David Cronenberg is being honoured by the Venice International Film Festival with its Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. The Canadian director and screenwriter, 75, is best known for dark, edgy films like Dead Ringers, A History of Violence, Crash and Maps to the Stars. Cronenberg was previously awarded the Cannes’ lifetime achievement award – the Carrosse d’Or – in 2006.
Netflix is developing a new film and television apprenticeship program with Quebec’s INIS (L’institut national de l’image et du son). Netflix’s first partnership agreement with a Quebec organization as part of its commitment to support industry development opportunities in Canada, the program is aimed at those from First Nations, Aboriginal communities or diverse cultural backgrounds in Quebec, to counter the exclusion often experienced by members of those communities. INIS plans to recruit nine students – three scriptwriters, three directors and three producers – for each edition of the program to be offered in 2019, 2020 and 2021. The agreement also includes scholarships for emerging professionals from those communities.
Netflix has greenlit The Order, a 10-part werewolf drama from Nomadic Pictures, created and written by Dennis Heaton and Shelley Eriksen. Shooting is underway in Vancouver. Netflix has also commissioned V-Wars, set to begin shooting in Sudbury in June. The 10-part vampire series will be produced by Toronto’s High Park Entertainment, in partnership with IDW Entertainment.
Discovery’s latest original Canadian series Hellfire Heroes follows two rural Alberta fire departments working in isolated areas of the province. Airing Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT, beginning May 22, the show features the men and women of the Lesser Slave Lake Regional Fire Service and Yellowhead County Fire Department, which protect a combined area spanning more than 30,000 square kilometres.
HBO has dropped a trailer for Sharp Objects, the new eight-episode drama from award-winning Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée. Based on the novel of the same name by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), Sharp Objects stars Amy Adams as a reporter who returns to her hometown to cover the murders of two pre-teen girls. Also starring Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Eliza Scanlen, Elizabeth Perkins and Matt Craven, the series will premiere in July on HBO Canada.
CityNews will host the first televised debate featuring all three major Ontario provincial party leaders in advance of the June election. #CityVote: The Debate will air commercial-free on Monday, May 7 from 6 – 8 p.m. ET on City, CityNews.ca, the CityNews Apps and the CityNews Facebook page. For multilingual audiences in Ontario, the debate will also air on OMNI2 at 6 p.m. ET in Punjabi and at 10 p.m. ET in Mandarin. Additionally, analysis of the debate will be featured on OMNI Television’s daily current affairs programs that evening – Focus Punjabi at 7:30 p.m. ET, Focus Cantonese at 8:30 p.m. ET, and Focus Mandarin at 9:30 p.m. ET.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) says the f-word should be avoided during sports broadcasts after coarse language was aired during a CFL game on TSN 4 last October. The CBSC found a breach of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics, concluding that the f-word and variations thereof should not have aired during an Oct. 27 broadcast that began before 9 p.m. and that the broadcast should have contained viewer advisories. Microphones on the field at the Hamilton Tiger-Cats/Ottawa Redblacks game picked up coarse language from the players. There were no viewer advisories during the broadcast or any admonishment by the on-air hosts.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) says an episode of Code F broadcast on VRAK at 6 p.m. on May 26, 2017 wasn’t sexually explicit enough to necessitate a post-9 p.m. scheduling. Code F is a program where young women give their opinions on various topics with the episode in question focused on sex shops. The CBSC’s French-Language Panel concluded that VRAK did not breach code because the content was mild and vague rather than explicit. However, VRAK failed to provide an official logger copy of the program for CBSC review purposes, which the panel found breached its CBSC responsibilities.
Canadian Music Week and The Guild of Music Supervisors, Canada will present the 1st Annual Canadian Sync Awards on May 12 in Toronto. Hosted by Raina Douris and Odario Williams of CBC Radio 2, the awards will recognize the contribution sync makes to the creative industries with awards for Best Music Supervision – Scripted or Factual TV Production/Series; Best Music Supervision – Feature or Documentary Film; and Best Sync – Commercial, among other awards. Presenters will include legendary producer Nile Rodgers and composer and sound designer Jesper Kyd.
