Innovations planned for the 23rd Toronto International Film Festival include new services for producers seeking financing partners for projects in development.

A ‘Producers Desk’ in the Rogers Industry Centre will be helmed by a resource person to connect producers with potential financiers and partners, says Industry Centre exec director Debbie Nightingale. The desk will also offer Internet, fax and phone services.

The Industry Centre and Toronto production company Triptych Media will host a producers lounge throughout the Sept. 10-19 event where producers from around the world can meet and shop their projects. Projects in development will be preregistered and listed in a handbook distributed to the producers.

A Rogers Industry Centre catalogue will include a list of all registered industry and sales delegates this year.

Micro-meetings and producer dinners will return and link Canadians with foreign producers and other key industry players.

Multiple Academy Award-winning producer Saul Zaentz (The English Patient, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) is the keynote speaker for Symposium 98, which will focus on independent filmmaking.

European Film Promotion, a Pan-European association made up of 18 film organizations, will attend tiff for the second year to promote European films and filmmakers and partnerships with North Americans.

Also returning is the Canadian Film Centre’s Ultra Indie Experience, a five-part series of case-study workshops on taking a film from concept to the screen.

A festival village is being set up in the Bloor Street corridor. Grand Bay Hotel (the reincarnated Park Plaza Hotel) plays host for this year’s festival. The Four Seasons Hotel will house daily press conferences and Symposium keynote breakfasts. Other Symposium functions will be held at the Royal Ontario Museum and the Hotel Inter-Continental. The Rogers Industry Centre and videotape library will occupy three floors of an office building at 101 Bloor Street West.

In addition to the main theater venues, select Special Presentation and Masters screenings will take place in the new VISA Screening Room in the Elgin Theatre.

Francois Girard’s The Red Violin, written by Girard and Don McKellar, will open the festival. The Rhombus Media/Mikado Film coproduction follows a violin as it passes from owner to owner over several centuries and several continents.

Without Limits from Academy Award winner Robert Towne (Chinatown) will screen in the Gala Programme. The film is based on the life of runner Steve Prefontaine who revolutionized track and field in the ’70s.

The National Cinema Programme, entitled New Beat of Japan, will feature current Japanese films.