What if Canadian movies didn’t have to choose between art-house respectability and crowd-pleasing thrills? In Montreal, two producers built a company around that very idea, and helped launch a generation of filmmakers along the way.
John Dunning and André Link co-founded Cinépix in 1962. Over the next four decades, they turned a distribution outfit into a scrappy production and sales operation known for erotic dramas, horror, comedies and international hits. Their story is a primer in independent film production: find the audience, watch the budget, back distinctive talent, and don’t let a raised eyebrow stop the show.
Two producers, two toolkits
Cinépix began in Montreal during Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, a period of rapid social change. Dunning came from the exhibition business. Born in Verdun in 1927, he grew up around cinemas his father operated, worked the candy counter at the family’s Century Theatre as a teenager, and took over the business after his father died. He gravitated toward stories and production, eventually producing more than 59 feature films.
Link brought a different kind of experience. Born in Budapest, raised and educated in Paris, he emigrated to Canada in 1954 and worked in film distribution sales before joining Dunning to launch Cinépix. He focused on finance, distribution and the business machinery that could carry a film beyond its first screening. Later, he helped found the Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters, served twice as its president, and led Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. from 2000 to 2006.
The pair were often described as an “odd couple,” but their differences became a production strategy. As Playback’s Hall of Fame profile recounts, Link handled the money while Dunning hunted for stories and got them made. They also agreed that neither partner could veto a project the other wanted to pursue. The rule was simple: let the other take a chance, then support the decision.
That arrangement made room for risk without turning every decision into a showdown. For an indie film production company, that’s a useful lesson: complementary skills can matter more than matching instincts.
From “maple syrup porn” to monsters
Cinépix’s first production, Valérie (1969), followed a young woman who leaves a convent and sets out on her own. Its provocative premise helped the film earn about $1 million at the box office. More sex comedies followed, including Here and Now (L’Initiation, 1970), Love in a Four Letter World, Heads or Tails (Pile ou face, 1971), and Ah! Si mon moine voulait....
The films drew sharp criticism. Some were dismissed as “maple syrup porn,” and the Toronto Telegram called them “nothing more than sexploitation movies.” Public criticism also landed on the Canadian Film Development Corporation, now Telefilm Canada, for supporting the productions. Dunning, however, saw an audience, and a chance to challenge the limits placed on what Canadian films could show. In his words, “We were mavericks in the sense that we wanted to put films in the marketplace that would appeal to the majority.”
The company wasn’t making one kind of picture forever. Link took pride in Cinépix’s production of Claude Jutra’s Kamouraska (1973), while the company moved into increasingly ambitious genre territory. It backed David Cronenberg’s early horrors Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977). In Shivers, a parasite spreads through a Montreal apartment complex. The film provoked a political and censorship uproar; producer Don Carmody later recalled, “They wanted to put us in jail and Cronenberg in an insane asylum.” Rabid went on to make $7 million on North American screens.
Dunning became a mentor to Cronenberg, who called him “the unacknowledged godfather of an entire generation of Canadian filmmakers” and said, “I still consider him my movie mentor.” For a producer, creating opportunity can mean more than getting one film across the finish line. It can mean giving a filmmaker the runway to make the next one.
Low budgets, big audiences
Cinépix’s influence spread through the careers it helped build. Ivan Reitman worked with the company on films including Shivers and Rabid, then directed Meatballs (1979), starring Bill Murray. The comedy became a breakout Canadian box-office hit, taking about $46 million and winning the Golden Reel Award in 1980.
George Mihalka was just 27 when he directed My Bloody Valentine (1981). He later described Dunning and Link as “supportive uncles,” recalling, “We were a bunch of kids. We were fresh out of film school. They took a chance on us.” Don Carmody began as a driver on George Kaczender’s U-Turn (1973), then went on to produce Porky’s (1982), a major international hit, and co-produce the Oscar-winning Chicago. He credited the partners as mentors and described them as the genesis of commercial filmmaking in Canada and Quebec.
The method wasn’t mysterious, but it demanded discipline: keep production resourceful, take the audience seriously, and look for ways a film can travel. Dunning and Link produced nearly 60 films together. Genre gave their slate a powerful engine; distribution and sales helped it reach screens beyond Canada. Later, home video extended the lives of many titles, creating a second run for films that might otherwise have disappeared after their theatrical release.
For today’s filmmakers, the formats and platforms have changed, but the fundamentals still apply. Whether a team is developing genre movies, working in sci fi film production or planning a digital media production strategy, it needs a clear audience, a realistic budget and partners who can carry the idea from development to release.
From Cinépix to Lions Gate
Cinépix grew beyond production into distribution, and its reach broadened again in 1989 when it partnered with Famous Players to form C/FP. The partnership shared in hits including The Piano, The Crow, The Crying Game, Like Water for Chocolate, Indochine and Strictly Ballroom. Cinépix bought out Famous Players’ interest in 1994 and reorganized as Cinépix Film Properties.
In 1997, Link, Dunning and other shareholders sold the company to a Vancouver investment group led by Frank Giustra for $36 million in cash and shares. It was renamed Lions Gate Films in 1998. Link remained with the company and later served as its president; Dunning left after the sale.
Their work earned recognition beyond the box office. Dunning and Link received a special Genie Award for their contribution to Canadian filmmaking, were inducted into Playback’s Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame in 1997, and joined the Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame in 2007. Dunning later received the Toronto Film Critics Association’s Clyde Gilmour Award for lifetime achievement. His memoir, You’re Not Dead until You’re Forgotten, was published in 2014.
The producer as creative enabler
Dunning once said, “For years we were in the dark area of the business. We were the black sheep. And we certainly weren’t the critics’ favourites.” That outsider status was part of Cinépix’s identity. The company made commercial films at a time when their popularity could be treated as an embarrassment. It pushed against censorship, gave young filmmakers room to work, and built a business around connecting movies with audiences.
For independent filmmakers, the lasting lesson isn’t to imitate a particular decade’s shocks or formulas. It’s to build a partnership that makes a project more possible: someone who can defend the story, someone who can navigate the business, and a shared commitment to getting the film in front of viewers. In genre filmmaking, the producer isn’t just the person holding the budget together. The producer can be the person who opens the door.
That spirit still drives ambitious, audience-first genre work. Andromeda Studios is building a slate of Canadian projects including Sorority Shark Attack, Gatortown, Lake Patrol and Drive-In the Musical. The tools keep changing. The appetite for a bold premise, and the people willing to make it real, doesn’t.
For more on the history of Cinépix, explore the official biographies of John Dunning and André Link, Playback’s feature on the pair, and The Hollywood Reporter’s obituary of Dunning.