– Brenda Collins resigned her position July 5 as executive administrator of the B.C. Motion Picture Association. She leaves the association with a $23,000 deficit, a far cry from a $30,000 surplus the year before. The 1996 fiscal year was marked with many more initiatives such as the Leo Awards and a costly marketing program that took the association to natpe and mipcom and developed a cd-rom showcase of b.c. producers.

Collins is now sole proprietor of Axcess Filmworks, a service production provider, and is at work on the movie True Heart.

Collins – who had a non-exclusive contract with the bcmpa – was not paid for the last three months of her tenure. She will not be replaced, says bcmpa chair Trudy Handel, since upcoming projects, such as the annual wrap party, will be handled by a freelance project manager.

– Dishes washed up

One-by-one, Disney-style, the industry is taking on all comers abetting grey market dth piracy which entails the poaching of rights to programming, already owned by, and/or purchased for, the Canadian market.

On the heels of persuading RCA Thomson Electronics Canada not to import u.s. dth dishes and The Brick’s decision to quit selling satellite dishes, Canada’s pay-tv nets, Superchannel, Family Channel and tmn, and dth service ExpressVu, asked the Federal Court for an immediate injunction to stop the sale and distribution of u.s. dth satellite dishes in Canada by eight companies.

The legal action filed cites Price Costco, London Drugs, NII Norsat International (operator of Aurora Distributing), A.C.E. Imports International, The (Discount) Stereo Store (operator of Base Electronics), A.& B. Sound, Jerry’s Radio & TV of Barrie, and Hi-Fi 2000.

– Atlantis selling spree

Atlantis Communications tempered its uninspiring financial picture by announcing a bit of a selling spree at this year’s annual general meeting.

The first season of Traders will be making its way into the u.s. market via the Lifetime cable network, owned by Hearst and abc/Disney. No details on the licence fee, but Atlantis chairman and ceo Michael MacMillan says Atlantis is ‘very happy’ with the arrangement.

MacMillan also announced the sale of three mows to ctv. The Oath, which wrapped shooting July 5, is an mow set in pioneer days and stars Brendan Fletcher as a young boy forced to survive in the wilderness on his own.

Directed by Sheldon Larry, The Oath also stars Keith Carradine, Annette O’Toole, Gordon Tootoosis and Maury Chaykin. cbs will be distributing in the u.s. and the mow airs American Thanksgiving weekend.

We The Jury, presold to the U.S.A. Network, began shooting July 9 and stars Kelly McGillis and Christopher Plummer in a courtroom drama about a female juror who struggles to push the rest of the jury to the truth. The film is being directed by Sturla Gunnarsson.

Capping the three-pack sale is Night of the Twister, which broke an 18-year ratings record for Family Channel when it aired earlier this summer. ctv is in for the second window.

The upbeat sales news balanced the downside of the agm, at which MacMillan explained the origin of, and solutions in progress for, what he called ‘clearly unsatisfactory’ financial results.

Several mechanisms are in place to rectify the bottom line, including a production strategy which focuses on producing fewer, more profitable programs. The benefits of these changes will not be visible until the 1996 third quarter, MacMillan said.

‘Going forward, we believe Atlantis is on sound financial footing and will provide an improved return to shareholders in the years ahead,’ concluded chief financial officer Lewis Rose.

– TIFF launch

Toronto International Film Festival programmer David Overbey has announced a significant increase in the number of seats for press screenings at this year’s event. Forty thousand seats will be available for industry and press, compared to 16,000 last year.

‘There was an absolute demand for more press seats,’ according to festival spokesperson Valerie Wint. ‘There were so many press that often the general public couldn’t get a seat.’

The theaters at The Sheraton – the new host hotel for this year’s 21st annual tiff – and at the Art Gallery of Ontario will hold press screenings each day.

This year’s National Cinema Program will feature films from Vietnam, and Portuguese director Joao Cesar Monteiro is this year’s Spotlight director.

Changes to the festival structure include two new programs: Discovery and Reel to Reel. Discovery will feature premieres from filmmakers on the brink of mass appeal, while Reel to Reel will showcase cutting-edge docs.

Asian Horizons and Latin American Panorama have been folded into Contemporary World Cinema, and films which would have previously screened in First Cinema will be distributed among Contemporary World Cinema, Reel to Reel and Discovery.

Dialogues, last year’s highly successful program featuring renowned filmmakers introducing and discussing their favorite films, will return this year, curated by James Quandt and Susan Oxtoby of Cinematheque Ontario.

The Rogers Industry Centre is also returning, replete with ‘Micro-meetings’ (one-hour face-to-faces with the likes of Warner Bros., bbc, Miramax, Paramount and Polygram), the ‘Pre-sales Desk’ (pitch/networking consultation) and the efdo umbrella desk.

This year, French film agency Unifrance joins the roster of industry initiatives.

– NFB aboriginal program

The nfb is launching a production program to expand filmmaking opportunities for aboriginal peoples.

The Aboriginal Filmmaking Program is a three-year initiative from the nfb’s English Program branch for independent directors looking to produce or coproduce projects.

English Program will set aside $1 million for each of the program’s three years to finance its productions and the nfb’s share of the afp coproductions. The focus of the program will be documentary production.

The afp will replace the Studio One structure and a team of nfb producers will be responsible for ensuring that more projects are created by aboriginal filmmakers and other underrepresented groups.

– Devine Entertainment

Toronto-based Devine Entertainment has signed on with hbo to create and produce a new series of family dramas entitled The Inventors’ Specials to premier in the fall of 1997.

Devine principals David Devine and Richard Mozer, who produced The Composers’ Specials currently airing on hbo, are producers on the new series.

Principal photography commences Aug. 12 in Toronto on the first drama, Einstein: Light to the Power of Two starring Paul Soles (Beethoven Lives Upstairs) in the role of Albert Einstein.

Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci and Galileo will be among the inventors represented in the series of hour-long historically- based dramas exploring the social, scientific and artistic concerns of various time periods.

– A-V alliance

The Alliance for Canada’s Audio-Visual Heritage, a Ministry of Heritage and National Archives of Canada-created organization mandated to preserve Canada-produced audio and video product, has officially opened its doors.

Although initiatives are in the embryo stages, the alliance is working towards the creation of a national network of Canadian audiovisual data bases and a feasibility study on the establishment of regional storage centers for film, tape and audio footage.

Members of the alliance include actra president Sandy Crawley, cafde president Dan Johnson, tmn president Lisa de Wilde, Robert Daudelin, curator, Cinematheque Quebecoise, and Kim Tomczak, executive director of V-Tape and representative of the Independent Film and Video Alliance.

– Discovery Channel Multimedia

Toronto-based Beamscope has signed on as Canadian distributor for Discovery Channel Multimedia’s cd-rom product line

Discovery Channel Multimedia has 20 cd-rom titles on the market in the u.s. and the distribution agreement with Beamscope will include the sale of all present and future titles into the Canadian retail channel.

The product line includes two real-world based games: Savage, a first-person experience as a lion surviving on the Serengeti, and Connections, based on James Burke’s series of the same name broadcast on tlc.

– Cinar to publish

Cinar Films president Ron Weinberg has announced Cinar is diversifying its core production business by moving into educational publishing.

Post a Cinar stock 52-week high of $32 on the tse this month, Weinberg announced that negotiations are on-going with several private publishers but doesn’t expect a deal to be solidified until mid-1997.

Ideally, materials including workbooks and classroom decorations would be part of Cinar characters and stories infiltrating the education and day care system. The books on which Cinar bases many of its programs are already available in some schools and classrooms.

Cinar recently closed a subordinate share issue in the u.s. – at us$19 a pop – adding us $41.6 million to the kitty.