* Teletoon president John Riley has been named to replace Lisa de Wilde as president of Astral Television Networks, effective Sept. 17.

Howard Rosen is CEO/executive producer of Roadhouse Productions in Toronto, where he oversees the development, production, financing and servicing of feature/cable films, television series, multi-camera live events, commercials and broadband interactive projects.

Bill Roberts is president and CEO of Vision TV. He is also a founder of Public Broadcasters International and member of its steering committee.

Montreal: Production veteran Kimberley Berlin, entertainment lawyer Charlene Paling and four other women have opened Wishmaker Films, a new production house with established U.S. service relationships and a promising Canadian development slate. Berlin is the new company’s CEO and Paling is president.

Montreal: Jean Bureau, former production financing and international distribution executive with TVA International, has formed JB Media, a new production company which will open with a slate of five MOW thrillers.

Since the U.K. government decided to extend its tax-credit legislation, British leaseback companies are looking to set up shop in Canada, where coproduction stats continue to flourish and competition has been traditionally slim.

‘In Canada, we are in the most imperiled situation when it comes to our cultural imagination,’ says Alan Franey, director of the Vancouver International Film Festival.
For 20 years, the festival has been waging the battle to preserve and nurture a uniquely Canadian vision, just as the province’s filmmakers have been developing their own projects alongside the burgeoning Hollywood Northwest. This 20th anniversary year signals some of VIFF’s success in its role as one of the largest exhibitors of Canadian films in the world.

Dates: Sept. 27 to Oct. 12

For the film industry, the frenzy of the Vancouver International Film Festival will be over on Oct. 12. But for VIFF Trade Forum producer Melanie Friesen, the pace won’t slow down until late in December when the last of hundreds of VIFF participants have been called and polled for their views on the industry conference component of the fest.
Partly in response to suggestions made last year and also in response to the B.C. film industry’s move toward diversification outside North American markets, this year’s Trade Forum will feature several panels dedicated to international copros, with many guests coming from European houses. ‘As films get more expensive, we need to take a look at coproductions; in such a global marketplace, there isn’t an alternative,’ Friesen says.

The story of Mile Zero, the opening film in the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Canadian Images program, could be ripped from newspaper headlines. Father kidnaps son from estranged wife. Working with that premise, however, director Andrew Currie has crafted a film that looks at the question ‘Is it possible to love too much?’

A few years ago, New Yorkers woke up to see Apple’s advertising billboards sport a perplexing shiller. The faces of 20th century titans like Albert Einstein and Miles Davis had been replaced by what one newspaper at the time termed ‘the definitely ‘different’ stare’ of Charles Manson.

Jeff Macpherson was inspired to shoot his feature comedy, Come Together, after seeing Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 Dogme film The Celebration. A ‘flat broke’ Macpherson originally wrote the script as a Christmas present to his partner Laura Harris (who ended up playing a role in the movie and also produced it). ‘She thought it was beautiful,’ Macpherson says. Later on, he showed the script to a friend who persuaded him it was too good to shoot on video.