A year after it unveiled its Symphony Nitris HD editing platform at NAB 2005, Avid is still touting this product as its best solution for post producers working in HD, SD, or both.

Broadcasters on both sides of the border have unveiled several new plans for streaming their programming.

In a bid to draw more 18-34 viewers to its March 13 Genie Awards coverage, CHUM is ditching the format of its previous two outings as broadcaster of Canada’s annual film fete. This year’s show will veer far from CHUM’s earlier sit-down dinner approach à la Golden Globes, not to mention the traditional theatrical awards show template employed for many years by CBC.

Robert McLachlan didn’t set out to establish a film company that, 25 years on, would be one of Western Canada’s most enduring. Instead, the Omni Film Productions founder was simply trying to make a living in Vancouver by shooting industrial films after he graduated from Simon Fraser University’s film program in the late 1970s.

Media careers will be front and center at this year’s Innoversity Creative Summit. The diversity-in-media conference has beefed up its Career Fair in hopes of matching more talented up-and-comers with broadcast and film outlets.

This year’s Dragons & Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia showcase promises a host of must-see films from Asia, with a particular spotlight on regions not typically represented, including Inner Mongolia and Tibet.

VIFF 2005 received so many strong films from central and eastern European and U.S. indie filmmakers that it built new programming streams around them for this year’s event. This represents a new direction for the fest, which, outside of the Dragons & Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia sidebar, tends not to cover specific regions.

The 25th anniversary Atlantic Film Festival’s Opening Gala on Sept. 15 will feature the Atlantic premiere of writer/director Thom Fitzgerald’s drama 3 Needles. Produced through Fitzgerald’s Halifax prodco Emotion Pictures and distributed by Seville Pictures, 3 Needles tracks a global epidemic as experienced across three continents.

The AFF premiere of director Nick Willing’s $11-million feature thriller The River King, starring Hollywood thesp Edward Burns and Canucks Rachelle Lefevre (The Legend of Butch & Sundance) and Sean McCann (Miracle), is an appropriate homecoming for two reasons.

The life and legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau is a key theme at this year’s AFF, with a pair of PET-themed films on the menu: Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making and Trudeau’s Other Children.

!!

!!Director: Sturla Gunnarsson