Seventeen countries will be represented among 14 categories for the 24th Banff Rockie Awards, to be presented June 9 at Banff2003.

The Independent Production Fund has announced decisions for its February round of applications. Equity financing will go to 14 productions including Alliance Atlantis Communications’ The Eleventh Hour, Barna-Alper Productions’ Blue Murder and Degrassi: The Next Generation from Epitome Pictures. Funding was split evenly between English- and French-language productions.

Hot Docs, the biggest documentary film festival in North America, will be hosting its 10th anniversary April 25 to May 4 throughout Toronto’s trendy Little Italy and Annex neighborhoods.

Canada had a strong showing at the 75th Academy Awards, with four Canucks receiving top honors in Hollywood.

Nothing has made as big a noise at NAB in the past few years as the latest camera technology, specifically in the high-definition field. But the innovation did not stop with the debut of Sony’s 24p HDCAM at NAB2000. This year, local equipment suppliers, DOPs and post folks will return to the desert to see the state of the art of image capture.

JVC will be trying to steal eyeballs from competitors such as Sony and Panasonic at NAB2003 with new offerings in camcorder and digital dailies technologies.

The Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund recently celebrated its fifth anniversary.

The IMAX Corporation has devised a cost-effective way to bring the ‘IMAX experience’ to multiplexes currently equipped only for 35mm exhibition.

Shawn Doyle and Kristen Thomson took home this year’s ACTRA Awards, along with Gordon Pinsent, who snagged the Award of Excellence for his long list of achievements.

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters Task Force on Cultural Diversity is about to embark on what it is terming ‘one of the most comprehensive studies on cultural diversity ever done, anywhere,’ with the goal of finding out what minority groups want to see on TV and how to give it to them.

Twenty-nine screenplays have made the final cut for the Writers Guild of Canada’s Top Ten Awards.

On Feb. 6, ‘the motion picture industry lost one of its best,’ says Ken Kurz of his father Gerd Kurz, who died of heart failure at the age of 61.