Montreal: Quebec’s cultural funding and certification agency SODEC issued $89.8 million in tax credits for 389 Quebec-content productions in fiscal 2000/01, representing cumulative production budgets of $582.3 million. The estimates are based on advanced rulings from SODEC’s tax credit office, and are the equivalent of the Part ‘A’ schedule at CAVCO.
The 2000/01 certification level for content programs is 8% lower than the $97.8 million in refundable production credits issued by SODEC for 373 productions (representing budgets of $655.2 million) in fiscal 1999/00.
‘Although the number of files has continued to increase, the overall credit level has basically decreased, which means production budgets have gone down,’ says SODEC’s tax credit director Stephane Cardin.

Vancouver: British Columbia’s new Liberal government was sworn in June 5 and began the biggest ministerial overhaul in provincial history.
Including Premier Gordon Campbell, there are 28 new cabinet ministers. Campbell was elected May 16 with 77 of 79 seats
While the ministerial changes affect the regulation of industries across the board, the film industry in particular has been shuffled.
The British Columbia Film Commission, funding agency British Columbia Film and, through the BC Pavilion Corporation, the government-run Bridge Studios, now fall under the new Ministry of Competition, Science and Enterprise, one of the portfolios designed to fuel economic growth.

Despite recent industry woes, the interactive sector honored itself at the second annual Canadian New Media Awards at CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio May 28 in Toronto. Produced by strategic interactive brand solutions company Delvinia, this year’s CNMA fielded 560 nominations from producers of websites, CD-ROMs and video games across Canada. One hundred and twenty professionals from the public and private sectors voted online for the winners in a dozen categories.
Presenters joked about life after the dot-com stock crash, and in that ‘hard times’ spirit the show did not even have a human host. The MCs were puppets – specifically The Grogs, including Warren, Gidian, Philippe Cesare and Swami Jeff.
LearnStream, out of Fredericton, NB, was named company of the year. LearnStream, which says to have generated more than $7 million in revenue in the past year, designs new media courseware for Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Royal Bank, Sybase and Nortel Networks.

Montreal: More than 65 titles from the National Film Board’s English Program are in various stages of production or in this year’s distribution pipeline, including 40 documentaries and 13 high-profile, feature-length docs.
The program lineup includes wild and wonderful animation from award-winning directors John Weldon, Chris Hinton and Cordell Barker, a new creative website for children, and a Paul Cowan portrait of the working people who bet and lost on Westray.
Documentary highlights include John Paskievich’s My Mother’s Village, a Documentary West-produced cinematic journey of exile and memory based on the filmmaker’s experience as the child of a refugee; Linda Ohama’s Obaachan’s Garden, a Documentary West portrait of the filmmaker’s grandmother and her experience as a ‘Japanese picture bride’ in the 1920s; and Daniel Sekulich’s Aftermath: The Remnants of War, a Documentary Ontario coproduction with Aftermath Pictures evoking stories of war from France, Bosnia, Russia and Vietnam, presold to History Television.

Montreal: Canada’s foremost film director, Norman Jewison, will be discussing the art and business of adapting stage and literary properties to the screen at this year’s Banff Master Class on directing. The director says he’ll also take a look at original screenplays, but his keenest interest at this point is the transference of theatre to film.
Clips from various Jewison films including Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Agnes of God (1985) and A Soldier’s Story (1984) will be used to address transition or adaptation issues, likely approaches and pitfalls as well. The presentation will also include screening scenes and a discussion of his TV movie adaptation of Donald Margulies’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play Dinner With Friends. The film was shot for HBO and will premier in late July in Los Angeles and New York.

Here’s an irony befitting a plot line on Frasier: while TV icon Kelsey Grammer and 2,000 small-screen glitterati do the Hot Springs, pitch, celebrate, meet and drink in spectacular Banff, the screen story of the month will play out among the…

Montreal: Chris Haddock, creator of the top-rated and critically acclaimed Canadian crime drama series Da Vinci’s Inquest, says the production ‘is really a writers’ show and it’s the writers who are at the creative forefront.’
One of the things Haddock says he learned right at the beginning of the series was ‘getting as many real advisors on board as I could,’ including B.C.’s chief coroner and a number of Vancouver police homicide advisors, including this season a woman advisor who has worked on many fascinating cases.
As the show’s writer/producer, Haddock is part of a new wave of Canadian primetime talent who set out to break the traditional mold of ‘the line producer/production manager mentality in charge of shows.’

An article in the May 28 edition of Playback noted that edgy new teen soap Sausage Factory (working title), an MTV/Peace Arch/Nelvana coproduction, was picked up by YTV in Canada. The half-hour program will in fact air on Comedy Network….

Salter lays off staff …

Calgary: The teenage boy, decorated in sacrificial face paint, is forced back onto a stone altar by two elaborately dressed guards. A hand bearing a knife comes down to his chest and he screams – ‘NO!’ ‘Go to glory,’ says the…

A humble packaged meat that has straddled the century from Depression-era savior to pop cultural icon is the subject of director/producer Anne Pick’s Documart pitch, An Ode to SPAM. Or as she describes her project, ‘It is the amazing true story…

Toronto’s Cuppa Coffee Animation has launched a new broadcast design department to handle what has become a key portion of the company’s business. …

A young man living with his parents starts a newsletter from his mother’s kitchen table; a young woman goes home from a waitressing stint and writes an article about her experiences; a young man drives from potential client to potential client…

Almost 50 years ago an experimental polio vaccine manufactured using chimpanzee kidneys was administered to more a million people in Central Africa. Could this have been the origin of AIDS?…