The buzz on the floor of the RealScreen Summit, held Feb. 12-14 in Washington D.C., was that Alliance Atlantis Communications and Granada (U.K.) are the two front-runners to buy Washington-based Devillier Donegan Enterprises. The doc producer/distributor confirms it’s in the market…

When Paul Kenyon started Absolute Locations three years ago, his vision was for a comprehensive location library that would be available on the Internet.
Lin Gibson, Absolute’s director, development and operations, explains how the idea evolved. ‘Once [Kenyon] realized what a black hole it was pouring money into developing the software and the staffing, it became just impossible to continue [the online service] without some other kind of support. So what he did was wisely stop concentrating on that for a year or so, and just opened a small rental company. And what happened is that that rental company has been extraordinarily successful.’
This delay in the online venture caused Absolute to become ‘kind of a hybrid,’ providing rental equipment ‘that relates specifically to being on location, like pylons, chairs, heaters and air conditioners – all the way from garbage cans to portable toilets.

Say ‘hello’ to Farewell Studios.
Producers wishing to shoot more in the Toronto area can thank the location scouts for Iron Eagle 4, who prowled the region several years back hunting down studio space for the latest installment of their franchise. In their travels, they discovered an old sugar refinery with 85-foot ceilings in Oshawa, on, tucked into the Durham region on Toronto’s ‘eastern back lot.’

There are very few people in Canada who do what Vancouver-based casting director Kathleen Widows does. Widows casts all sorts of people for all sorts of spots through her Kathleen Widows Casting, but she is also one of a rare species in the Canadian production world. Widows is also a baby wrangler.
‘A what?’ you ask.
Despite the lack of baby wranglers in Canada, theirs is a service one would think every agency or production house would need from time to time. Perhaps Widows can explain this facet of her job best.

Montreal: Bell Canada unit Bell Nexxia is launching a new fibre-optic video distribution service geared to the transport requirements of the broadcast and film and TV production industries. …

Cogeco Program Development Fund reports it has invested a total of $2.15 million in the development and production of Canadian film and television projects in 2000/01….

Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival this year debuts Moc Docs, a new mini-mockumentary series….

Since 1969, Ontario’s African Lion Safari, located just outside Toronto, has been a place where one can come face to face with a lion or elephant without travelling to beautiful Africa. Since the early 1970s, this new-style zoo has also been…

A young Michelle Coppola learned her trade while on the road as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. While touring the continent singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to JFK at night, she was honing her skills as a makeup artist during the day. Fast-forward 20 years and we find Coppola very much stationary at home in Toronto running Coppola F/X Makeup Studio & Academy, servicing film and television productions and teaching would-be makeup artists the dynamics of making someone better (or worse) looking than they are.
Not to limit Ms. Coppola and her staff to just production makeup work. On the contrary, Coppola works on corporate video, theatre and music video projects, and also does makeup for stills photography shoots, weddings and more.

Vision TV and WNET New York have struck a partnership deal that will give the spiritual specialty group exclusive rights to license content from the leading PBS affiliate….

Vancouver: Funding agency British Columbia Film has released its program guidelines and application forms for development and production financing for fiscal 2001/02….

Montreal: The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television has issued new rules and revised application forms for the 2001 Prix Gemeaux. …