The Vancouver International Film Festival doesn’t have the Hollywood stars like Toronto or the business deals of Cannes, but it has carved out its own unique presence on the film fest circuit.

The lineup of Canuck films on the fall festival circuit is chock-full of terrific comedies and intense literary adaptations, led by Kari Skogland’s The Stone Angel, the ideal opener for the Canadian Images program.

VIFF is poised to reassert its foothold in nonfiction programming with 84 documentary features – including 40 premieres – aiming to satisfy Vancouver’s insatiable appetite for truth.

B.C.’s nonfiction filmmakers are center stage at VIFF with five world premieres about radically different subjects.

In 2002, Canadian Yung Chang went on one of the so-called ‘farewell cruises’ along the Yangtze River with his parents and grandfather. It was a common trip for tourists to see the area before it was to be flooded by the Three Gorges Dam, and the voyage became the catalyst for the feature doc Up the Yangtze.

Films from China are spotlighted in this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, with epic Chinese filmmaking represented by Jiang Wen’s The Sun Also Rises, an operatic tale of love and madness set in the 1970s, starring Joan Chen.

The Vancouver International Digital Festival, four days of digital media events focusing on animation, gaming, web 2.0, mobile and interactive content, begins Sept. 22, in essence kicking off the city’s major film festival.

The environment plays a starring role in this year’s VIFF through the fest’s new Climate for Change series.

Art and commerce merge at the 22nd annual Film and Television Forum, Sept. 26-29, with new streamlined days, each of the four with a specific focus.

The fourth annual Television Animation Conference, the two-day offshoot of the Ottawa International Animation Festival (Sept. 19-20), will attract about 250 industry execs looking for the next step in producing stellar content for all screens sizes, from mobile to HD.

Starz Media – the Burbank power-house entertainment company that animates The Simpsons – officially opens Starz Animation Toronto, its new Canadian studio, at the end of the month.

Despite the position of the regulator, private broadcasters tell the commission that media consolidation poses no threat to diversity in media, so no changes are necessary