The Trailer Park Boys thrilled fans at the closing-night party for the third annual Tidal Wave Film Festival in Fredericton, NB. The party featured a screening of two episodes of the hit Showcase series and appearances by John Dunsworth (Mr. Lahey), Patrick Roach (Randy), Lucy DeCoutere (Lucy) and Sarah Dunsworth (Sarah).

‘It was a pretty crazy night,’ says festival chair Lloyd Salomone. ‘Women were exposing their chests and the men were [autographing] them,’ he says. ‘And guys were ripping off their shirts and cast members were signing on their backs… It was a real hoot.’

This year’s festival, which ran Nov. 5-9, attracted 5,000 people (up 3,000 from last year) and featured more than 65 movies, 40 of which were shot in New Brunswick.

U, a film by University of New Brunswick students, won the viewer’s choice award for best feature film. Toronto-based John Walker’s Men of The Deeps, which was shot in Cape Breton, won the viewer’s choice award for best documentary and New Brunswick’s own Tim O’Neil’s Unseen Enemy won for best short film.

-www.tidalwavefilmfest.ca

Global Visions cultivates

home-grown talent

Canada’s oldest documentary festival keeps getting bigger. Organizers extended the 22nd annual Global Visions Film Festival in Edmonton, which ran Nov. 5-8, by an extra day to accommodate this year’s more than 5,000 attendees. The festival screened 66 films, 41 of which were Canadian. Global Visions also teamed with art group Dreamspeakers to present eight aboriginal films.

‘The quality of Canadian documentary work is just exceptional,’ says festival director Helen Folkmann. Canadian Eva Colmer’s The Enemy Within won the festival’s first-ever audience award and Folkmann says that of the festival’s five world premieres, Zacharias Kunuk’s Angakkuiitt: Shaman Stories was among the most popular.

-www.globalvisionsfestival.com

Roll over Beethoven

A multimedia project that complements a TV documentary about Ludwig von Beethoven, titled Beethoven’s Hair, won nextMEDIA’s first CyberPitch competition. Thomas Wallner and Patrick Crowe of Toronto’s Xenophile Media won $5,000 for their online interactive story that reveals the people and events that inspired the German composer.

Wallner and Crowe were especially happy to win, given the high quality of pitches at this year’s festival, which ran Oct. 22-25 in Charlottetown, PEI. ‘It felt really wonderful,’ says Wallner. ‘It’s going to help us attract more funding and it’s a really great validation of the project.’

This year’s nextMEDIA festival, the seventh installment of what was formerly known as the Baddeck International New Media Festival, attracted 200 participants, a festival high. According to the event’s exec producer Berni Wood, the comprehensive nature of the festival is what makes it successful. ‘It talked to broadcast, wireless and gaming,’ she says. ‘We had every area covered.’

-www.btvf.com

Soccer film takes top prize at mountain fest

A film about a soccer match between the lowest-ranked international teams, which played in the mountainous country of Bhulan on the same day as the World Cup final, took home the grand prize at the 28th annual Banff Mountain Film Festival. The Other Final is directed by Johan Kramer of the Netherlands.

The festival screened 54 of the world’s best mountain-themed films Nov. 1-9 at the Banff Centre in Banff, AB. Debra Hornsby, director of communications, says one of the festival highlights was Kevin MacDonald’s Touching the Void, about mountain climber Joe Simpson’s near-fatal fall in 1985. The docudrama won the best feature-length mountain film award.

‘The story is very well known in the mountain community and there was a lot of interest in seeing it brought to the screen,’ says Hornsby. ‘The audience and jury thought that MacDonald did an excellent job of creating the story without putting a Hollywood spin on it.’

Canadian directors Glen Crawford and Brad Wrobleski won the people’s choice award for their mockumentary Sister Extreme.

-www.banffcentre.ca/mountainculture

Shorts about SARS hit home

A shorts program featuring works by Hong Kong’s top directors, including Shaolin Soccer’s Stephen Chow, will provide Reel Asian Film Festival-goers with a glimpse into the devastating effect of SARS on Hong Kong. The 11 one-minute shorts will screen before each of the 15 screenings at the seventh annual festival, running Nov. 26-30 in Toronto.

The fest, celebrating films by and about Asians, kicks off with Robot Stories, the debut feature film by director Greg Pak. The closing-night party will feature the awards ceremony and a screening of Ann-Marie Fleming’s The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam, a documentary about her great-grandfather’s life as a vaudeville magician.

The @Wallace local artist award will go to Samuel Lee for his film How to Make Kimchi According to My Kun-Umma. Samuel Chow’s Banana Boy will receive the TSV emerging local artist award and Fleming will take home the new best Asian-Canadian documentary award.

The artist’s program will spotlight works by Ontario filmmakers, while the international spotlight will shine on filmmakers from Indonesia.

-www.reelasian.com