The artistic process is clearly front-and-center at this year’s Film and Television Forum, as creators of U.S. cable series such as Weeds and Dexter and innovative filmmakers from the international scene have been tapped to take part, Sept. 24-27.

The VIFF forum features four days of seminars, panel discussions and master classes – each with a day focused on a specific genre of programming – so there’s a film day followed by TV day, another for documentary, and finally a new filmmakers’ day.

The guest lineup includes Weeds creator Jenji Kohan and Dexter writer/producer James Manos Jr., as well as filmmaker John Sayles’ producer Maggie Renzi (Honeydrippers).

Rodrigo Garcia (In Treatment, Big Love, Six Feet Under) will helm a TV directing master class; Oscar winner Guillermo Navarro (Hellboy, Night at the Museum, Pan’s Labyrinth) will discuss feature cinematography; and Michael Tronick (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Meet Joe Black, Hairspray) will lead a film editing workshop.

This year’s business and market-focused sessions are also adding emphasis to the creative process.

‘We are a creative industry, and at events like these we often end up talking so much business that the creative gets neglected, so we make sure to weave that in,’ says forum creative director Helen du Toit.

‘Many of our sessions are about the fusion of business and creative,’ du Toit explains. ‘Flexibility, adaptability and strengthening our creative and business plans for the international marketplace also comes up in a lot of this year’s sessions.’

An international coproduction session puts the spotlight on Ireland, Germany and Mexico, featuring David Collins of Ireland’s Samson Films (Once, Eden), Pablo Cruz of Mexico’s Canana Films (recently named one of Variety’s 10 Producers to Watch) and Steffen Reuter of Schmidtz Katze Filmkollektiv (Black Ice).

‘Our coproduction session is about finding the right project and creative partner as well as looking at the structure of the deals,’ explains du Toit.

New Filmmakers’ Day features indie innovators including Lance Hammer, who turned down numerous distribution offers on his film Ballast at the Sundance Film Festival this year. He plans to release the film himself in October. 

‘There is this whole wave of new filmmakers using the Internet to reach their audience directly,’ says du Toit. ‘By cutting out the middleman they see more of the revenues.’

Anna Fleck and Ryan Boden, writer/directors of the multiple award-winning Half Nelson (starring Ryan Gosling) and the Sundance hit Sugar, are also key guests at New Filmmakers’ Day. Digital guru Matt Dentler, former South by Southwest producer and current head of marketing and programming at New York-based Cinetic Rights Management, will discuss developing programs for various platforms.

TV Day looks at the recent success of Canadian series – such as the CTV/CBS show Flashpoint – getting picked up south of the boarder. Guests include TNT original programming VP Brett Weitz and Blueprint Enterainment president Noreen Halpern, as well as an executive from Flashpoint.

Film Day includes a world sales update with Nicolas Chartier, president of sales and production company Voltage Pictures, which has distributed over 60 movies internationally, including The Triangle from Dean Devlin and Bryan Singer, Flyboys and Personal Effects, starring Ashton Kutcher and Michelle Pfeiffer.

On Documentary Day, Tom Koch of WGBH, the single largest producer of PBS primetime and online content, and Scott Hooker, senior executive producer of long-form programming at MSNBC, will discuss opportunities in television, and the types of doc programs they are looking for.

‘Documentary filmmakers are in a panic as a lot of their funding sources have dried up, so it is great to have MSNBC here because they have a new program to finance docs,’ points out du Toit.

A session on innovative documentary programming features David Brady of Toronto’s Cream Productions, whose futuristic film Aftermath: Population Zero is the highest-rated documentary ever to air on History Television. The film is also unique in that it used CGI in order to create scenes offering a futuristic speculation on how Earth would fare without humans.

‘This session is all about how to stay true to story but extend the limits of documentary,’ explains du Toit.

A ‘docutainment’ seminar is also planned, with executive producer Sheila Hockin of Canada’s Next Top Model and How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?

The forum also hosts the annual Telefilm Canada international tête-à-tête meetings, where producers can arrange to discuss projects with other international producers, distributors and commissioning editors attending the festival. Over 1,200 delegates attended the Film and Television Forum last year.

A full forum schedule and list of guests is available at www.viff.org/forum