After a brief stint with Vancouver’s InternetStudios, film-financing expert Robert Beattie is returning to his roots in his new role as the first Canadian rep for American gap finance pioneer The Lewis Horowitz Organization.
With its newfound presence in Canada, LHO, a division of L.A.’s Southern Pacific Bank, will be able to expand its reach to Canadian producers looking beyond the Canadian funding system to make their movies and TV programs. The Canadian film and TV industry will also have a much easier time borrowing money against unsold rights, as the 21-year-old LHO is a leader in gap financing – a model Canadian banks have traditionally shied away from.

Montreal: Some claim it’s taken 40 years, but finally CTV has a real home in Montreal.
The network has acquired 100% interest in CF Television, changing CFCF-TV’s status from long-term affiliate to a wholly owned and operated station.
CTV’s takeover of CF Television was approved by the CRTC earlier this month, and the deal was signed and closed on Thursday, Sept. 13, says Tom Curzon, CTV’s group VP, corporate communications.

Montreal: TVA Group has confirmed it is in talks to sell its unprofitable 70%-owned TVA International unit.

Montreal: Iranian director Majid Majidi’s Baran, a story of illegal Afghan workers exiled in Iran, and Hungarian director Arpad Sopsits’s Torzok (Abandoned), a grim and finely crafted dramatization of the cruel fate of abandoned children in Hungary circa 1960, shared this year’s Grand Prix des Ameriques for top film in competition at the 25th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival.

Due to the catastrophic events that have taken place in the U.S., the 26th Atlantic Film Festival has been forced to change its film lineup and some events, but organizers assure that, despite some faulty media reports, the festival is taking place as planned Sept. 14-22 in Halifax.
‘We are going ahead,’ confirms AFF communications manager Ivy Ho. ‘It’s going to be difficult because we have to juggle things around, but for everyone’s sake it’s going through.’

It’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting in the Rogers Industry Centre during the Toronto festival sifting through a pound of press releases and invitations left in my press box, when a man sitting next to me asks if I’ve seen anything worthwhile. Before I have a chance to tell him that I had seen Last Wedding and thought it was quite impressive in performance and dialogue and that I couldn’t get a couple of its, let’s say, raw sex scenes out of my mind,’ he starts mumbling something about some press screening he’d just come from. ‘Oh you’re press?’ I ask. ‘No, no, I’m a distributor. American. I’ve been coming to this festival for years,’ he responds. ‘So, did you see Last Wedding?’ I ask.

Jewison, Lantos team up

In the Sept. 3 Cinematography story, ‘Vincelette helps Multi-vision fly on Superman,’ the description of the Techniscope process should have read as follows: ‘Techniscope provided a wide-screen image using a two-perf pull-down system whereby you are exposing two perforations where you would normally expose four, thus exposing two frames on the neg space that would normally be needed

* Teletoon president John Riley has been named to replace Lisa de Wilde as president of Astral Television Networks, effective Sept. 17.

Howard Rosen is CEO/executive producer of Roadhouse Productions in Toronto, where he oversees the development, production, financing and servicing of feature/cable films, television series, multi-camera live events, commercials and broadband interactive projects.

Bill Roberts is president and CEO of Vision TV. He is also a founder of Public Broadcasters International and member of its steering committee.

Montreal: Production veteran Kimberley Berlin, entertainment lawyer Charlene Paling and four other women have opened Wishmaker Films, a new production house with established U.S. service relationships and a promising Canadian development slate. Berlin is the new company’s CEO and Paling is president.

Montreal: Jean Bureau, former production financing and international distribution executive with TVA International, has formed JB Media, a new production company which will open with a slate of five MOW thrillers.

Since the U.K. government decided to extend its tax-credit legislation, British leaseback companies are looking to set up shop in Canada, where coproduction stats continue to flourish and competition has been traditionally slim.

‘In Canada, we are in the most imperiled situation when it comes to our cultural imagination,’ says Alan Franey, director of the Vancouver International Film Festival.
For 20 years, the festival has been waging the battle to preserve and nurture a uniquely Canadian vision, just as the province’s filmmakers have been developing their own projects alongside the burgeoning Hollywood Northwest. This 20th anniversary year signals some of VIFF’s success in its role as one of the largest exhibitors of Canadian films in the world.