operation Avalanche – gave the Globe and Mail a blunt assessment of Canadian cinema: “A lot of people just have to die of old age for the system to change.”

One of the implied targets was Niv Fichman (LLD Hons. ’98), the Oscar- and Emmy-winning producer whose fingerprints are on four decades of Canadian film, from David Cronenberg and Patricia Rozema to Guy Maddin and Denis Villeneuve. But Fichman, a Canadian film industry veteran, didn’t take offence. In Johnson, he saw a kindred spirit and issued an invitation.

“I said, ‘I want Matt Johnson in front of me in my kitchen,’” Fichman says, seated in the open-plan offices of his production company, Rhombus Media, in downtown Toronto. “I told him I’d had the same feelings about older filmmakers when I was his age. I wanted them dead too – I just wasn’t bold enough to say it in a national newspaper.”

Niv is a great producer because he’s a great host. He brings people together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts

Fichman wasn’t just sizing up a challenger. He had a project in mind. He asked Johnson and his producer, fellow York grad Matthew Miller (BA ’09, MFA ’13), if they’d consider adapting Losing the Signal, the non-fiction account of the rise and fall of Research In Motion, the Canadian company behind BlackBerry.

Matching filmmakers to material – and reconciling creative risk with commercial reality – has long been Fichman’s métier.

The resulting film, BlackBerry, a distinctly Canadian story released in 2023, set a record in 2024 by winning 14 Canadian Screen Awards and crossing the million-dollar mark at the national box office – proof of Fichman’s instincts. The film is fast, funny and slyly self-aware, a story about disruptors swallowed by the system, made by a team bridging old guard and new.

“Working with Niv on BlackBerry was like a master class in producing,” says Miller, who won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture alongside Fichman and Johnson. Miller also collaborated with Fichman on Telefilm Canada’s Talent to Watch, a program supporting emerging directors. “Niv is a great producer because he’s a great host,” Miller adds. “He brings people together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts.”

Fichman’s own story begins in Tel Aviv, where he was born in 1958. He immigrated to Canada with his family at age eight, and today Toronto is home. When Fichman was a boy, his father, an engineer, brought home a movie camera. He noticed it made his father happy. “I associated that camera with joy,” he says.

One problem with Canadian cinema is it always wants to judge itself in a vacuum

In high school, he began making short films with that camera, building a portfolio that earned him a spot in York’s fledgling Film Department. But after learning he wouldn’t be able to shoot anything on 16 mm film until third year, he switched his acceptance to Ryerson (today Toronto Metropolitan University). Later that fall, the phone rang at his mother’s house.

“I got a call from somebody at York asking me, ‘Where are you? You’re not coming to class.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I decided to go to Ryerson.’ They said, ‘That’s really terrible, because we were impressed with your portfolio and decided to put you straight into third year.’ I said, ‘You did? OK, I’ll come.’ I quit Ryerson and headed to York.”

He arrived at the University in late October of 1977, younger than his classmates, who had already bonded. “They all hated me,” he says. “I’d just shown up, skipping two years.” He kept to himself, commuting across the city and sleeping under the mixing console to maximize time on campus. Gradually, he won over classmates and faculty, including the famously gruff Lithuanian-born filmmaker and York film Professor Vincent Vaitiekunas. “The only person he seemed to like was me, because I was a kid. Most film students then were on their second degrees.”

York was a launching pad. Fichman skipped classes to attend the first Toronto International Film Festivals, and took a music performance course – “I played tuba. It was the only thing I wanted to do besides film.” Music was the link to Barbara Willis Sweete (DLitt ’98), a classmate who had already completed a degree in classical music before coming to York. Together, they made a short documentary about Fichman’s brother, Yuval, a pianist. That summer, in 1978, Fichman took the film to Europe, prints in his backpack, trying to sell it. “You could only take a film somewhere on 16 mm,” he says. “I think I checked the cans at the airport.”

By their second film, Music for Wilderness Lake, they were already operating more like professionals than students – spending so much time on real-world projects that they were often away from campus. Some classmates resented this, feeling they weren’t following the usual academic path.

“We convinced York to let us show a movie we’d made about Barbara’s grandfather as our thesis,” Fichman recalls. It was an unusual arrangement, but even with that exception, both he and Sweete were still short on required credits and ultimately didn’t graduate.

I could talk about how horrible things are – as they always are, all these cycles and cycles of horribleness – or I could just suck it up

Still, the momentum was undeniable. Their films were starting to attract attention beyond York. In 1978, they founded Rhombus Media at York, and Larry Weinstein (BFA ’80) joined soon after. From the outset, the company built a reputation for artful, ambitious films about music, theatre and dance. By the mid-1980s, Rhombus was attracting international attention with works such as All That Bach and, in the realm of dance, Blue Snake. Their collaborations with leading choreographers and companies – such as the National Ballet of Canada and Montreal’s Carbone 14 – resulted in films such as The Firebird and the Emmy-winning Le Dortoir, which helped define the company’s fluid visual style and global reputation.

As Rhombus expanded into feature filmmaking, The Top of His Head marked an early foray. But it was Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould that proved a watershed. When the film premiered at TIFF in 1993, the screening drew a packed house and an electric response, critics and cinephiles buzzing about its inventive structure and Colm Feore’s lead performance as the Canadian virtuoso pianist. The film went on to win four Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, and its acclaim helped cement Rhombus as a leading force in Canadian filmmaking.

In 2016, Sweete and Weinstein left Rhombus amicably. Since then, Fichman has continued to expand the company’s reach, collaborating with international auteurs such as Olivier Assayas and Park Chan-wook. Yet he remains committed to broadening the horizons of Canadian cinema. “One problem with Canadian cinema is it always wants to judge itself in a vacuum,” he says. “I could talk about how horrible things are – as they always are, all these cycles and cycles of horribleness – or I could just suck it up.”

At 67, he continues to champion new projects. Most recently, he executive produced Mile End Kicks, Chandler Levack’s latest feature, about a 24-year-old music critic immersed in Montreal’s indie rock scene. But these days, Fichman doesn’t spend all his time behind a console. “There’s so much to do in life. Sometimes I just want to zone out. I’m really interested in food and cooking.” The question is, which filmmaker will he summon to his kitchen next?  ■

— With files from Deirdre Kelly