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Cedar Island launches at Hot Docs

From a media release:

Cedar Island is a Canadian production company formed by seasoned producers Henrik Meyer and Andrew Williamson to produce meaningful documentaries, feature dramas and digital media projects with a focus on international co-productions.

Bringing together their decades of domestic and international experience, Andrew and Henrik develop, finance and create captivating content for broadcasters, distributors and audiences in Canada and around the world.

“Inspired by our interest in producing ‘content with purpose’, we’ve joined forces to bring engaging, exciting projects to audiences in Canada, Germany and around the world. At a time when story matters more than ever, our slate of projects in production and development, focus on telling original, compelling stories.” – Andrew Williamson

“Building on previous service productions in British Columbia and Alberta for European partners over the past 14 years, we now expand our services to the Yukon where we are scheduled to go into production with a German television production already this summer.” – Henrik Meyer

Cedar Island Films has an active development slate including:

• In development with Knowledge Network for the short doc series Wild and the feature documentary River with director Simon Schneider

• In development with Emmy award winning writer and investigative journalist Kristina Borjesson and TriCoast Worldwide, Los Angeles on The Whistleblowers

• In development with the feature drama Dragonfly Summer with director Marie Clements, a Canadian/German co-pro with Kinderfilm GmbH, Erfurt

Website: www.cedarislandfilms.com

— BIOS:

Andrew Williamson is a seasoned producer and director who executive produced the critically acclaimed doc series Emergency Room: Life & Death at VGH for The Knowledge Network/Discovery and High Moon, a co-venture with Universal Cable Productions and Executive Producer Bryan Fuller. He also produced Gastown Gamble for the OWN Network.

Andrew is producing The Whale and the Raven, a Canadian/German feature documentary with the National Film Board of Canada/ARTE and The Magnitude of All Things with the NFB and TELUS Health Fund.

Andrew is the founder of Crazy8s, elected to the Branch Council of the CMPA – BC Producers Branch and on the Film Advisory Board for Langara University. He volunteers with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project to help educate people about climate change.

Henrik Meyer has produced film and television for over 25 years. His last film as a German producer was Margarethe von Trotta’s Venice-contender Rosenstrasse, and his first production in Canada after immigrating in 2004 was Douglas Coupland’s Everything’s Gone Green, which won Best Picture and Best Screenplay in British Columbia in 2006. Since then, Henrik has produced over 1500 minutes of German television in Canada and co-produced 2013 Berlinale-contender Gold and multi-award winning, Indigenous youth drama Shana – The Wolf’s Music, which is being aired at Canada’s APTN in 2018.

Before moving to Canada and becoming a dual German-Canadian citizen, Henrik was the inaugural head of Letterbox Filmproduktion at Studio Hamburg and produced for all leading German broadcasters as well as Disney, Warner Bros. and the Tele Munich Group. He joined forces with Andrew Williamson on the international feature doc co-pro The Whale and the Raven for the NFB and ARTE.

 

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Industry News

INIS sets up new training program thanks to support from Netflix

From a media release:

INIS (L’institut national de l’image et du son) announced today that it has secured Netflix’s support to develop and implement, over the next three years, a brand-new film and television production apprenticeship program intended for participants from First Nations, Aboriginal communities and diverse cultural backgrounds in Quebec. This is Netflix’s first partnership agreement with a Quebec organization as part of its commitment to support industry development opportunities in Canada, with a focus on developing the next generation of Canadian creators and talent.

The creation of this intensive six-month program is a continuation of many actions carried out by INIS in recent years. These actions were all intended to encourage the arrival and accelerate the professional development of new creators in the audiovisual sector so that they can share their vision and reality through documentary and fiction. This new program will promote access to high quality training for talented and motivated individuals.

Offered at a low cost to its participants, the program will be developed with the collaboration of several partners who already work with targeted clientele. It aims to counter the exclusion often experienced by members of these communities. By taking the proven structure of INIS and its educational philosophy, the program will cover essentials, alternating theoretical workshops (always centred on the practice) as well as a series of concrete creative exercises, offering the possibility to apply the learnings in a tangible way.

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 with Netflix also includes scholarships for emerging professionals from First Nations, Aboriginal communities and diverse cultural backgrounds to access other regular programs offered by the institution.

INIS contributes to the development of the professional environment of film, television and interactive media in Quebec and Canada by providing individuals and businesses with training and support programs that promote diversity of content and meet the needs of the public requirements and changes in the audiovisual, communications and entertainment markets. INIS is the recognized training mutual in the audiovisual sector. INIS is supported by the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications and the Commission of Labor Market Partners; by its main partner, Corus Media; its major partners, the INIS Foundation, Technicolor, NBCUniversal, UDA, DGC and AQTIS as well as their respective members.

 

 

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Allarco emerges from creditor protection

From a media release:

Allarco Entertainment 2008 and Allarco Entertainment Limited Partnership (Allarco) announced today that it has successfully emerged from creditor protection, having been issued its Certificate of Plan Completion from the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta (the Court) on April 5, 2018.

In May 2016, the company sought creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) in an effort to facilitate a restructuring and refinancing of its business operations.  Since that time, Allarco has continued to operate under CCAA protection, supervised by the Court appointed monitor PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. (the Monitor). On December 13, 2017 a formal plan of arrangement or compromise (the Plan) was filed with the assistance of the Monitor.

A meeting of the affected creditors was held on January 24, 2018 where 78 creditors voted in favour for the Plan by a margin of 77-1. The Court approved and issued the sanction order to proceed with the Plan on February 16, 2018.

With the issuance of the Monitor’s Certificate of Plan Completion effective April 5, 2018, the CCAA proceedings have been completed in accordance with the Orders of the Court and under the supervision of the Monitor.

“I wish to thank our creditors sincerely for their patience and support as we worked through the CCAA process to achieve this goal,” said Don McDonald President & CEO of Super Channel. “We had to make some very difficult decisions to ensure survival of the business and for the company to remain an active participant in the Canadian broadcast industry.”

 

 

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Link: The half-billion dollar Netflix bet on Hollywood North

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From Max Greenwood of Techvibes:

Link: The half-billion dollar Netflix bet on Hollywood North
The goal of the subsidiary is twofold: one objective is to invest in Canadian content, but the other is to navigate a long-standing law that prohibits foreign companies from spending directly in Canada. Traditionally, U.S. companies had to work with local production companies to hire staff, as non-Canadian companies that seek to localize in Canada must notify the Canadian government and get approval—whether it be hiring stylists or caterers. With this new subsidiary, Netflix can now manage hiring themselves. Continue reading. 

 

 

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