What the news for filmmakers and filmgoers in Canada comes down to today:
- The Canadian film industry comes to . . . live theatre. Montreal playwright Vittorio Rossi has had five different screen projects “lost in ‘development hell'”, but has also managed to produce a film of his own in five days. Now his new play The Envelope, opening on the 24th at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal, follows a playwright deciding between an indie producer from L.A. and a Canadian producer with an envelope full of government money. Read about it at BroadwayWorld, here.
- Comedian Rob Cohen’s “epic quest to rediscover our national identity” comes to Hot Docs in the form of his new film Being Canadian. Read about that and a lot more that’s being planned for the festival in the National Post, here.
- An unexpected number of film submissions come to the Sunrise Film Festival. Taking place for the first time this year, this festival on the North Shore of Nova Scotia has already accepted 17 films from several countries since the beginning of February — and that’s with a deadline of August 25th. Read more here in the Truro Daily News.
- Storyhive comes to a vote. This competition featured content creators who were each given $10,000 funding to produce pilot webisodes — after training by the National Screen Institute. Two winners will get $50,000 each from Telus, plus more training from NSI, to make their full series a reality. And you can vote for your favourites — click here to see the project links at NSI.