Richard Paradis, president of the Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters, says distributors are onside with Telefilm Canada’s performance policy orientation for feature films.

Like the Motion Picture Association of America in the U.S., full and open access to markets lies at the heart of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association credo.

One of the main areas of focus for l’Association des producteurs de films et de television du Quebec is the general protection of independent production on a public policy and governmental level. When there is a change of political regimes, the APFTQ has to ensure past gains won by producers aren’t undone.

The Canadian Film and Television Production Association has nearly 400 company members across the country, including independent producers, broadcaster-affiliate prodcos and producers of interactive media.

Unlike most showmen, Steven Ellis has no problem working with children or animals. The president of Toronto’s Ellis Entertainment just saw his 3 x 60 doc The Baby Human debut on Discovery Health in the U.S. and is now at work on five one-hours of Beastly Countdowns for Animal Planet and Discovery Channel Canada.
Each ep of the $1.25-million series spotlights the top 10 ugliest, noisiest, most annoying, and so on, critters known to man.

Vancouver: Peace Arch Entertainment, recently restructured and reinvented as a genre feature producer, is back in business with four feature films, with aggregate budgets of about $35 million, and a television series.

The MPTAC Industry Update session at ShowCanada 2003 features a summary presentation of highlights from the ‘State of the Movie Going Industry’ report by Howard Lichtman, president of Lightning Group, a strategic marketing company based in Toronto specializing in the movie and entertainment industries.

Fever Films North America launched in early March with executive producers/producers Danielle Schwartz and Jon Banack. The new commercial prodco is an affiliate of Avion Films and will take over where Generator Films, which is moving away from spot production, left off.
As the name suggests, one of the company’s mandates will be to target work in the U.S. market, something Schwartz says will be an advantage for the homegrown directors on Fever’s roster.

The NHL hockey playoffs are underway, and once again beer advertisers are going full throttle to capture the attention of a predominantly young, male demographic that will be glued to TVs for two straight months.
For creative teams and directors, this time of the year can be akin to Oscar season, with innovative beer spots revving up reputations and earning accolades and awards. For production houses, it is also a time to beef up bottom lines as budgets for other categories are bedraggled, partly because of over-dependence on U.S. advertisers mired in an uncertain economy.

The Canadian Television Fund is reporting massive oversubscription levels in all program categories, including drama, where demand in dollar terms is more than double the available resources.
The new high tide in rejection points to an accelerated ‘process of dismantling Canadian-made TV,’ says the CFTPA.
CTF says funding available for the spring round is $172 million, or 51% of demand.

Paul Gratton doesn’t think Decoys will sweep the next Genies. Or the Geminis. Or the festival circuit. The sci-fi comedy, which wrapped a six-week shoot in Ottawa early this month, is not meant to win critical praise or little gilt statuettes. No, it has bigger plans.
‘This was designed from day one to address the need for Canadian box-office hits and, most importantly, it’s designed to be the first of several CHUM-branded theatrical releases,’ says Gratton, VP/GM of CHUM’s Space: The Imagination Station.

It has been just over a year since Glenn O’Farrell took over as president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and, as such, he has rarely been far from the front lines of the many issues and debates in the radio and TV industries.
Under O’Farrell, the CAB has launched a very vocal campaign against signal theft and, recently, a massive multi-year study of ethnic diversity while continuing to lobby policymakers in Ottawa for greater funding and fewer restrictions.

After 12 years, director Richard D’Alessio has left Imported Artists to join director Pete Henderson and executive producer David Cranor as a partner at new Toronto prodco Brown Entertainment, which launched in February.
D’Alessio says the move is an opportunity to help build a shop that will focus on a distinctly Canadian sense of humor and he hopes it will fill a previously vacant niche in the Canadian industry by fixing on a specific comedy identity.

Toronto’s Avion Films recently signed a deal with The Institute, which adds Avion director Tim Hamilton to the L.A. prodco’s roster for U.S. representation. The deal makes Hamilton one of two directors represented by the six-month-old company. The reciprocal deal also gives The Institute’s Michael Bay, director of U.S. blockbuster Pearl Harbor, Canadian representation at Avion.

War and pestilence haven’t yet had an apocalyptic impact on Canada’s film and television production volumes – U.S. producers are more interested in the ongoing ACTRA contract negotiations – but protracted assaults on both Iraq and the killer pneumonia SARS could curb the long-term production trends.