Vancouver: More screenings meant a 10% increase in movie attendance at the 2002 Vancouver International Film Festival, which wrapped Oct. 11.

‘The festival was an extraordinary success this year,’ says festival director Alan Franey. ‘Attendance climbed past the 150,000 mark for the first time ever while membership in the VIFF Society reached 41,000, both increases of more than 10% from the previous year. This was largely attributable to the addition of the Cineplex Odeon Granville Seven Cinemas, which allowed for a 10% increase in the number of screenings and for pass-holders to more easily fill their days with screenings.

The Air Canada Award for Most Popular Film went to Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore’s exploration of American gun culture. Runners-up were the German documentary of artist Andy Goldworthy called Rivers and Tides (Fluss Der Zeit) by Thomas Riedelsheimer, and American music documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown by Paul Justman.

The Federal Express Award for Most Popular Canadian Film was a tie between local filmmaker Nettie Wild’s investigation of drug policy in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside called Fix: The Story of an Addicted City and Expecting, an improvised comedy about home birth by Ontario filmmaker Deborah Day. Mina Shum’s Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity was runner-up.

Shanghai Panic by Chinese director Andrew Y-S Cheng won the $5,000 Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema, given to Asian filmmakers.

Keith Behrman, director of the B.C. drama Flower & Garnet, won the $5,000 Telefilm Canada Directing Award, given to the best emerging Western Canadian feature film director. Meanwhile, Michelle Porter won the $4,000 Telefilm Canada Award for best emerging Western Canadian director of a short film for the comedy Big Shoes to Fill.

Nicholas Racz won the $12,000 Citytv Western Canada Screenwriters Award for his work on Burial Society, which he also directed.

Gambling, Gods and LSD, a Canada/Switzerland coproduction by Peter Mettler, won the National Film Board Award for Best Documentary Feature.

South Korean director Lee Chang-Dong won the Chief Dan George Humanitarian Award for Oasis, and actress Jane McGregor won the Women in Film and Video Artistic Merit Award for her work in Flower & Garnet and Claudia Morgado-Escanilla’s short film Bitten.

Next year, VIFF takes place Sept. 25 to Oct. 11.

-www.viff.org