Strada Films prexy Sandra Cunningham has been elected CFTPA chair for a two-year term by its new board of directors.

‘Over the course of the next two years, we will see landmark changes in the political environment,’ said CFTPA president and CEO Guy Mayson in a statement.

‘We are already witnessing fundamental change in the environment in which we operate,’ cautioned outgoing CFTPA chair Ira Levy, also partner and executive producer at Toronto’s Breakthrough Films and Television. ‘It’s an environment that is at once increasingly consolidated and fragmented.’

Cunningham chaired her first CFTPA meeting in Banff on Sunday and tells Playback Daily that she believes the new board is ready for whatever the environment dishes out: ‘When I looked around the boardroom table on Sunday, what I saw was the most high-powered and diverse group of industry people that’s ever been around a CFTPA table.’

The new CFTPA board of directors (listed on the CFTPA website, www.cftpa.ca) is a virtual who’s who of producers across the country. ‘I think people are stepping up to the plate because of that changing environment,’ Cunningham adds. ‘The energy is high and I’m looking forward to it. I think the CFTPA has matured and I think we will be vocal as a group.’

Producers are pleased that the CFTPA has a new chair with 25 years of producing experience under her belt.

‘I think Sandra is a great choice,’ says Robert Lantos, who coproduced four films with Cunningham, including Atom Egoyan’s Ararat and Where the Truth Lies, Norman Jewison’s The Statement and Istvan Szabo’s Being Julia.

‘She has the ability to make peace between producers with conflicting agendas,’ Lantos adds. ‘She has the ability to put out the most intense fires and she keeps her cool in the most tense situations. These are all the valuable assets that the chair of the CFTPA needs.’

Cunningham cofounded Toronto-based Strada Films, which is producing the feature doc 27, about the lives and tragic deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, due in theaters in 2008.