INSIDE

– Perspective: Channel 4 begins p.1

– Hanley documents the festival p. 27

– There’s more than just barbeque on the spit: Pat Ferns gets roasted p. 32

– Canadian Rockie nominees: who from home is going up against the international heavyweights p. 34

– Stand up for the Comedy Cabaret p. 40

In an eye-crossing, jet lag-inducing calendar of international events which includes endless cycles of acronyms and enough festivals to choke an elk, Banff is a relative oasis of calm. The TV people have time to screen TV shows for a change, and the shop talk includes issues beyond ratings and rights. Television, often dismissed by the critics as hackneyed and asinine, gets treated to ‘artsy’ dialogue too often reserved for film.

It might be the venue ­ huge snow-topped rocks and the big sky can’t hurt ­ but there’s something about Banff which lets fresh air into debates on tough subjects. In last year’s Two in a Room, Channel 4 and the CBC took an earnest look at an alternative doc proposal called Planet Queer before the CBC blinked first.

As the uniquely coprod-fertile festival broadens to cover more of the world more of the year, Banff’s tradition of friendly irreverence and casual squeaky-clean Canadian-ness will be its best defence against any global growing pains which might challenge its collaborative consciousness. It’ll still be a beautiful place to make a deal.

* * *

After good reviews of last year’s Sex, Violence and the V-Chip, Sleeping Giant executive producer Jim Hanley is taking his cameras back to Banff.

This year’s production will be an hour-long pilot for an annual show reporting on the world of television, called The State of Television: The Banff Report.

According to Pat Ferns, president and ceo of the Banff Television Festival, they are looking to the future and trying to position themselves for 1998 with an international television product that says something about tv while promoting the Banff experience.

‘We are looking to develop a show that has both entertainment elements as well be some kind of reflection on the state of television worldwide,’ says Ferns. ‘Ultimately, it will be a vehicle that the festival would be helping to market internationally.’

While Hanley is hoping to make this year’s effort a little different than a documentary, he is still unsure of the shape the production will take.

‘We don’t have enough money to make the full thing, so this is kind of a notepad sketch of what we really want to do and for what the program could be like in 1998,’ he says.

This year’s show, which will air sometime this year on Bravo!, access and Alberta’s new A-Channel, will focus on the main theme of discussion at the festival.

Meanwhile, Bravo!’s videographers will also be in Banff capturing the festivities for an Arts and Minds segment to be aired sometime this fall.