All articles by de.seguin@gmail.com – Page 14
-
News
Eastern Promises, My Winnipeg win top prizes as TIFF winds down
Guy Maddin's personal documentary My Winnipeg won the C$30,000 Toronto-City Award for Best Canadian Feature and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises won the C$15,000 Cadillac People's Choice Award as the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival wrapped on Saturday. Runners up for the audience prize, first and second respectively, were Jason Reitman's ...
-
News
Haitian Film Festival postponed to 2008
Film Festival Jakmel has postponed its annual event for a year, according to festival founder David Belle. Based in the southern resort town of Jakmel in Haiti, the festival last year injected over $1m in economic activity in the region. However, planning for the fourth iteration was plagued by funding ...
-
Features
Canada - Blindness In sight
Fernando Meirelles sits in an office at a prison in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. "I was so afraid," he says. The director of the critically-beloved City Of God and the widely-respected The Constant Gardener is recalling the nausea of pre-production on his new film Blindness.Meirelles had sought to adapt Jose Saramago's ...
-
News
Equinoxe buys Canadian rights to Nic Balthazar's Ben X
Montreal-based distributor Equinoxe Films has picked up Canadian distribution rights on Nic Balthazar's directorial debut Ben X. The film, which shared the top prize at the Montreal World Film Festival as well as winning the audience and ecumenical prizes, is being sold internationally by French sales outfit Films Distribution.Inspired by ...
-
Reviews
Continental: A Film Without Guns (Continental: Un Film Sans Fusil)
Dir: Stephane Lafleur Canada 2007. 103 min.From the bold statement of the title to the closing scene that completes a crooked circle, Stephane LaFleur's feature debut is a mordantly funny tour of human despair. You don't need firearms to kill the human spirit, loneliness and a boring job will do ...
-
News
China Clipper to fly with China's Hengdian, Canada's Long Tale
Vancouver-based Long Tale Entertainment has signed with Chinese production colossus Hengdian Studios for the $30m Canada-China co-production China Clipper.Long Tale's Harry Sutherland put the package together with US MoviePlus, the LA-arm of worldwide film finance entity set up by Stuart Little producer Steve Waterman and Chris Brough, founder of Vancouver's ...
-
News
DHX corrals Chris Noonan's Zebras
Chris Noonan, director of Miss Potter and Babe, is preparing to shoot his next film, the $16m (A$20m) Australia-South Africa co-production Zebras.The original screenplay by David Williamson (The Year Of Living Dangerously, Phar Lap) is based on an Apartheid-era true story of Paul Krieje, an Afrikaaner who coached a Soweto ...
-
News
Seema Biswas set for Deepa Mehta's Stella
Bandit Queen star Seema Biswas has signed for a lead role in Deepa Mehta's Stella, a $4m comedy set to shoot in New Delhi immediately following production of the recently announced Heaven On Earth.In a departure from form, Mehta will co-direct with her brother Dilip Mehta, production on many of ...
-
News
Cinemaginaire launches Meunier's Le Grand Depart
Montreal-based Cinemaginaire is set to begin production on Claude Meunier's directorial debut Le Grand Depart.Meunier, one of Quebec's most revered comic talents and the writer behind the province's most successful television series La Petite Vie, also wrote the screenplay for the romantic comedy.Cinemaginaire's Denise Robert and Daniel Louis are producing. ...
-
News
New distributor KinoSmith pumps up with Bodybuilder
Canada's distribution business has grown by one, as Toronto-based marketing and distribution veteran Robin Smith launches his KinoSmith Independent Films.Freshly greenlit through Telefilm Canada's low-budget independent distribution program, KinoSmith will release Brian Friedman's Hot Docs audience prize winner The Bodybuilder And I. Produced by January Films and the National Film ...
-
News
Joshua Jackson to star in McGowan's One Week
Principal photography beings Monday on Michael McGowan's One Week starring Joshua Jackson and Liane Balaban.The film is produced by Nicholas de Pencier, Jane Tattersall and Michael McGowan under the Mulmur Feed Company banner with Richard Hanet and Jackson serving as executive producers.Mongrel Media will distribute in Canada.The story follows the ...
-
News
Clement Virgo plans The Collectors with Conquering Lion
Poor Boy's Game director Clement Virgo is setting up his next project, the $9m thriller The Collectors, as a Canada-UK co-production.The screenplay is written by Annmarie Morais, who wrote the Paramount Vantage pickup How She Move. Virgo and producing partner Damon d'Oliveira of Toronto-based Conquering Lion Pictures will be taking ...
-
News
Canadian doc makers nervous as Burns exits Documentary Channel
Canada's documentary filmmaking community is up in arms as one of the nation's top commissioning editors, The Documentary Channel's programming director Michael Burns, has been let go.Driving the controversy is the role of national broadcaster CBC in the firing. The CBC purchased majority control of The Documentary Channel having given ...
-
News
Preity Zinta to star in Deepa Mehta's Heaven On Earth
Bollywood starlet Preity Zinta is set to star in Deepa Mehta's new film Heaven On Earth.Written and to be directed by Mehta and produced by long-time producing partner David Hamilton, the $3m feature goes to camera on November 5 in Toronto followed by filming in India. Mongrel Media will be ...
-
News
Anagram heats up global warming project The Thaw
Vancouver-based Anagram Pictures, production company behind zombie comedy Fido, is setting up global warming horror picture The Thaw for production in spring 2008.Mark Lewis (Ill Fated) is attached to direct the screenplay he cowrote with Michael Lewis. Anagram's Mary Anne Waterhouse and Trent Carlson will produce with Rob Neilson. Maple ...
-
News
Equinoxe joins Future Films and Arcadia on Purple America
Jorge Torregrossa's Purple America is now going ahead with a Canadian co-producer, Equinoxe Productions. The $6.3m (Euros 4.5m) production was developed by Spain's Arcadia Films with the help of El Deseo and London-based Future Films. Future's Stephen Margolis has led the financial arrangements. The project is set to go ahead ...
-
News
Montreal's Park Ex readies Jacob Tierney's The Trotsky
Montreal-based Park Ex Entertainment, producer of Canadian smash Bon Cop, Bad Cop, is readying Jacob Tierney's follow-up to Twist.Written and to be directed by Tierney, The Trotsky dives into the mind of a 17-year-old high schooler who believes himself to be the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. Twist producer Victoria Hirst ...
-
News
Cirrus dives into Surfing In Newfoundland
Fresh from its latest Quebec smash Nitro, Montreal-based Cirrus Communications is setting up its next film, Surfing In Newfoundland.Quebecois filmmaker Eric Tessier (Sur Le Seuil) will make his English-language debut, directing the screenplay by Newfoundland writer Andrew Youngblood based on his own experiences surfing the frigid north Atlantic waters. With ...
-
News
Canada's Triptych readies High Life with Garry Yates
Toronto-based Triptych Media, co-producers of TIFF Closing Night title Emotional Arithmetic, is readying its next feature, High Life, with director Garry Yates (Seven Times Lucky).Triptych's Robin Cass is setting the project up as an Ontario-Manitoba coproduction with plans to begin principal photography later this autumn. Based on the darkly comic ...
-
News
Maximum, Seville strike co-distribution deal with Magnolia and HDNet
Canadian distribution startup Maximum Films and Entertainment One'srecently acquired Seville Entertainment have signed a multi-pictureco-distribution deal with Magnolia Pictures and HDNet films. The slate pick-up, which covers all of Canada in all media, includes Michael Radford's period heist picture Flawless, starring Michael Caine and Demi Moore; Brian De Palma's Iraq ...