It has been a year of unprecedented volatility in the Canadian film and TV industries, but that didn’t stop top producers from notching some significant accomplishments.

Among the incriminating evidence the Federal Bureau of Investigation has on Gary Howsam is surveillance footage of the former Peace Arch Entertainment CEO with a knife in his hand.

Gerry Flahive is an award-winning documentary producer at the National Film Board in Toronto, with credits including Manufactured Landscapes and Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the 70’s Generation.

New Zealand writer/director Virginia Heath walked away from the Sheffield International Documentary Festival with $10,500 and a copro deal with the National Film Board for My Dangerous Loverboy. The interactive project – which combines web and mobile sites to raise awareness about the global sex trade – won the NFB’s Cross-Media Challenge at the close of the annual doc fest on Nov. 11.

MONTREAL: Following its hit action flick Nitro and its wildly popular family drama C.R.A.Z.Y., Cirrus Communications is bringing an auteur story of social unrest to the big screen in 2008. The $5.4-million Comme une flamme is inspired by the massive student strike that shut down Quebec’s colleges and universities for two months in 2005 and forced Premier Jean Charest to back down from his plans to cut the province’s bursary program.

Embattled Peace Arch Entertainment has put a $15-million movie, The Boathouse, on hold after being swamped by the dramatic arrest of CEO Gary Howsam earlier this month. British producer Studio Eight Productions was set to lens the psychological thriller beginning mid-November in Barrie, ON. A local lakeside cottage was prepped for the film, which is based on a script by Vancouver-based screenwriter Elizabeth Stewart.

Seven24 Films has linked with Kudos Film and Television in the U.K. on the $15-million miniseries Burn Up, now in the works around Calgary for Global and the BBC. The four-hour enviro-minded thriller sees director Omar Madha team with Bradley Whitford (The West Wing), Neve Campbell (Scream) and Brit Rupert Penry-Jones, star of the long-running Kudos series Spooks, known here as MI-5. Christopher Hall (Hound of the Baskervilles) is producing the project, which shoots in Alberta until mid-December, after which it will wrap with a week of shooting in London in the new year. It is set to air in the spring.

A Canada/U.K. coproduction, reported to be the biggest-budget feature in the history of the New Brunswick film industry, has gone down. Bonny Boys, produced by Tim Hogan of Moncton-based Dream Street Pictures (Canada Russia ’72) and U.K. producers Robert Sidaway and Ashley Sidaway (Joy Division, Nouvelle-France), shut down at the end of October, reportedly due to scheduling conflicts. Rachel Blanchard (Where the Truth Lies), originally slated for the lead role, is no longer associated with the project.

Another adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel is in the works, this time under Sienna Films, which is shooting the psychological thriller Cry of the Owl on location in and around Toronto. Directed by Brit Jamie Thraves (The Low Down), it stars Paddy Considine (Hot Fuzz) as a troubled man trying to escape a tumultuous marriage when he becomes infatuated with a girl, played by Julia Stiles (The Bourne Ultimatum). Their meeting leads to a relationship with dire consequences. Owl also features Canuck thesp Caroline Dhavernas (Surviving My Mother).

Bardel Entertainment has started work on a 26 x 30 run of Zeke’s Pad, following a deal with B.C.’s Leaping Lizard Productions and Australian copro partner Avrill Stark Entertainment. The 3D toon, for YTV and Channel 7 in Australia, comes from creator Liz Scully and centers on a teen boy whose drawings on an electronic sketch pad spring to life.

Winnipeg is hosting the 13 x 30 shoot of Less Than Kind, a new comedy for the Citytv station group from Breakthrough Films & Television and locals Buffalo Gal Pictures. It is set to air next fall, following a teen boy as he struggles with being ‘too Jewish, too fat and too smart’ to fit in with his own family.

The kids division at Blueprint Entertainment has signed a deal with educational outfit The Mad Science Group to develop a TV show and a line of products aimed at preteens. John Morayniss and Frank Saperstein will exec produce for Blueprint, with Ariel Shlien and Ron Shlien of Montreal-based Mad Science.

Josie Bissett (Melrose Place) stars in the psychological thriller The Other Woman, shooting this month in Calgary under director Jason Priestley for Nomadic Pictures and producers Chad Oakes and Mike Frislev (Broken Trail). It is set to air in April on Lifetime, and on Movie Central and W Network.

Founder, chair and co-CEO of the Toronto prodco enjoyed a banner 2007, racking up programs that were ratings, sales and awards winners

When Christian Larouche interviews a prospective employee, he looks for one thing: the flame.