The Whistler Film Festival, which launches its fifth-anniversary edition today in Whistler, B.C., is one step closer to becoming the Sundance of Canada with an aggressive new industry component that will sled in a slew of hot-shot sales agents and distributors from New York and Hollywood. And coming next year, China.
"We're not trying to compete with Toronto or Cannes or Berlin," says WFF board member Harry Sutherland, a Vancouver producer and president of Long Tale Entertainment.
"What we're trying to do is create a small niche festival with a really useful marketplace that helps focus and drive independent-film production in Western Canada.
"We're different from independent producers in Toronto, where there's a certain sense of entitlement and the filmmakers feel very much part of the Canadian system.
"Out here, we're much more focused on Los Angeles and Asia," says Sutherland, who is currently developing a number of projects in Asia, including Dim Sum Funeral, a feature film with American producer Clark Peterson ( Monster) starring Russell Wong and Joan Chen.
"If we ever want to go beyond being a service industry for Hollywood, it's important to focus on professional-development opportunities like this that will help us finance our own films, sell them and get them into distribution."
The festival's Bell Filmmaker Forum will present 10 workshops and panels from tomorrow through Sunday, with titles such as Rebirth of Canadian Dramatic Television and New Directions in Documentary.
Tomorrow's focus on the international marketplace gives participating filmmakers the opportunity to discuss their projects at round-table sessions with an impressive roster of sales agents and distributors that includes: Shebnem Askin, president of 2929 International in Los Angeles (the worldwide sales and distribution division of billionaire Mark Cuban's 2929 Entertainment); Nicholas Chartier, founder of Voltage Entertainment, also in L.A.; Meyer Shwarzstein, president of L.A.'s Brainstorm Media and a former executive with MGM/UA; Ariel Veneziano, president of GreeneStreet Films International in New York; and Peter Wetherell, founder of L.A.'s Magus Entertainment, who was hired by B.C. Film to help pull the forum together.
Sutherland says he wasn't entirely convinced about the future viability of the Whistler Film Festival until Wetherell got involved. "He works in the independent sales market out of L.A., but he knows people all around the world and has pulled together a very interesting group. This year is just the start. Two or three years down the road, the business fold will be even more impressive."
Next year, the filmmakers' forum will invite 25 Chinese producers for a two-day seminar on pan-Pacific co-productions.
Of course, the festival is about more than just business. The four-day program opens tonight with a gala screening of C.R.A.Z.Y., Canada's official entry for a best-foreign-language-film nomination at the upcoming Academy Awards. The lineup of 90 films -- 60 per cent of it Canadian content -- includes 36 features and mid-length films, 54 shorts, three world premieres, seven Canadian premieres and 16 B.C. premieres.
"We've been actively pursuing films that have somehow managed to slip under the radar of other festivals or are perhaps are a little too challenging for other festivals, but are still worth celebrating and discovering," says director of programming Bill Evans.
Although the focus is on Canadian film, Evans says he received a big jump in submissions from south of the border this year. The 2005 program features several Canadian premieres of U.S. films, including a Sundance favourite from last year, This Revolution, a quasi-fictional homage to Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, directed by native Torontonian Stephen Marshall.
Other festival highlights include Saturday night's tribute to Canadian movie mogul Robert Lantos, who also heads up the jury for the $10,000 Phillip Borsos Award for Best Canadian Feature along with director Don McKellar and actress Molly Parker.
A new non-cash award for Best Mountain Culture Film is also helping to bump up the festival's competitive component, which already includes a $5,000 development prize from CITY-TV for short scripts and the $5,000 award for best documentary from CBC Newsworld.
And yes, there will be parties galore and plenty of opportunity for star spotting, especially at tomorrow night's invite-only Brightlight Pictures/Vancouver Film Studios soiree at Araxi Restaurant, to which Kelly Rowan ( The O.C.) and the Wayan brothers ( White Chicks) have been invited.
Still, no matter how many films are shown or how much glitter is tossed on the event, Whistler is a resort town and obviously has a limited audience base. That's why producers like Sutherland are betting on the festival's industry component as its best chance for growth.
"We have a huge industry, but it's one that rarely gets recognized," says Sutherland.
"The Toronto [International]Film Festival will never focus on Western Canadian films. And the problem with the Vancouver International Film Festival is that it's a public audience festival for international film. We need one event that's a little more focused on the business of Western Canadian film. For Western Canadian filmmakers, that's what Whistler can provide."
The Whistler Film Festival runs from today through Sunday ( http://www.whistlerfilmfestival.com or 866-236-4394).
AND THE WINNER IS ... ?
Six Canadian feature films at the Whistler Film Festival are in competition for the Borsos Award. Who will win the $10,000 prize?
The End of Silence
(World premiere)
Directed and written by Anita Doron (Ontario).
Produced by Fred Fuchs.
Starring Ekaterina Chtchelkanova, John Tokatlidis and Sarah Harmer.
A Russian ballerina faces poverty in a foreign land when her career is cut short. As the past pulls her home, she finds comfort and companionship with her lover's mysterious ex-wife.
Exiles in Lotus Land
(B.C. premiere)
Directed and written by Ilan
Saragosti (Quebec).
Produced by Claudette Jaiko.
Starring Mélo and Ti-criss.
Documentary filmmaker Ilan Saragosti follows two Quebec street kids as they travel to and from Western Canada in this unsettling look at youth living on the edge. Fetching Cody (B.C. premiere)
Directed and written by David Ray (British Columbia).
Produced by Carolyn Allain.
Starring Jay Baruchel, Sarah Lind and James Byrnes.
Time travel descends on Vancouver's gritty Downtown Eastside in this offbeat love story about a drug addict's attempt to change fate.
Love Is Work (World premiere)
Directed and written by John
Kalangis.
Produced by Alan and Jean Barke.
Starring Shauna Macdonald,
Fabrizio Filippo and Kathryn Zenna.
Five couples meeting at the same restaurant delve into surreal meditations on love, sex, money, death, birth and fame.
Six Figures (B.C. premiere)
Directed by David Christensen
(Alberta).
Produced by David Christensen, Susan Bristow and Jason Lee.
Written by David Christensen; based on a novel by Fred Leebron.
Starring J. R. Bourne, Caroline Cave and Deborah Grover.
A Calgary-based murder-mystery about a seemingly happily married couple with two kids and rewarding careers. Is the pressure of an overheated real-estate market enough to trigger a murderous rage?
The Zero Sum (World premiere)
Directed by Raphael Assaf (B.C.)
Produced by Raymond Massey and Marvin Young.
Written by Armen Evrensel.
Starring Ewen Bremmer, Sarah Strange and David Richmond-Peck.
A story of two brothers who will do just about anything for each other even if it means doing time in jail for a crime that one of them did not commit.
Alexandra Gill