This year’s Academy Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to the Canadian television industry, goes to Michael Maclear, chairman of Toronto’s Screenlife Productions and Leading Cases Productions.

Although Marvel-ous Stan Lee – the brains behind Spider-Man, The Hulk and a host of other super-folk – will play a starring roll as a featured guest, this year’s VIFF Trade Forum is really about filmmaking dollars and scribing sense.

Thirty-eight Canuck short films will screen as part of TIFF 2003’s Perspective Canada Shorts program. The films, culled from 500 submissions considered by programmers Stacey Donen and Liz Czach, are as diverse in length, style and subject matter as they are in the reasons for their creation. While some directors now consider shorts merely as a means of making the jump to long form, many at TIFF still see shorts as an end unto themselves.

Although she has yet to choose her destination, one thing is certain: when Elizabeth McDonald steps down as president and CEO of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association later this month, it will be only the beginning of a new chapter in the librarian-turned-lobbyist’s diverse career.

Late ’70s/early ’80s: McDonald graduates from Montreal’s McGill University with a master’s degree in library sciences

With the Canadian fall spend at hand, broadcasters are lighting candles and praying that they’ll see just some of the manna that fell from heaven during the U.S. upfront.

Last issue, we reported on the lineups of CTV and Alliance Astlantis and CBC. In this issue, we feature what’s in store from Global/CH and CHUM/NewNets:

Peter Moss, EVP programming and development at Corus Entertainment, has spent the last three decades as a student of theatre and television, always seeking the next lesson – and the next big challenge. With Moss slated to receive the Independent Production Fund Outstanding Achievement Award next month from the Alliance for Children and Television, Playback takes this opportunity to examine his enormous contribution to the industry. From his time in theatre in London and Toronto to his executive posts at the CBC, YTV and Cinar, Moss’s career is characterized by its remarkable drive.

In its nearly 30 years of existence, the Toronto-based non-profit Alliance for Children and Television has provided industry training, rewarded top achievements and prodded the Canadian TV industry into providing programming that stimulates children’s intelligence and creativity and avoids intellectual laziness.

When a US$3-million feature documentary rakes in a reported US$40 million in worldwide box office, it’s bound to cause a stir in the non-fiction world. Granted, Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine, brought to life with Canadian prodco Alliance Atlantis, is no average doc. Not many such films are directed by and feature a celebrity with a book (Stupid White Men) on the bestseller shelves. But its success has some debating whether it will help more feature docs achieve a high profile in Canada.

Although Tom Perlmutter, director of the English Program at the National Film Board, promises an announcement at Hot Docs that will be ‘very interesting and significant,’ the NFB has already made three moves this month that saw its international role grow significantly.

It’s been a while since Canadian studios have seen their cash-flush commercial clients with any regularity. The lavish days of yore have become a distant memory, and most studios have had to learn to adapt in order to stave off the icy clutches of economic Darwinism.