* Raynald Briere is the new president and CEO of Montreal-based broadcast/media company Groupe TVA, owned by Quebecor Media. A communications industry veteran for more than 30 years, Briere has been Reseau TVA’s senior VP of broadcasting and executive director since 1998.

David Mintz, the former president of Global Television Network, passed away at his home in Toronto on Feb. 5.

Montreal: Quebec cultural funding and certification agency SODEC will concentrate its considerable resources in the year ahead on priority programs, the production and development of feature films, documentaries and short films.

Vancouver: Almost 24% of the staff at Sextant Entertainment Group in Vancouver was laid off Jan. 31, a delayed reaction to last year’s fears about a Screen Actors Guild strike in the U.S., says the company’s CFO.

Montreal: Technical services company Global Vision has opened a motion picture negative processing laboratory in Montreal.
Called Citelab, the new facility will compete directly with the Covitec/Technicolor film processing lab.
Citelab has installed a U.K.-manufactured Photomec processing unit for 16mm, Super 16mm, 35mm and Super 35mm negative film. ‘The lab will basically feed all of Global Vision’s other post services,’ including its film-to-video telecine services, says GV sales manager Paul Bellerose.

While French-language, Quebec-produced films had a strong year at the box office, close to the industry’s intermediate goal of 10% market share, English-language films have a long way to go to reach the 5% market share objective set by the CFFF.

With Canadian and foreign producers beginning to realize the production potential of the East Coast, the Atlantic region has emerged as a viable and desirable location, generating big numbers in annual industry revenue.

Allison Outhit is the VP, television and business affairs, of Collideascope Digital Productions, a Halifax-based convergence and iTV production company. In this article she talks about how Canadian producers, particularily on the East Coast, can weather the storm of economic uncertainty

Alliance Atlantis Communications’ acquisition of Salter Street Films may have sounded some alarm bells regarding the future of the Halifax prodco and the overall well-being of the East Coast production industry. However, as the dust settles on the change of hands, business is marching forward with little detriment and some new advantages.

The popularity of shooting and posting in the high-definition format continues to rise throughout the province.
A recent example is Scar Tissue, a production of Shaftesbury Films in association with CBC. The MOW was shot on three sets at the CBC’s Toronto studios and on location at a farm in Hockley Valley, Jan. 28 to Feb. 14. What is unique about the $1.9-million project, lensed by vet spot shooter Henry Less, is that it used a three Sony 24p HDCAM setup, provided by Sim Video Productions. This multi-camera technique, inspired by Alan Rudolph’s The Moderns, enabled the crew to complete production of the two-hour movie with quality and efficiency.

Montreal: American university film schools are among the most active users of the World Affairs Television profile series The Directors. All 46 hours of the collection can be licensed online at reduced rates as part of a telecourse curriculum program offered through PBS’s Adult Learning Service (www.pbs.org/als) in Alexandria, VA.
Season four of The Directors, 11 hours comprised of 10 new profiles, is hosted by Dateline NBC’s Keith Morrison and Geoffrey Korfman. The series tapes in Montreal, Toronto, New York and Los Angeles and is a ‘mind-boggling’ logistical exercise of rights clearance, post and editing, travel and hotel arrangements, says exec producer Larry Shapiro. Sessions can cost as much as $20,000 to produce or as little as $7,500.

Canadian film and TV companies rarely place help-wanted ads in the classified section of the local newspaper, which would only lead to their fax machines then being gummed up with an onslaught of applications.