Montreal – Circle of Friends, an MOW coproduced by Montreal’s Incendo Productions, wraps on May 10 after four weeks in Montreal. The thriller stars Julie Benz (Satan’s School for Girls, Jawbreaker) as a woman who returns home to investigate the mysterious deaths of her childhood friends.

Academy Award-winning actress Anna Paquin spent time in her hometown of Winnipeg recently shooting Blue State, the first feature from U.S. writer/director Marshall Lewy, which wrapped in late-April after a 20-day shoot.

Vancouver – Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah – two of the assassins from Quentin Tarantino’s popular Kill Bill films – have reunited for the crime drama Vice, shooting until May 4.

Vancouver – Director Douglas Buck has wrapped the thriller remake Sisters after a four-week stay in Vancouver. The picture is a redo of the 1973 Brian De Palma movie and stars Chloë Sevigny as a reporter investigating the suspiciously close relationship between another young woman and her psychiatrist, played by French import Lou Doillon and Stephen Rea, respectively.

The recent ruling by the CRTC exempting mobile television services from regulation promises to provide plenty of fodder for the panels and addresses at the Playback Mobile Forum, May 11 at the York Event Theatre in Toronto.

Seduction ­- romantic and otherwise – is the theme of the 2006 Shorts in Motion: The Art of Seduction copro from the National Film Board and marblemedia.

Ian Cooper is an associate at Stohn Hay Cafazzo Dembroski Richmond LLP, a boutique entertainment and copyright law firm based in Toronto.

It’s starting small, but Calgary’s MoboVivo believes it will be first in Canada to offer legal, paid, downloadable TV shows for the Apple Video iPod.

All that’s needed at the Toronto Documentary Forum is an idea for a film, lots of chutzpah and nerves of steel. Now in its seventh year, the TDF is based on the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam model of aspiring-filmmaker-meets-potential-broadcaster session, allowing creators to hone and polish their pitches – and even, in some cases, sell them.

If one word sums up the mix of films in this year’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival, it’s eclectic.
The cinematic menu this year features a healthy blend of socially and politically engaged documentary programming from all over the world, according to Sean Farnel, the fest’s new director of programming.

‘This is a film every Canadian should see right now!’ says Lynne Fernie, programmer of the Canadian Spectrum strand at Hot Docs 2006, referring to Samira Goetschel’s first film, Our Own Private Bin Laden. But she is just as emphatic about the other 22 titles in the program, including 12 features, seven one-hours and three shorts.

The digital revolution has Canadian documentary producers and distributors running to close windows.