Montreal: Fans of the late Mordecai Richler have reason to celebrate, as his popular novel St. Urbain’s Horseman is being made into a miniseries for the CBC.

On one hand, Serge Losique is happy that his World Film Festival will, despite reports of its imminent demise, be around to blow out 30 candles starting Aug. 24. But the controversial founder and president of the Montreal fest is also concerned about how digital technologies are impacting the way films are being consumed.

Despite the stalemate between its rival technical unions, Quebec’s production sector has nonetheless lured some major film shoots from south of the border.

OUTtv has again found new owners, this time at Shavick Entertainment.

Montreal – Filmmaker Brian McKenna (Big Sugar) is hoping that nostalgia will win over audiences for his ambitious CBC miniseries, The Great War.

The most sought-after launching point for Canadian movies is again proving to be a diverse draw, as the Toronto International Film Festival revealed on July 18 a lineup of homegrowns stocked with zombies, an Inuit shaman and the Rwandan genocide.

Producer Denise Robert says she was ‘deeply hurt’ by recent remarks made in a Montreal newspaper in which colleagues, complaining about a lack of funding for Quebec filmmakers, questioned the wisdom of Telefilm Canada putting cash into her two latest projects.

Ghyslaine Côté’s Le Secret de ma mère has managed to pack Quebec cinemas since its July 7 opening, taking in $606,778 on 88 screens in its opening week, for an impressive per-screen average of $6,895.

Montreal’s Muse Entertainment has water, lots of water, on its mind this summer as it works on three similarly themed disaster miniseries ­- Flood, Superstorm and Killer Wave, the latter under the direction of Bruce McDonald.

The recommendation that the CBC should get out of both advertising and sports coverage has reignited long-standing debates about the network while making for strange bedfellows among lobbyists and insiders.

Representatives of Quebec’s film community say they are optimistic about the province’s lack of film funding following a meeting with Minister of Heritage Bev Oda.