This year the Academy Award stage was swamped by award recipients thanking their mothers and peers with non-American accents. Of the five films nominated for best picture, three were made outside of the U.S. For the past few years, American filmmakers have been bad-mouthing Canada for what they see as taking the bread out of crews’ and casts’ mouths as the U.S. film industry finds it cheaper and financially beneficial to shoot in Canada. Now the Hollywood studios are finding new incentives to shoot off the North American continent all together. Many countries offer excellent financial benefits and European governments have cultural departments that offer generous tax breaks. This, combined with digital technology, means a film can be shot and post-produced almost anywhere in the world.

With the explosion in tax credits, new media incentives, broadcaster programming funds and government and cableco financing initiatives, Playback’s annual compilation of investment and finance sources lists the ever-widening national and provincial pools of money producers can dip into. But as…

Malcolm Silver specializes in multimedia financing and investor service. He is the president of Toronto-based Malcolm Silver & Company….

Ireland seems to be the latest country to use tax shelter – Section 35, to create a busy local film industry. Certainly the scheme has created an unprecedented boom in local production….

Malcolm Silver is head of Malcolm Silver & Co., a Toronto-based company which finances the production and marketing of film, television, video and multimedia….

works for film and TV industry…