Vancouver: With West Coast filmmakers such as Bruce Sweeney, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, Bruce Spangler, Scott Smith and Nathaniel Geary emerging over the last several years, Vancouver is home to what might be called the Pacific New Wave.

This year, the Vancouver International Film Festival received an uncommonly high number of documentary submissions tackling controversial issues – so many, in fact, that the fest has created a special program to showcase them.

Vancouver: The business of filmmaking has often been compared to swimming with sharks. The 19th annual Film & Television Trade Forum at the 2004 Vancouver International Film Festival takes that to heart, with a spotlight focus on the US$130,000 shark thriller Open Water and its American writer/director, Chris Kentis, the special guest of New Filmmakers’ Day, Sept. 25.

With hundreds of young Canadians graduating yearly from animation schools, many will be facing a significantly tougher job search than they would have a decade ago. And in response to the diminished job market and changing recruitment needs of studios, educational institutions are adapting their training practices.

NFB storms Ottawa fest

Get your rest, stock up on eye drops, throat lozenges, PowerBars and Java beans, get out your celebrity-gawking glasses and put on your best schmooze face – TIFF is coming.
The 29th annual Toronto International Film Festival, which announced its final lineup Aug. 24, gets underway for 10 days starting Sept. 9 with opening-night gala Being Julia, starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons and produced by Robert Lantos.

The weather was cool, but the summer box office was hot this year for Hollywood films shot in Canada.
On the strength of blockbusters such as I, Robot and The Day After Tomorrow, service features made US$584 million for Hollywood this summer – up significantly from US$442 million last summer, and almost double the US$307 million of 2002.

The Little Station that Couldn’t got a new got owner in August, when two arms of the Quebecor media conglom moved in to buy Toronto 1, putting up $46 million to buy the troubled station from CHUM.
Sun Media and TVA Group have struck an agreement for T1 that, pending federal approval, could be finalized by spring 2005, handing TVA its long-sought entry to the English TV market and creating cross-promotional potential for local tabloid the Toronto Sun.

It looks like second time could be a charm for CHUM’s feature film aspirations.
After only four days in theaters, CHUM’s second attempt at a teen flick with mass audience appeal, Going the Distance, looks like it may do just that. By comparison, Decoys, the first CHUM-branded feature designed to be anything but a typically obscure Canadian feature, fell way short of its big box-office aspirations.

So far, so good. That’s the word from the Canadian Television Fund which, five months into its much-ballyhooed new deal for producers and broadcasters, reports that its funding machinery is running smoothly. Or, more smoothly than it used to, at least.

Out of 350 applications, the CBC has short-listed 12 finalists in its daytime soap-opera project.

Over the last four years, broadcasters across North America have been abandoning the traditional September-to-May TV season in favor of premiering new programs throughout the year, even during the summer season, long thought to be a ratings wasteland. For some, the new approach has quickly paid dividends, but other broadcasters continue to struggle.