Vancouver: CBC series Da Vinci’s Inquest came away the big winner at the 2002 Leo Awards in Vancouver May 10 and 11 with nine trophies, including best drama series.

Vancouver: British Columbia’s production volumes in 2001 dropped 8% in a year rife with anomalies, including the precipitous fall in value of domestic production.
Official tallies, released finally this month, indicate that 197 productions in 2001 generated direct spending of $1.08 billion, the second-best year after 2000, which posted overall volume of $1.18 billion.
The good news is that despite the threat of U.S. writers and actors strikes in the summer of 2001, a slow U.S. television economy and terrorist attacks in the fall, foreign service production was up 12.5% to a record high of $857 million, including 22 features, 19 series, 37 TV movies/miniseries/pilots, three animation titles and three documentaries.

Vancouver: With the creation of the Motion Picture Production Industry Association of British Columbia April 25, the stage is set for the B.C. government to restructure how the film industry works on the West Coast.

Vancouver: The new partnership of Vancouver producers Stephen Hegyes and Shawn Williamson of Brightlight Pictures is generating a critical mass of in-house and service production.
While romantic comedy Try Seventeen wrapped May 1, the made-in-Vancouver, Canadian-content drama Punch wraps a month of production May 17.
The debut feature for writer/director Guy Bennett, Punch explores a father’s and daughter’s volatile relationship and their struggle to find the right emotional distance.

Vancouver: In his maiden speech as the newly installed chair of the CRTC, Charles Dalfen told 900 delegates at the 2002 Canadian Cable Television Association conference in Vancouver that the commission will step up its support for efforts to stamp out black-market satellite systems.
‘The black market is hurting us all,’ said Dalfen, ‘and threatens to draw away money from the Canadian broadcasting system as a whole through, for example, the depletion of the Canadian Television Fund, which is dependent on licensed distributors for half of its revenues. To the extent that new legislation may be required to limit the black market, we will lend our full support.’

Vancouver: British Columbia’s most critically acclaimed feature for 2001 was snubbed again by the Canadian industry – this time at home.

Vancouver: Local producer Ogden Gavanski is the Canadian partner in the Spanish coproduction My Life Without Me, a project with legendary director Pedro Almodovar as executive producer (El Deseo Productions of Madrid, Spain).
The English-language, independent production wrapped April 26 and has a budget valued at less than $2 million. It stars Sarah Polley as a young woman who hides her terminal cancer to live her life with a passion she never had before. She makes a list of things to do, including finding her husband a new wife.

Vancouver: B.C. television producers will have to look elsewhere for production financing now that British Columbia Film has opted out of the TV equity financing game in the wake of the provincial government’s cost-cutting budget announced Feb. 19.

Vancouver: Producer Colleen Nystedt is the latest founding partner to leave Vancouver’s Sextant Entertainment in an operational restructuring that began Jan. 31 when 24% of staff were laid off.

If Canada’s visual effects community picks up any more gigabytes of U.S. work, the Film and Television Action Committee in Los Angeles may have to open a new front in its ‘Blame Canada’ runaway production trade war. Increasingly, larger-budgeted U.S. productions are coming north to use post-production services in Canada – and not just for shows shot north of the 49th parallel.

Vancouver: Any gains B.C. producers made in production volumes in the past few years may be wiped out when the domestic industry’s annual statistics are finally released.

Vancouver: Whether they are spurred by the expansion of the domestic broadcasting system, the changing appetites of television audiences or a thaw in the international television economy, Canadian programmers and distributors will be in a mood to spend at MIPTV in Cannes April 15-19.
Toronto distributor Canamedia Productions, for one, is trying to double the size of its catalogue to 100 titles in the lifestyle, adventure travel, documentary and youth genres in order to increase its presence in the market prior to its 25th anniversary.