Montreal: An impressive lineup of Japanese producers and industry reps will be in Montreal Aug. 26 for the Canada-Japan Conference, a follow-up to a conference held in Japan in 1994.

The event is sponsored by Telefilm Canada, the All Nippon Producers Association and the Montreal International Film, TV and Video Market and will take a timely look at a wide range of issues including the state of the Japanese film and multimedia industries, coproduction and financing possibilities, copyright, and two case studies, The Sleeping Man and Rinko: The Best Bad Thing.

Panelists

Conference panelists are: Masato Hara, producer and president of Ace Pictures, a distributor of Japanese and foreign feature films, and general director of the anpa; Masafumi Endoh, a producer and director of numerous drama programs for public broadcaster nhk and coproducer on the Cinar Films/wqed tv movie Rinko; Tetsuji Maezawa, hdtv producer with Sony pcl and a member of the anpa’s international co-operation committee; and Hiroshi Fujikura, a producer of feature films and programs for Japanese tv. Fujikura is the producer of The Sleeping Man (Nemuru Otoko) entered in official competition at this year’s World Film Festival.

Deborah Drisdell, Telefilm’s coproduction manager, is the conference’s moderator.

Lead drive

To date, Montreal producers have led the drive for coproduction with Japan.

In 1995, Aska Films and Shochiku shot the feature film The Amateur while Telescene, Daiei and Cine Bazar produced Roger Spottiswoode’s award-winning miniseries Hiroshima, presold to Showtime in the u.s.

This year’s projects include Rinko, a coventure between Cinar and public broadcasters nhk and Pittsburgh pbs affiliate wqed, and Le Vieil homme et la mer, an animation project between Montreal’s Productions Pascal Blais and Japan’s Imagica and Russia’s Panorama Animation.

Earlier, nhk and the nfb coproduced the documentary The Book of the Dead.