Fall brings four new features to Vancouver

When Susanne Boyce strolls the trade-show floor at MIPCOM, Oct. 4-8 in Cannes, she won’t be worried about les Joneses.

The cold war between Montreal’s World Film Festival and its financial backers got even colder on Sept. 7 when Telefilm Canada and SODEC invited other, competing fests to apply for the $1 million that is currently earmarked for the WFF.
The call for proposals came one day after the WFF wrapped and just a few weeks after a damning report from both organizations slammed the fest for, among other things, its financial secrecy and poor relations with filmmakers.

Vancouver: Keatley Films is cooking up a little promotional innovation as a side dish to its new six-episode CHUM restaurant drama Godiva’s, set in Vancouver.
Depending on what’s on the menu for Canadian drama in 2005, Check, Please is planned as a six-episode talent search that will run concurrently with Godiva’s in January across the CHUM group of stations.

Vancouver: This month’s 23rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival may be the last of its kind – or at least the last of its size – with the Vancouver International Film Centre opening for year-round programming business by next spring.

Vancouver: With West Coast filmmakers such as Bruce Sweeney, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, Bruce Spangler, Scott Smith and Nathaniel Geary emerging over the last several years, Vancouver is home to what might be called the Pacific New Wave.

Vancouver: The business of filmmaking has often been compared to swimming with sharks. The 19th annual Film & Television Trade Forum at the 2004 Vancouver International Film Festival takes that to heart, with a spotlight focus on the US$130,000 shark thriller Open Water and its American writer/director, Chris Kentis, the special guest of New Filmmakers’ Day, Sept. 25.

Out of 350 applications, the CBC has short-listed 12 finalists in its daytime soap-opera project.

A National Hockey League work stoppage this fall would be a body-check to the CBC, but whether the public broadcaster will be slightly bruised or put on the long-term injury list is a question mark.

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