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Expanded Cinéfest debuts Chilly Beach feature
Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival wants to spotlight northern Ontario as a place to make movies.
Jump Cuts
Friends gather to remember Leiterman
Vision has faith in new lifestyle shows
VisionTV has been growing its audience steadily since about 2001 – the year COO Mark Prasuhn and head of programming Chris Johnson came aboard – and hopes are high that more lifestyle and light entertainment programming in its 2005/06 fall season will provide a further boost.
Reflections of a past AFF skipper
Gordon Whittaker is director, Atlantic Canada at Telefilm Canada and former executive director of the Atlantic Film Festival.
Letter
Re: ‘War of the World’ (Playback, Aug. 15, p. 29):
C is for controversy – and Canadian
I’m willing to wager that ‘controversial’ is the adjective most frequently used to describe forthcoming Canadian films in our past couple of issues. Of course, it is film festival time, and promoting controversy is one way a production can rise from the fall’s deep cinematic muck. Though keep in mind the rule we used to live by back in the day when I worked at the Toronto International Film Festival box office – the sexier the picture in the TIFF program book, or the sexier the title, often the worse the film.
S&S expands slate
Toronto: S&S Productions is looking to turn out more lifestyle and comedy programming, in part, says boss David Smith, because he and his brother Steve Smith are preparing to retire their long-running The Red Green Show.
The series will shoot its final ep on Nov. 5, bringing 14 seasons to a close and opening the door for a ‘new generation’ of titles and talent, he says.
Service
Beat the Greeks
Dallaire to shoot in Africa
Halifax: When The Halifax Film Company head Michael Donovan looked into acquiring the rights to make Shake Hands with the Devil into a feature, he was surprised to learn that Laszlo Barna was doing the same thing.
Donovan contacted the head of Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions, and the two producers promised that whoever secured the rights to retired lieutenant-general Roméo Dallaire’s story would invite the other into the production. HFC got there first.
Broadcast
Vancouver hosts Masters of Horror
Briefly
* CHUM Television has greenlit The Buck Calder Experience, a comedy pilot about a U.S. director trapped in Canada, from Headtrip Films and ad house Sparks Productions.
Chronicling the Generations
To help celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary, Fenn Publishing and Madison Press have released the book Degrassi: Generations, which chronicles the shows’ history. The collection, including a foreword by Degrassi mega-fan and soon-to-be feature director Kevin Smith, goes behind-the-scenes on the various Degrassi series, providing write-ups on all the characters and episodes over the years. It is written by Kathryn Ellis, a former Degrassi writer and publicist married to longtime series writer and Degrassi: The Next Generation cocreator Yan Moore.
Silver and stronger than ever
After 25 years in the trenches, Toronto executive producer Linda Schuyler has a venerable hit TV franchise on her hands, thanks in part to the attention paid it by Hollywood, where the cachet for all things Degrassi continues to grow.
Director Smith lands dream gig
Kevin Smith may not have been able to direct any episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation, but it is likely that his ultimate canvas will be bigger, as he is slated to shoot a movie adaptation of the series in Toronto around May.
Hood brought ‘form’ to franchise
Kit Hood, a British-born film director and editor and former child actor, co-created the Degrassi concept with Linda Schuyler when the two were a couple back in 1979.
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