The Calgary International Film Festival, held Sept. 26 to Oct. 5, proved its plan to beef up to a 10-day festival was a good one, reporting 38,000 attendees for its fourth edition. Last year, the festival, held over six days, brought in 25,000 film-goers.

Festival delegates can expect the usual surreal and ironic mix of quaint Eastern Canadian charm and heavy tech-talk that has become the trademark of nextMEDIA, Oct. 22-25 in Charlottetown, PEI. Aside from a diverse assortment of sessions and panels, the new media fest will feature five keynote speakers over the three days.

Janet Yale surprised her Canadian Cable Television Association colleagues and many industry watchers by her sudden resignation as CCTA president and CEO in late September.

The National Screen Institute in Winnipeg has selected the participants for its Totally Television program, and in its second year, there is a definite lean toward Toronto-based talent.

East Coast postsecondary arts school, NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), has grown in size and stature with a new graduate program in film and a new building in which to house the program, thanks to Alliance Atlantis.

Mambo Italiano is continuing its dance with the box office following an impressive opening weekend in English Canada. The film festival fave, starring Paul Sorvino and Mary Walsh, produced by Montreal’s Cinemaginaire and distributed by Equinoxe Films, took in about $600,000 in its first weekend outside of Quebec, on 129 screens, according to Equinoxe VP, distribution Yves Dion. That’s a per screen average of about $4,650.

Halifax: This Hour Has 22 Minutes is returning to its Newfoundland roots with the recruitment of Shaun Majumder, as the fourth anchor of the spoof news show replacing Colin Mochrie. The 31-year-old comedian from Burlington, NF ‘oozes talent,’ says Salter Street Films president Michael Donovan, the show’s executive producer.

Canada was shut out of the 55th annual Emmy Awards televised gala on Sept. 21, but Canadian producers and service providers snagged a few trophies in the creative arts (craft) categories presented in the days leading up to the ceremony.

Halifax: It’s business as usual on the set of Topsail Entertainment’s Trailer Park Boys, less than a week after the cast and crew heard the news about their nominations at the 18th annual Gemini Awards.

HALIFAX: The Atlantic Film Festival succeeded this year in fulfilling its Atlantic-content mandate, while also presenting some fine out-of-province and international work. With executive director Gregor Ash and festival director Lia Rinaldo at the helm, the growing festival also gave the event international credibility with its sixth annual Strategic Partners coproduction conference.

‘I think it had the most remarkable response to anything I’ve ever done,’ says Jan Miller, producer of the Atlantic Film Festival’s Strategic Partners conference, held Sept. 13-15, during the first weekend of the fest. That’s a bold statement, considering Miller, who started the popular conference six years ago, founded the National Screen Institute in the ’80s and has taught the art of pitching to countless emerging filmmakers all over the world.

Before there was CSI there was The Murdoch Mysteries, a book series penned by Canadian writer Maureen Jennings about Detective William Murdoch, who shocked his peers with wacky new crime-solving techniques – like dusting for fingerprints. Murdoch’s exploits in Victorian Toronto are being brought to the small screen for CHUM Television/ Bravo! by way of two MOWs from Winnipeg’s Original Pictures and Toronto’s Shaftesbury Films.