Titanic schooling

Waterloo, ON-based DALSA Corporation is venturing into the world of moviemaking on a grand scale with its new Origin digital cinematography camera.

If one were to look for a theme, a string of pearls, that connects the projects of Barna-Alper Productions through a quarter century of production, it would have to be its focus on social justice issues.

After 25 years of producing top-quality Canadian programming – including Da Vinci’s Inquest, Blue Murder, Milgaard, At The End of The Day: The Sue Rodriguez Story, Scorn and Diana Kilmury: Teamster – to say that Barna-Alper Productions president Laszlo Barna has won the respect of his peers is an understatement.

Before Da Vinci’s Inquest, Blue Murder, Diana Kilmury: Teamster and a truckload of Gemini Awards, all there was to Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions was husband-wife team Laszlo Barna and Laura Alper, and the mutual interest they shared in documentaries. And even with the higher-profile success of Barna-Alper’s episodic dramas, the company’s documentary division continues to produce acclaimed doc programs for television, and recently crossed the threshold into theatrical documentaries with The Take.

We met in 1966 at the Hungarian Ball in Montreal. I could claim we met in the trenches during the McGill Daily crisis, occupying the Administration building and getting stoned together in the principal’s office. Or we could have met ducking the charge of Montreal’s finest while demonstrating against the Vietnam War outside the U.S. Embassy on what was then McGregor Street. We could have, since we were both at McGill at the time, but we didn’t. Alas, the sordid truth must be told. We were debutante escorts at the annual Montreal Hungarian Ball. To be more exact in the interest of full disclosure, we met at the dance rehearsals, stumbling through the intricacies of ballroom Waltz and Csardas. Parenthetically (and speaking strictly for myself), the rehearsals were not much help.

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As the president and general manager of Discovery Channel, Paul Lewis knows a thing or two about Barna-Alper’s documentary productions. Discovery has been running Barna-Alper’s doc series since the channel first came on stream in 1994, with such programs as The Body: Inside Stories, Human Wildlife and Frontiers of Construction mainstays on its schedule.

Guy Mayson is the president and CEO of the CFTPA.

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For two years Clifford Lincoln lived and breathed the woes of Canadian broadcasting. As chair of Parliament’s standing committee on heritage, the veteran MP authored Our Cultural Sovereignty: The Second Century of Canadian Broadcasting, an 872-page study that makes 97 recommendations on how to revamp Canada’s broadcast industry.

Christmas came early for Ontario producers last month with news that the provincial government is hiking its foreign and domestic tax credits to 18% and 30%, respectively – answering months of bitter complaints from stakeholders and, it is hoped, paving the way for a turnaround in the province’s beleaguered production sector.
‘We are committed to creating a supportive business environment in which our film and television industry can not only survive but thrive,’ says Madeleine Meilleur, the minister of culture. ‘All Ontarians have a stake in the success and sustainability of this important industry.’