With less than a month to its launch, Toronto 1 has put a final dollar value of just under $15 million on its two production funds, part of parent Craig Media’s commitment last year to the CRTC during licensing hearings for the Southern Ontario market.

Canada’s digital and satellite television subscriber growth was stunted somewhat in the first quarter of 2003, according to research by Decima Publishing in Ottawa.

Vancouver: All three gala films at the 22nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival will be Canadian.

Montreal: Sylvain Chomet’s animation feature Les Triplettes de Belleville/Belleville Rendez-Vous, a minority Canada/France/Belgium coproduction, has been selected to close the 27th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival on Sept. 7.

The Atlantic Film Festival will open Sept. 12 with the East Coast premiere of Thom Fitzgerald’s The Event, one of 26 Canadian feature films, nine of which are Atlantic in genesis, to screen at the 23rd edition of the popular fest. The festival will run until Sept. 20 in Halifax.

The past year has been good to documentary filmmakers. Bowling for Columbine, Winged Migration, Spellbound and Capturing the Friedmans, to name a few, all beat the odds to varying degrees and brought in more box-office cash than anyone could reasonably have thought possible. People – regular people, mind you, not critics or other filmmakers with 10 bucks and two hours to kill – actually lined up and paid to see these things, and chattered excitedly for days and weeks afterwards about spelling bees, flying birds, kiddie porn and the uncertain mental health of Charlton Heston.

Vancouver: Western Canadian documentary filmmakers will get a regional shot at pitching their ideas to commissioning editors and distributors at Hot Doc’s Forum – West, a highlight of the inaugural DOC TALK conference in Vancouver, Oct. 27-29.

Of the five dramatic features from debut directors in this year’s Perspective Canada, only two are gritty, urban dramas, while the other three are – get this – comedies! To those who said Men with Brooms wouldn’t change anything, TIFF lightheartedly presents Peter O’Brian’s Hollywood North, Anita McGee’s The Bread Maker and Sudz Sutherland’s Love, Sex and Eating the Bones to complement the seriousness of Jacob Tierney’s Twist and Nathaniel Geary’s On the Corner.

Thirty-eight Canuck short films will screen as part of TIFF 2003’s Perspective Canada Shorts program. The films, culled from 500 submissions considered by programmers Stacey Donen and Liz Czach, are as diverse in length, style and subject matter as they are in the reasons for their creation. While some directors now consider shorts merely as a means of making the jump to long form, many at TIFF still see shorts as an end unto themselves.

* Newswoman Beverly Thompson has left Toronto’s Global Television to join CTV’s Canada A.M. Thompson has been a fixture at the anchor desk for Global for several years and will make her first appearance as cohost on Canada A.M. Nov. 3.

Vancouver: The worldwide television production lull has dragged down revenues at Vancouver-based Mainframe Entertainment by 34%, according to its year-end financial report.

Vancouver’s film and theatre community convened at St. Andrew’s Wesley Church on Sept. 1 to remember actor, director and UBCP president John Juliani, who passed away Aug. 20 at age 63, after a short battle with liver cancer.