Vancouver: With West Coast filmmakers such as Bruce Sweeney, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, Bruce Spangler, Scott Smith and Nathaniel Geary emerging over the last several years, Vancouver is home to what might be called the Pacific New Wave.

That movement continues at the 2004 Vancouver International Film Festival, muted somewhat by funding challenges and the natural progression of filmmaking cycles, says Canadian Images programmer Diane Burgess.

‘It’s difficult to assess things from the middle [of the trend],’ says Burgess, when asked whether the Pacific New Wave has legs. ‘We won’t know for a couple of years. We’ll have to see who continues to make B.C.-based, B.C.-set features.’

Creatively, the Pacific New Wave distinguishes itself by its use of local settings in a story, in sharp contrast to how Hollywood uses B.C. as a backdrop in service productions. On the Corner, a recent feature by Geary, typifies the more realistic use of setting in the Pacific New Wave, says Burgess.

In the 2004 Canadian Images program, features from rookie B.C. directors include the escape-from-a-small-town story Ill Fated (Mark A. Lewis) and the gay-wedding dark comedy Everyone (Bill Marchant). Making its world premiere is Deluxe Combo Platter by veteran local director/cinematographer Vic Sarin (Left Behind), a romantic comedy about a small-town waitress.

Sophomore B.C. features include Male Fantasy (Blaine Thurier), a comedy about a man who wants to be irresistible to women.

The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess, a wild-and-wooly locally made biopic about the B.C. juror who slept with the accused, is the latest from Toronto director Bruce McDonald, and may be considered an honorary Pacific New Wave member.

Meanwhile, the selection of documentaries at VIFF 2004 is very robust, with ScaredSacred (Velcrow Ripper) kicking off Canadian Images.

‘This is an extremely strong time for docs,’ says Burgess. Audience demand, whetted by The Corporation and other box office-busting docs, as well as the trend for docmakers to create for the big rather than small screen, drive the success of the genre, she explains.

ScaredSacred, a 35mm tour of the world’s ‘Ground Zeros’ – sites of tragedy, such as New York’s World Trade Center – was designed to be experienced in a theatrical setting, says Burgess. It also highlights the growing trend of internationalism in Canadian production in both fact- and fiction-based work.

‘These productions really talk about what it means to be a global citizen,’ says Burgess. ‘On the surface, you don’t see the Canadian content you’d expect from a Canadian film. Canadian films don’t have to be all about what’s happening in a Canadian setting. They reflect a transnational sensibility.’

Other B.C. documentaries on the program include The Ties that Bind (John Ritchie), a world premiere about a family dealing with a son’s cerebral palsy, and Being Caribou (Leanne Allison, Diana Wilson), about newlyweds following a herd of caribou threatened by oil drilling.

‘With international coproductions like Being Julia (Istvan Szabo), Head in the Clouds (John Duigan) and Metallic Blues (Danny Verete), we find evidence of the contributions of Canadian talent on the world stage,’ says Burgess.

The Quebec contingent is strong again this year, featuring Montreal fest opener Elles etaient cinq (Ghyslaine Cote), Memoires Affectives (Francis Leclerc), Happiness Is a Sad Song (Francois Delisle), Littoral (Wajdi Mouawad) and the hit Camping Sauvage (Guy A. Lepage), which has already earned millions at the Quebec box office.

Director Don McKellar’s feature Childstar is the focus of a Canadian Images special presentation, along with Head in the Clouds, a WWII-era drama starring Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz, coproduced by Montreal’s Remstar Productions and the U.K.’s Dakota Films.

The Canadian Images program includes about 45 mid- and long-format productions as well as 64 shorts. Eight features and 24 shorts are from B.C., down slightly from last year, when there were 35 B.C. titles.

Awards include the $12,000 Citytv Western Canada Feature Film Award, presented to the director of the best feature from Western Canada, and the $5,000 International Keystone Entertainment Award, presented to the best young Western Canadian director of a short film. Both awards are voted on by a jury of industry experts.