With dramatic family tales capturing half of the major prizes at the 2007 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, you’d expect that the buzz out of the fest (April 19-29) would be on personal docs focusing on the lives of their filmmakers, or which feature the directors as characters.

Buyers, sellers and other industry types on their favorite films from this year’s Hot Docs

Veteran TV journalist and Business News Network anchor Jim O’Connell died May 3 following a short bout with colon cancer. He was 48.

A person could go crazy trying to understand the market. And many most likely did, during the annual hurly burly of MIPTV last month in Cannes. And though the answers might be right, wrong, really wrong or timeless, we feel we must tempt madness and ask:

• Corus Entertainment has signed with Singapore Technologies Electronics to coproduce animated DTV titles though its Nelvana Studios, starting with Puff the Magic Dragon and Franklin the Turtle. The deal follows a previously announced long-term partnership between the companies to collaborate on animated series and DVDs, the first of which, the 26 x 30 The Future is Wild, is due on Discovery Kids and Teletoon later this year. Nelvana Enterprises, meanwhile, has teamed with Amazon.com to sell animated and live-action content through the latter’s Unbox video download service, while its popular Babar property will go online with Vuze, a new service from U.S.-based Azureus. The Unbox deal provides download-to-own eps of The Adventures of Tintin, Di-Gata Defenders and others to U.S. customers for $1.99 each. Vuze, meanwhile, will wire all 78 episodes of Babar plus the franchise’s two feature-length films into the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Italy, the U.S. and Russia.

• Pamela Brand has stepped down as executive director and CEO of the Directors Guild of Canada, leaving to ‘pursue new goals’ after almost 20 years with the organization. Lesley Lucas, national director of membership services, will fill in until a permanent replacement is found.

According to its producers, Falcon Beach has sold in 115 territories, and is set in Lake Winnipeg in all of those except the U.S. Incorrect information appeared in a story in the April 16 issue.

With the latest two-step from CanWest MediaWorks, you’d think that Izzy was back from the dead. I’m speaking, of course, of the deal between CanWest and Comcast’s E! Entertainment to rebrand its flaccid second-tier conventional CH channels under the E! banner.

Top 20 TV Programs tracks ratings for the top 20 television shows in Canada for the period April 23-29, 2007.

Every filmmaker, producer and distributor of Canadian long-form content should take in ShowCanada. That way they can at least see the grill on the truck called Hollywood before it runs them over and drives away with the keys to Canada’s theaters. If the experience doesn’t inspire them to make films that people want to see, then sitting with some Canadian exhibitors might at least force them to look both ways – North and South – before crossing the street next time.

The Hot Sheet tracks Canadian box-office results for the period April 27-May 3, 2007, and DVD sales in Canada for the period April 16-22, 2007.