Dates: Sept. 27 to Oct. 12

For the film industry, the frenzy of the Vancouver International Film Festival will be over on Oct. 12. But for VIFF Trade Forum producer Melanie Friesen, the pace won’t slow down until late in December when the last of hundreds of VIFF participants have been called and polled for their views on the industry conference component of the fest.
Partly in response to suggestions made last year and also in response to the B.C. film industry’s move toward diversification outside North American markets, this year’s Trade Forum will feature several panels dedicated to international copros, with many guests coming from European houses. ‘As films get more expensive, we need to take a look at coproductions; in such a global marketplace, there isn’t an alternative,’ Friesen says.

The story of Mile Zero, the opening film in the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Canadian Images program, could be ripped from newspaper headlines. Father kidnaps son from estranged wife. Working with that premise, however, director Andrew Currie has crafted a film that looks at the question ‘Is it possible to love too much?’

A few years ago, New Yorkers woke up to see Apple’s advertising billboards sport a perplexing shiller. The faces of 20th century titans like Albert Einstein and Miles Davis had been replaced by what one newspaper at the time termed ‘the definitely ‘different’ stare’ of Charles Manson.

Jeff Macpherson was inspired to shoot his feature comedy, Come Together, after seeing Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 Dogme film The Celebration. A ‘flat broke’ Macpherson originally wrote the script as a Christmas present to his partner Laura Harris (who ended up playing a role in the movie and also produced it). ‘She thought it was beautiful,’ Macpherson says. Later on, he showed the script to a friend who persuaded him it was too good to shoot on video.

After blowing up the world of teenagers with his 1999 feature debut Johnny, director Carl Bessai has turned his attention to the quieter anxiety of those in their mid-thirties. With his new film, Lola, the Vancouver director looks at a 35-year-old woman who takes on the identity of another. ‘She’s one of those people whose life has been in limbo for 10 years and she’s troubled,’ says Bessai.

Few films have their food catered by a monastery. Yet that is exactly what happened on the set of Solitude, which looks at the fleeting connections that arise between two women who are on a monastic retreat and one of the resident monks.

Vancouver: After years of asking the provincial government to restore or enhance its dwindling operating budget, British Columbia Film has finally been able to show what it can do with a few extra bucks.
A $5-million parting gift from the former provincial government this spring has sparked overall annual increases in homegrown production in 2001/02 of 71% and, more specifically, quadrupled the number of features the funding agency can assist.

At the heart of the new British Columbia feature comedy On the Nose is the story of a gambler who improves his odds for success with a little help from a foreigner.
Okay, it’s about an ancient aborigine head that can pick winning horses for his Dublin-based keeper Robbie Coltrane. But the plot could easily apply to the film’s producer – Scott Kennedy of Vancouver’s Highwire Entertainment – who improved the long odds on completing the $6.4-million On the Nose by doing it as an Irish treaty coproduction.

Vancouver: It’s said that if you ask any Los Angeles film executive in the know what’s going on in Vancouver, he or she will be able to tell you the names of U.S. productions underway at any studio here. It’s a party trick of growing difficulty, however, as the city’s soundstages proliferate to meet the continuing demand from the U.S. and abroad – producers who want to take advantage of shooting in Lotus Land.

Sullivan Entertainment’s Wind at My Back Christmas Movie is shooting this month in dynamic Scarborough, ON. The MOW spin-off of the TV series is not really a finale for the show, according to production manager Dan Matthews.
‘It ties up loose ends from where the characters left off at the end of the fifth season, and it’s packaged in a holiday movie,’ Matthews explains. However, ‘there are no immediate plans’ to do another season of the series at this point, he adds.

Halifax’s imX communications is forging ahead on its digital feature film series seats 3a & 3c, with principal photography now completed on Thom Fitzgerald’s The Wild Dogs, number two in the low-budget five-pack.
Wild Dogs follows Dragonwheel, written and directed by Tricia Fish, which wrapped earlier this year as the first installment in the seats series.
Coproduced with Axiom Films of the U.K., each film in the series is premised on the chance meeting of two people on an airplane and the profound impact it has on their lives.

Montreal: Filming began Aug. 28 and goes through to Nov. 9 on the Productions Videofilms dramatic miniseries Jean Duceppe: L’Homme de theatre. Duceppe is one of the giants of modern Quebec culture and a pioneer in theatre and television. The company he founded, Compagnie Jean Duceppe, continues to showcase its productions at Place des Arts.
The six-hour miniseries from director/producer Robert Menard (Le Polock, Cruising Bar) and producer Claude Bonin (Omerta III, Dr. Lucille), marks a welcome return to drama for broadcaster Tele-Quebec.

Toronto commercial production companies Generator Films and Angel Films have merged and will be operating under the Generator banner after the Labour Day weekend.
According to Generator cofounder and executive producer Michael Cooper, the merger gives his company a chance to better succeed in both its longer format initiatives as well as in its native commercial business with Angel owner Sarah Ker-Hornell as a new partner and executive producer.

The Players Film Company head Philip Mellows has joined forces with executive film producer Steve Hoban (Ginger Snaps, Cyberworld, Blood & Donuts) and Noah Segal, a veteran film distributor and former executive VP, worldwide marketing, Lions Gate Films, to create 49th Parallel, a new long-form production company.
Mellows stresses the new company is not just a marketing tool. ‘A lot of commercial production companies have put out a shingle and said ‘Now, we’re a film company.’ I don’t want to be perceived as a guy just trying to raise the profile of his commercial production company,’ Mellows says. The two high-profile film execs on board is further evidence of Mellows’ commitment to the new operation.