Vancouver: More screenings meant a 10% increase in movie attendance at the 2002 Vancouver International Film Festival, which wrapped Oct. 11.

Directing a feature is like writing a novel and television like tackling a short story, but for Zach Math, directing commercials is pure poetry.

After wrapping a recent campaign for Canada Reconnect, it occurred to director Aubrey Singer that the talent could have put more of his head into it.

Telefilm Canada backed a record number of projects last year – putting $208.3 million into the production, development and marketing of 956 Canadian movies, television, new media and music. And although some new policies caused confusion and ruffled a few feathers, executive director Richard Stursberg says fiscal 2001/02 was ‘a good year.’

Michael Downing’s directing career took off when his first short film, Clean-Rite Cowboy, screened at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival and secured him a scholarship at the American Film Institute in L.A., where he started studying in the fall of that year.

Quebec director Alexandre Franchi’s imagination is a little hyperactive. As a kid he always wanted to bring his toys to life, now as a director he’s been able to make it happen.

Michel Coulombe is a TV and Web programmer with the SilenceOnCourt.tv platform and French-language arts channel ARTV.

With the First Cut Awards marking our annual celebration of the work of first- and second-year directors, OTS turned to Canadian agencies to ask: ‘What does a young director bring to a commercial production?’

Montreal: Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness, a simple, impressionistic story of exile and village life on the African coast, is the winner of the Dvcolor $10,000 Louve d’Or prize for best feature film at the 31st Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media.

Union heads across the entertainment industry are optimistic that their first unified lobby effort will bring quick changes to policies at the CRTC and reverse the apparent slump in production of Canadian TV drama. The Canadian Coalition of Audiovisual Unions, which earlier this year submitted a policy paper to the federal regulator and Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps, has had some early success.

The International Cinematographers Guild, IATSE Local 667, has taken steps to allow cash-strapped productions to use its camera technicians and make films with the visual proficiency needed to hope to ever find an audience.

Representatives of ACTRA and the Union of BC Performers agree with the Screen Actors Guild that the implementation of SAG’s Global Rule One ‘has not presented any significant administrative difficulties,’ according to a joint statement released by the three organizations.

Alarmed at recent rulings by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, actors and other performers are fighting to protect their status as independent contractors. Senator Tommy Banks, in the artists’ corner, met Oct. 9 in Ottawa with representatives from across the entertainment industry to discuss the problem of Employment Insurance, performing artists and Canadian tax law.

GFT Entertainment is set to wrap production on The Limit, a $5.8-million thriller shooting in Hamilton, ON and starring screen legend Lauren Bacall along with Claire Forlani, Henry Czerny and Pete Postlethwaite.
The Canada/U.K. copro, handled on this side of the pond by GFT, casts the 78-year-old Bacall as a feisty senior who crosses paths with an undercover cop (Forlani) and a ruthless gangster (Postlethwaite).
Toronto-based AD-turned-helmer Lewin Webb (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Johnny Mnemonic) makes his feature directorial debut and also produces along with GFT’s Gary Howsam and Jamie Brown of Studio Eight Productions in London. GFT regular Curtis Peterson (Detention) is DOP and Nick Rotundo (The Fourth Angel) will edit after the Oct. 30 wrap.

Vancouver: The WB Network has commissioned a pilot and six one-hours of The Black Sash, a mid-season replacement series by Tollin/Robbins Productions.
In the drama, a former cop falsely accused and incarcerated in Hong Kong returns to the U.S. and becomes a martial arts instructor by day and a bounty hunter by night. It stars Russell Wong (Romeo Must Die), Ray J (Moesha), and Canadians Corey Sevier (A Wilderness Station) and Sarah Carter (Trapped).
Production runs Nov. 4 to Jan. 24.