Victoria, BC: In addition to teaching and mentoring, leading international pitch sessions, and holding key positions at a number of international festivals, Pat Ferns now heads up his own production company and has several big-budget documentary projects in the works.
The former CEO of the Banff Television Foundation also signed a strategic partnership agreement last year with Chicago-based indie prodco Towers Productions (American Justice). Ferns says it is too early to reveal details of a four-hour doc series he is currently developing for Towers, but says he’ll be working with noted author and Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff.

Toronto: Robert Lang and Nisha Pahuja want to say something about diamonds that hasn’t been said before – more than the usual material about the DeBoers cartel, the civil war in Sierra Leone and that whole ‘two months’ salary’ thing.
‘There’s been a lot of interest in diamonds over the years,’ says Lang, nodding to the most recent, newsy topics, ‘but we want to go deeper. We want to look at diamonds as a commodity, through the lives of people who work at different stages of the pipeline.’

It’s a Wal world, after all

Roy Dupuis’ second round as The Rocket

What a difference a year makes. Last summer business was down in Canada’s production centers. The dollar was high, tax credits were low, and the anti-runaway lobby in the U.S. was at its most vocal, making life unpleasant and not very profitable in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. One Hollywood star – speaking at no less a venue than the Democratic National Convention in Boston – went so far as to call runaway shoots ‘criminal.’
And yet, some eight months later, the loonie has settled, tax credits are higher and even Ben Affleck has again come to Canada – to star in (Oh, the irony) no less an all-American project as Truth, Justice and the American Way, a biopic of TV’s original Superman, George Reeves.

The results are in and $99.2 million has gone out. The Canadian Television Fund on May 16 made its decisions for the coming season and has put cash into 36 new and returning English-language dramas, handing out 66% of the total dollars requested by casters earlier this year.

Montreal: Aside from the Gomery Inquiry, this city’s greatest soap opera and blood sport is undoubtedly the ongoing film festival war. But if watching the three events duke it out may seem alternately odd and funny, it is no laughing matter for filmmakers who, as the deadlines for submission approach, are left wondering where they should submit their projects.
The three fests – the World Film Festival, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma and the newly formed Montreal International Film Festival – have been fighting over schedules, naming rights, alleged insults and government funding since last year. The confusion is taking a toll on filmmakers.

The Canadian Television Fund has dished out $130.8 million through its Broadcaster Performance Envelopes for 2005/06, paving the way for children’s shows, docs and variety programming in English in French Canada.

Sandra Macdonald is preparing to leave the Canadian Television Fund and has announced she will step down from its top spot when her contract runs out in September, ending a rocky three-year term, just as the future of the fund seems again to be growing cloudy.

The Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association is calling on Ottawa and the CRTC to encourage investment in broadband networks in order to avoid the creation of monopolies and to encourage broadband-focused production.

He said this one would be different, and apparently he meant it. Atom Egoyan’s latest – the noir-ish mystery Where the Truth Lies – landed with a splash at this month’s Cannes film fest, turning heads with its ample nudity, spurts of violence, drugs and sex.

The May 9 article ‘2004 B.O. up 4.5%’ mis-stated the take of the Canadian box office. Foreign and domestic films were up less than 1% last year, to $952.3 million. Canadian-made movies accounted for 4.5%.

The Hot Sheet tracks Canadian box-office results for the period May 6-12 and television ratings for the period May 9-15.

Fog machines don’t just make it hard to see, they might also make it hard to breathe, according to a new study that says exposure to special effects fog may lead to a number of different ailments including wheezing, tightness in the chest, runny nose and headaches.

CRTC approves RAI