Montreal: Nominations for the 20th annual Gemeaux Awards for French-language television were unveiled on Oct. 12, with L’Héritière de Grande Ourse, société Radio-Canada’s paranormal mystery program, in the lead with 14 nominations.
Minuit, le soir, Radio-Canada’s drama about the nightlife of an ensemble of adventurous Montrealers, and TVA’s Le Négociateur, a crime drama set in 1970, were a close second, with 11 nominations each.

Alberta producers hope to double the level of production activity in their region over the next three years with the help of the provincial government.

Education through entertainment is the theme of the latest decisions at Telefilm Canada, where 25 of 38 projects that received financing by its Canada New Media Fund qualified as edutainment.

Montreal: There was no end in sight for Montreal’s bruising three-way film festival war, with the final fest of the season, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, opening with a salvo from none other than auteur Atom Egoyan.

Montreal: Wayne Clarkson feels that Telefilm Canada and SODEC were justified in yanking funding from Montreal’s beleaguered World Film Festival, but says that its intended replacement, the New Montreal FilmFest, will have to report on its attendance figures before it will get a second year of funding.

Kids programming confab

Teenagers are holding their own film festivals this month as REEL Canada makes a six-stop tour of Toronto-area high schools. The traveling fest gives students a chance to program their own mini festivals, making picks from a catalogue of some 24 Canadian-mades including Les Boys, The Dead Zone and Project Grizzly. The most popular choices so far? Meatballs with Bill Murray and New Waterford Girl by director Allan Moyle. ‘Bill Murray still has it,’ says cofounder Jack Blum, who, as it happens, also starred in the 1979 picture as the young camper Spaz. Organizers hope the new effort will promote interest in Canadian movies, and are looking to go national eventually.

Producers ‘missing the point’ on SAP

The story ‘Lawsuit won’t block Water’ in the Sept. 12 issue of Playback reported on Deepa Mehta’s lawsuit against several parties whom she alleges made public accusations of plagiarism against the filmmaker. Unfortunately, the Playback story also incorrectly stated that the defendants countersued against Mehta.

Regarding the Oct. 10 story ‘DGC gives nods to Ciccoritti, Finkleman, McGowan,’ Tom Bjelic and Allan Fung won the DGC Award for sound editing on a TV series for The Newsroom, while Kevin Banks, Alison Clark and Geoffrey Raffan won for sound editing on an MOW or miniseries for Plain Truth. Incorrect information appeared in the article.

New broadcaster, same deal. In response to an online Playback poll question asking ‘What do you think of Global picking up the Gemini Awards?’, 51% of respondents voted that it won’t make any difference. 27% felt the show would be more successful, while 22% believe the network is wrong for the Geminis.

Anticipating its 20 anniversary, the Gemini Awards are heading in a new direction, with Global Television producing the gala broadcast. But there is a back-story here that shows tepid support of the event from the English-Canadian networks.