Winnipeg: For many in Manitoba, winter is a slow, cold season, but for Winnipeg’s Frantic Films, it has been busier than ever. The company’s live-action division currently has a feature and three doc series in post, and its doc/reality series Last Chance for Romance is now airing on Global.
Before Jamie Brown joined the company as CEO and executive producer in 2000, Frantic was focused on local, primarily commercial, animation and had eight full-time employees. Today the company has 70 full-time staff and has completed visual effects work for features including X2,

Producers shooting in Nova Scotia can now access tax credits up to 45%. On March 8, Premier John Hamm announced a 5% increase to the province’s film and television tax credit, and a new 5% frequent-filming bonus. The announcements see Nova Scotia joining Ontario, Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba as provinces that have hiked tax credits over the last three months.

Although Being Julia star Annette Bening didn’t leave the Oscars with a best actress statue in hand, her nomination helped push the ThinkFilm release over the $1-million mark at the Canadian box office.

The National Screen Institute – Canada’s seventh annual FilmExchange wrapped March 5 in Winnipeg, with attendance up despite the fact that this year’s festival featured fewer events and six fewer features than in 2004. Attendance jumped by more than 130, with a total of 5,045 people showing up for four days of screenings and industry events, March 2-5.

IN the past few years, high tax credits and incentives in the Prairie provinces, coupled with relatively low tax credits in major production centers, have helped regional producers to build film and television industries in Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Calgary. However, recent tax-credit hikes have made Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia more competitive and may be enough to lure production back to the centers.

Over the last two years, Saskatchewan’s film and television industry has grown significantly, with production volumes up 58% in 2004 over 2003.

Tax-credit hikes in neighboring Ontario, as well as in B.C. and Quebec, may have kept important coproducing partners away from Manitoba, but that problem has possibly been averted by a recent tax-credit hike of 10% in the province.

While other provinces are upping tax credits, some in Alberta’s production community are pushing for different ways of attracting bigger productions.

The seventh Soirée des Jutra was a huge coup for Francis Leclerc’s Mémoires affectives. The intimate auteur film produced by Barbara Shrier of Montreal’s Palomar Films won four of its five nominations at the Quebec film awards, including best film, best director, best picture editing and best actor for lead Roy Dupuis.

CTV’S Corner Gas passed another ratings record on Feb. 21 when its audience approached two million.

One week into its release by Christal Films, Francois Bouvier’s Maman Last Call has jumped into the number-one spot on the Canadian box-office chart.

You know you’re a ‘real Canadian’ when instead of curling up on the couch with a blanket to watch a flick on a cold winter night, you’d rather put on a parka, head outside into the -20C night air and watch films projected onto ice.