The Vancouver International Film Festival’s annual Trade Forum promises to bring top industry pros together with up-and-coming filmmaking stars to help celebrate its 20th anniversary, Sept. 28-30 in the new Vancouver International Film Centre.

This year’s lineup reflects how much the film industry and community have changed in the past two decades, especially in Western Canada.

‘In the beginning, we catered to beginners. Sessions were pretty elementary. Everyone was interested in learning the basics, and how to get Canadian financing. Our focus was pretty insular,’ explains Trade Forum producer Melanie Friesen.

‘But it’s a whole new world,’ adds Friesen, who’s been involved with the Trade Forum for a dozen years.

In that time, Friesen has witnessed the maturation of the local film and TV community as well as the growing need for Canadian producers to step out of the box and into the global marketplace.

‘The players in the indigenous film community are mature and sophisticated. Today, even the beginners are advanced,’ she says.

The Trade Forum has honed in on these emerging trends and other aspects of the film and TV biz and crafted a new, streamlined and intimate format that Friesen says will give participants greater ability to personally engage with industry experts.

Both the creative and business aspects of production will be addressed in panel sessions that pose questions such as: Is the national cultural funding system serving Canada as well it could? How does one ‘fix’ films in the edit suite? What makes a good trailer? And how does one break into the Asian market?

According to Friesen, the session on targeting Asia is long overdue and a must-attend for filmmakers, ‘especially with China opening up.’ Asian theatrical distributors and television programmers attend virtually all international markets and festivals, buying for vast audiences.

At the Producing for the Asian Market session, Bey Logan and Peter E. Poon will offer advice on how Canadian producers can get a slice of this action by getting a grasp on the financing structures and overcoming cultural barriers.

Logan, who kick-started his career in Hong Kong indies, penned the Jackie Chan vehicle The Medallion. Poon, meanwhile, is GM of Fortune Star Entertainment, which handles worldwide distribution of more than 20,000 hours of programs, including the world’s largest contemporary Chinese-language feature library.

But all the marketing savvy in the world can’t sell a film to producers and actors – let alone an audience – if it isn’t well-written and well-executed, notes Friesen. Thus, other topics to be covered in master classes include directing, writing for the big and small screens, production design and documentary filmmaking.

James L. White, screenwriter on Oscar winner Ray, will give a master class on writing biopics. Although Ray, which grossed more than US$123 million worldwide, might be a record-breaker among biographical features, White points out with a laugh that a writer such as himself remains anonymous in the industry. He breaks down the writer’s life into two phases.

‘There’s the ‘honeymoon period,” he says. ‘[The studios] romance you, talk to you, and hire you. You’ve got your eye on the fruit basket in the bridal suite. But after you give them the first draft, you become the dumbest person and you’re down in the janitor’s room.’

Other writers on the bill include West Wing scribe Michael Oates Palmer (featured in the Narrative Television 2005 session) and writer/director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors), heading a master class on screenwriting on New Filmmaker’s Day (Oct. 1).

Other star attractions on New Filmmaker’s Day are Oscar-winning production designer Dennis Gassner (The Ladykillers, Road to Perdition) discussing his craft, and writer/director Catherine Hardwicke, a production designer-cum-director, who will discuss her indie success with skateboard flick Lords of Dogtown and the edgy teen drama Thirteen.

Hardwicke says she looks forward to talking to budding filmmakers and sharing her creative process, which she describes as ‘total immersion. I dive into the world I’m portraying.’ She surfed with a camera in hand during the making of Dogtown and shot the skateboarders’ maneuvers on land riding a motorcycle. Immersion is a concept many West Coast filmmakers will undoubtedly relate to.

The Trade Forum kicks off the launch of the Vancouver International Film Centre on Sept. 28 with its 1-Minute Motion Picture Contest. Local emerging filmmakers were invited to make a 60-second film with the VIFC as its star. The top 30 entries will be screened over the three days of the Trade Forum, and a panel of local filmmakers will pick the winning film and award its maker $2,500 in Kodak motion picture stock.

More info on the Trade Forum is available at www.viff.org.