Toronto content company Catalyst and intimate apparel company Knix are prepping the launch of a new initiative for documentary features.

The Knix Fund Catalyst Docs for Change Project is set to launch at the Banff World Media Festival (BANFF), which runs from June 11 to 14. The initiative will “fully fund” a documentary feature that gives the spotlight to “issues and stories that matter and speak to women,” according to a news release.

Filmmakers will be invited to submit projects to Catalyst and Knix, and one will be selected for production and distribution funding. Applications will open on June 11, and Catalyst founder Julie Bristow (pictured) and Knix founder and president Joanna Griffiths will take part in a moderated conversation at BANFF on June 14 to discuss the initiative.

BANFF will feature a number of keynote sessions and masterclasses. The festival recently unveiled the first of its Master Classes, with a panel of CBS comedy Ghosts and another on the Star Trek franchise from CBS Studios.

Eva Grant named as 2023 Native Labs Fellow

Canadian writer and director Eva Grant is one of the five filmmakers selected for Sundance Institute’s 2023 Native Lab fellowship, which offers creative guidance to artists and storytellers developing their original projects for the screen.

Grant is a bilingual filmmaker of mixed St’at’imc Indigenous, Asian, and European heritage. She will develop her project Degrees of Separation, a comedy about an Indigenous PhD student who “plans a daring heist to return ancestral remains to her tribe,” during the fellowship, which runs online from May 1 to 5 and in-person in Santa Fe, New Mexico from May 8 to 13.

Grant is currently a Vancouver Queer Film Festival Disruptor Fellow, and an Artist in Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is a former E20 screenwriter, and studied literature and philosophy at Stanford University.

This year’s Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs will support 12 fellows, with five fellows selected for the Native Lab. Grant was selected by the Indigenous Screen Office through its ongoing partnership with the Sundance Institute.

Tracking the economic impact of Disney’s Peter Pan & Wendy in Canada

Peter Pan & Wendy, the live-action remake of Disney’s 1953 animated classic, injected more than $170 million into the creative economies of British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec, according to data released by the Motion Picture Association of Canada (MPA-Canada).

British Columbia was the base of operations for the production with a 99-day shoot that employed more than 1,200 local cast and crew members. An estimated $112.3 million was spent in the province, including more than $71 million on labour and over $41 million on local goods and services from about 780 businesses.

To recreate the magical fictional island of Neverland, the production moved to Newfoundland and Labrador, where its cliffs and shorelines provided the backdrop during nine days of filming. More than $9.7 million was spent locally during the shoot, said a release by MPA-Canada.

Roughly $48.6 million was also spent on VFX and animation services in Quebec.

Canadian projects head to the Blue Mountains

Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry, Marie Clements’ Bones of Crows, and Philippe Falardeau’s docuseries Lac-Mégantic – ceci n’est pas un accident (Lac-Mégantic – This is Not an Accident) are the Canadian selections for the second annual Blue Mountain Film Festival. 

The festival, which runs from June 1 to 4 in the town of The Blue Mountains, Ont., will feature 24 films from 23 countries. Spanish comedy Many Chefs by Joaquín Mazón is the opening film, while the closing film is Ukrainian filmmaker Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s Pamfir.

With files from Taimur Sikander Mirza