VIFF Trade Forum producer Melanie Friesen is naturally sweet on her 2000 lineup – that’s her job. But she says the highest cal addition to the menu, ‘the maraschino cherry in our banana split is the legendary Roger Corman.

‘This year – as has the industry – we’ve continued to grow considerably. We’ve got a hell of a high calibre of guest speakers.’

Corman, a filmmaker since the 1950s, was pivotally involved in such films as Little Shop of Horrors, The Trip, and pre-Easy Rider biker flick The Wild Angels. He also acted as something of a mentor to filmmakers as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Ron Howard.

The producer’s panel will focus on taking on edgy material and navigating it through the system. Speakers include Steve Golin, producer of Being John Malkovich; Mary Sweeney, producer of the last two David Lynch movies; Albert Berger, producer of Election and Crumb, the documentary on cartoonist Robert Crumb; and Vibeke Vindelow, producer of Breaking The Waves and Dancing in the Dark.

The actors panel is no less impressive, with Don McKellar, Sandra Oh and ‘local heartthrob’ Tygh Runyan (Touched, 15 Minutes, My Father’s Angel, The Outer Limits) participating.

‘Docs have long been a vehicle for exposing social ills and inspiring discourse,’ says Friesen, and this year’s documentarian’s panel includes four filmmakers who ‘fall under New World Order.’ They are: Australian journalist John Pilger, maker of the doc Paying the Price: the Killing of the Children of Iraq; American Shayna Mercer, whose film Trade Off examines the 1999 wto demonstration in Seattle; Kevin McKiernan, who made the film Good Kurds, Bad Kurds; and Gary Marcuse, director/ producer of Nuclear Dynamite (profiled on p. 17)

At the end of every Trade Forum organizers survey delegates to determine what they would like to see added the following year, and with the input of a board of 14 people sift the possibilities for new panels.

Several panels have been added this year, inlcuding the film editor’s panel, featuring such a-list craftspeople as John Gregory from the u.k (Mike Leigh’s editor); Michel Arcand, a Canadian editor now working on the Schwarzenegger flick The Sixth Day; and Chris Tellefeses from New York, who has ‘a slew of independent films’ to his credit and is now working on Birthday Girl, shooting in London with Nicole Kidman.

‘I really admire editors because I can’t imagine doing it myself, so I thought I’d get the best from Canada, England and the u.s. so I could compare how they do things,’ explains Friesen.

Also new this year is a panel on writing for episodic tv, with Chris Haddock moderating. Panelists include Don McKellar of Twitch City fame, Beggars and Choosers writer Peter Lefcourt and The Practice’s Alfred Moreno.

Another new writing panel also joins the forum; this one on the subject of writing thriller screenplays, with the help of James Dearden, who wrote Fatal Attraction.

A panel called The Next Generation Dot Com will ‘inform us on web distribution for short films’ with the help of Atomfilm and ifilm, two of the Internet’s biggest short-specific distribs.

Lastly, the year’s New Filmmakers Day will include a digital panel and discussion of ‘production essentials – tricks of the trade to keep costs down.’ Also featured is an interview with director/writer Bruce Spangler and producer Erik Paulson about the locally shot film Protection, which looks at children taken away from their parents by social workers. *

– www.viff.org