+ Hunter Hunter from Winnipeg’s Shawn Linden and Megan Hekem is the winner of the inaugural Jim Murphy Filmmakers Bursary from the National Screen Institute.

– Torstar revealed its share of losses at CTVgm during the first three months of 2009 was $6.9 million, against a year-earlier loss of $500,000, coming mainly from a $5.3 million impairment charge on the struggling A channels. Given Torstar’s 20% stake in CTVgm, that would put the latter’s first-quarter 2009 losses at an estimated $34.5 million.

+ Kinosmith grabbed the Canadian rights to two titles at the recent Hot Docs: Toronto-based filmmaker Paul Saltzman’s Prom Night in Mississippi and Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country, a Danish film about indie video journalists in Burma by Anders Hogsbro Ostergaard.

+ L.A.-based management and production company The Gotham Group has inked a deal to exclusively represent Cuppa Coffee Studios. With an eye to transitioning the shop’s stop-motion animation expertise to feature films, Gotham is looking to position the Toronto company as one of the top three stop-motion units to U.S. film studios.

+ Further evidence that the box office is recession resistant arrived with Cineplex’s first-quarter results for 2009 – showing revenues of $211 million over the three months ending March 31, up 11.2% from the same frame last year, while attendance climbed 9% to 16 million.