Vancouver: The 16th annual Vancouver International Film Festival wrapped Oct. 12 with a 2% increase in box office and attendance equal to last year’s record-breaking 130,000.

The conclusion, says festival director Alan Franey, is that the 17-day event is the right size and that growing the catalogue of films or screenings will undermine the ‘convivial’ nature of the festival.

The festival’s mission to educate through cinema and foster the art of filmmaking has never been so understood as it was this year, he adds, with audiences and industry visitors commending the ‘pro-film, pro-filmmaker’ programming slant.

Corporate donations topped $400,000 for the festival and $200,000 for the three-day Trade Forum and one-day New Filmmakers Day.

About 850 people attended the Trade Forum.

‘I’m most pleased that what we did new this year worked so well,’ says Trade Forum producer Melanie Friesen. ‘Euroday was a great success in letting locals know what will sell in Europe and our tete-a-tete roundtables provided a lot of depth. Of course our jewel in our crown was [former prime minister] Joe Clark,’ who moderated a crowd-pleasing panel on satire with Linda Cullen, Bob Robertson and Michael Moore.

The viff award winners for 1997 are:

Best Canadian screenplay: Thom Fitzgerald, The Hanging Garden (Nova Scotia)

Best emerging Western Canadian feature film director: Gary Burns, Kitchen Party

Best emerging Western Canadian short film director: Andrew Currie, Night of the Living

Dragons & Tigers Award for young cinema: Lee Chang-Dong, Green Fish (South Korea)

Best documentary feature: Anne Claire Poirier, Tu as crie (Quebec)

Best animated film: Daniel Greaves, Flatworld (Bri

tain)

Most popular Canadian film: The Hanging Garden

Most popular film: Caroline Link, Beyond Silence (Germany)