For the sixth straight year, the Toronto International Film Festival Group has shouted into the canyon and come up with an Echo. Toronto-based Echo Advertising + Marketing is spearheading the pro bono (as in free, not in support of U2) campaign for TIFF, which runs Sept. 6-15. Supported, also pro bono, by Hoodoo Films and other volunteer services, Echo produced a teaser trailer to promote the festival and a master cinema trailer to run before all the festival films.

Radke Films’ Matt Eastman, the big winner at the annual 2001 First Cut Awards ceremony, earning the top spot among Canada’s new batch of commercial directors, received feedback on his victory the day after his win. He left Toronto’s Capitol Event Theatre on Aug. 2 with a trophy and free trip to the Cannes Advertising Festival in 2002.

* Director/writer: Bruce Sweeney * Producer: Stephen Hegyes * Diary by: Simona Chiose

Montreal: The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network is expanding its co-commissioning with Canadian broadcasters, licensing decidedly more expensive programming and moving to a schedule with greater mainstream potential.

Post-production and its powers are personified in this column.

In this regular feature, we dissect the current commercial production scene in markets across Canada.

* Director/writer/cinematographer: Andre Turpin * Producers: Luc Dery and Joseph Hillel * Diary by: Mark Dillon

Amidst the consolidation frenzy that has left virtually one Canadian distributor standing, former Lions Gate head Jeff Sackman has re-emerged with a new, commercially minded distribution house set to level the playing field in Canada.
‘The environment is ripe,’ says Sackman. ‘I feel strongly that the funding institutions – the gamut of people who share a desire to see results that have been talked about for years in the Canadian scene – are recognizing the unhealthy state of affairs with only one distributor in the country.’

With an eye to make proprietary films targeted at the U.S. marketplace, producer Steve Hoban, distribution maven Noah Segal and commercial production executive Philip Mellows have teamed up to create a new feature film production company – 49th Parallel.
49th Parallel [Canada-U.S. border] ‘is, for some people, an ‘unclimbable’ mountain. For us, it’s an invisible line,’ says Segal, who left his position as exec VP worldwide marketing at Lions Gate Films in early August to start up the new Toronto house, which plans to release three features a year.

Montreal: The real mission for independent movie producers is to do battle with the Hollywood studios, says Jared Underwood, senior VP and comanager, Imperial Entertainment Group in the U.S.

who’s gone where? From where? And when? As the Revolving Doors spin, we put the spotlight on spot-makers on the move.

Shots & Chasers tracks who shot what during the previous month. Production companies are invited to fax information for this column as frequently as possible to Dave Lazar or Dustin Dinoff at (416) 408-0870. The next deadline for submissions is Wednesday, September 19.

After eight years at the helm of Astral Television, president and CEO Lisa de Wilde announced last month that she’s moving on.
Short on details about her future, de Wilde will leave the company on Sept. 14, at which time she is likely to announce her next move.
With three top industry jobs in the waiting, there’s no telling where the Winnipeg-born lawyer-turned-broadcast executive will land.

* Claude Galipeau, former VP, new media at Salter Street Films, has joined Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting as VP, broadcasting.

Developing a strong commercial roster in Canada is no easy task. Maintaining a delicate balance between the best interests of a production company’s local talent and the international directors they represent, prodco execs, producers and sales reps are faced with hard decisions every time a board comes over the fax machine.
Do you offer the job to a well-established director a young creative team would stand on their heads for, or to an up-and-comer who would benefit greatly from the job, but who the creative team would likely refuse?