Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions may have struck twice in the best dramatic series category, but it is Alliance Atlantis’ The Eleventh Hour that leads the pack with 14 overall nominations for the 18th annual Gemini Awards, announced last week by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. Barna-Alper dramas Blue Murder and Da Vinci’s Inquest (which closely trails Eleventh Hour with 11 noms) will take on The Eleventh Hour, Cold Squad and The Atwood Stories for the golden profile on Oct. 20 in Toronto.

Black Ace, a feature film in development about Canadian sports trailblazer Herb Carnegie, won Telefilm Canada’s 4th Pitch This! competition at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film was one of six pitched at the Sutton Place Hotel, weeded down from 72 submissions, and earned its filmmakers $10,000.

The 4th Calgary International Film Festival (Sept. 26 to Oct. 5) will open and close with a bit of local flavor. CIFF’s opening gala is The Cooler, produced by local-gone-Hollywood Michael Pierce, who is bringing the film’s star William H. Macy to town for the screening. The festival will close with Calgary director Gary Burns’ The Problem with Fear.

Sudbury, ON isn’t the first town that comes to mind when someone utters the words ‘film festival.’ Then again, neither was Park City, UT once upon a time. But Cinefest Sudbury, now in its 15th year (running Sept. 15-21), is really hitting its stride and has attracted some of the biggest films on the international festival circuit.

NSI Canada has named the participants in its Global Marketing Program, a training initiative that mentors Canadian television producers and helps to ready their projects for consideration in the international marketplace.

Big Motion Pictures in Chester, NS is taking on the federal government in the CBC ‘six-pack’ Political Animals. According to Big producer Wayne Grigsby, the 6 x 60 series is a dramatic but tongue-in-cheek look at big politics and office politics in Ottawa as seen through the eyes of a 23-year-old woman, new to the game as a special assistant to a minister.

What is most striking about this year’s VIFF lineup is that all three gala screenings feature Canadian films. Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions will serve as the opening gala, Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World as the anniversary gala, and Charles Martin Smith’s The Snow Walker will close. This doesn’t necessarily reflect a trend, says Alan Franey, festival director for the last 16 years.

The blackout experienced throughout Ontario and the northeastern U.S. Aug. 14 was less a swift kick and more a grazing blow to Toronto’s recovering production industry, which, aside from some minor logistical dilemmas, emerged from the dark mostly unscathed.
For Canada’s major broadcasters headquartered in T.O., there were a few anxious moments.

CBC leads the pack with 64 nods as the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television unveiled nominations for Canadian documentary, news and sports programming for the 18th Gemini Awards.

Piers Handling is entering the busiest month on his calendar, and will soon face 10 days that would flatten most event organizers. But we’re talking about the Toronto International Film Festival, which is in many ways his baby. It is Handling’s 21st year with TIFF, and his ninth as the festival’s director. He’s seen it all by now, but with high expectations stemming from last year’s success and TIFF 2003 coming on the tail end of the SARS scare, Handling says he is feeling more than the usual pressure.

Canada’s digital and satellite television subscriber growth was stunted somewhat in the first quarter of 2003, according to research by Decima Publishing in Ottawa.

The Atlantic Film Festival will open Sept. 12 with the East Coast premiere of Thom Fitzgerald’s The Event, one of 26 Canadian feature films, nine of which are Atlantic in genesis, to screen at the 23rd edition of the popular fest. The festival will run until Sept. 20 in Halifax.