Last Wedding ranked the number one film of 2001 among Playback poll respondents.

* CanWest Global has appointed company vice chairman and former CEO Peter Viner publisher of the National Post. Viner will replace newspaper veteran Gordon Fisher, who’s been appointed president, news and information at CanWest.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien has appointed former CRTC vice chair Charles Dalfen as the commission’s new chairperson, effective Jan. 1, 2002.

Renny Bartlett – Eisenstein

Montreal: Canada’s newest distributor, Incendo Media, expects to be a major player in all media platforms and is opening with a Canadian joint-venture agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution and an output deal for DreamWorks SKG movies in the Quebec theatrical market. Heading the new company are president and CEO Stephen Greenberg and executive VP Jean Bureau. Both men are also partners in production company JB Media.

Paul Apak Angilirq – Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

Following are the nominees for the 22nd Genie Awards as provided by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

Documentary moviemakers are perpetually faced with the challenge of telling stories visually without too much reliance on static ‘talking heads’ material. Stock footage, then, becomes the central means of recreating periods and settings, especially on projects with a historical bent. When a doc takes on a subject not previously tackled, its producers assume the role of detectives, tracking down obscure footage to bring their stories to life.

First Light, a major supplier of stock photography in Canada, is moving into the footage business. The company, with offices in Toronto and Vancouver, represents various U.S. and European footage suppliers, including, most recently, New York-based Sekani, which has distribution rights to collections from Paramount Pictures, CNN, NHL, ESPN, the Hearst Collection, the Smithsonian Institution and Sharpshooters, which compiles lifestyle imagery for advertising. Sekani, which has built up its collections over 16 years, also secures licensing and rights as well as clearances, additionally offering a selection of royalty-free footage.

Royalty-free stock footage solves many headaches for producers. One company that saves video makers from concerns regarding licence-related exhibition and broadcast restrictions is Myrtle Creek, OR-based Artbeats, whose digital library includes motion picture, DV and Beta SP-originated clips in aerial, animal, establishments, nature and lifestyle categories.

Clive Smith’s departure from Nelvana, the animation production giant that he was instrumental in founding 30 years ago, has hardly surprised his friends in the music, television and animation industries. Many voices echoed a comment succinctly delivered by actor Dave Thomas: ‘If you’d told me five years ago that Clive had left the company, I wouldn’t have been shocked.’

Ottawa’s Twist Pictures and Montreal-based Seville Pictures have completed principal photography on Posers, a new feature film from writer/director Katie Tallo (Juiced). The film shot Nov. 14 to Dec. 4 in Ottawa.
According to Twist producer Chantal Ling, who worked with Tallo on the series The Last Band on the Planet, the director brought her the script in its first draft and after a bit of development the pair presented it to Seville. It is the first coproduction between the two companies.
Posers is about a group of wild, club-hopping party girls who beat another girl to death in a washroom. The girls get involved in a mystery when one of them is murdered following the crime.