Cinema Canada (Sep 1981)

Ranger to head 1QC, Fortier to Pay TV MONTREAL — Producer Louise Ranger will replace Jean Fortier as executive director of the Institut québécois du cinéma. The appointment came at the end of a board meeting, held on August 14. Ranger will assume the post on Oct. 1. Louise Ranger has workedin many capacities in the Quebec film industry, moving from production secretary through the ranks to work closely with Pierre Lamy as production manager and as producer on many films. Her credits include Les Males, Bingo, Les vautours, The Far Shore and L’eau chaude eau frette. Recently, she completed production on the animated television series, Les Voyages de Tortillardl (see Cinema Canada No. 67). In a surprise move, Fortier wrote to the board of directors of the Institut several months ago, opening up the possibility of his replacement. Stating that he never intended to hang on to the position, and as he felt a periodic re-examination of the post was appropriate, he opened the door for the board to consider his replacement if it was so inclined. Fortier and the staff of the IQC have been the object of severe and public criticism from several groups within the industry, and the general stagnant climate in Quebec film production has caused reevaluation of policies throughout the milieu. Fortier was also known to be interested in the questions raised by pay TV and thought to be anxious to get involved in the current debates on that. issue. He is now associated with the pay TV proposal Canadian Premiére, which was put together by Moses Znaimer, president of City-TV of Toronto. “All my working life, I’ve been a consultant, and I would be ready to work with the Institut on that basis, caring for some of the dossiers which are more difficult and with whichI have become most involved,” he suggested. Fortier was president of SMA and CROP, both research consulting firms, before serving a six-year stint with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) where he was especially interested in pay TV. Armand Cournoyer, who had worked at the CFDC as head of distribution and had been at the IQC in that position for two years, left the Institut on Aug. 7 to move to the National Film Board as head of International Marketing. His departure and that of Fortier set the scene for a new era at the IQC. . Already, Claude Godbout has replaced Guy Fournier as President of the Institut, Fournier having been moved to head up the Study Committee on the province’s projected rewrite of the Cinema Law. Godbout, president of Les Productions Prisma, and past president of the Association des Producteurs de Films du Québec, and the staff at the 46} Church Street-Toronto Ontatio-Caneda Telephones: 92-0181 962-0182 Film Arts Film Arts * the IOC are now representative of a younger generation of filmmakers. Among his credits are production of Michel Brault’s Les Ordres, Francis Mankiewicz’ Les Bons Débar| ras, and Diane Létourneau’s , Les Servantes du Bon Dieu, all co-produced by Marcia Couél le. -Drabinsky buys studio, shoots avo in’8i TORONTO — Toronto International Film Studios at Kleinburg are on the verge of being sold to Garth Drabinsky’s Tiberius Film Corporation, for a price estimated at between $1-1.5 million. / The studio, Canada’s largest, has been for sale for several years. Currently owned by NTA Canada, a subsidiary of the American company National Telefilm Associates, the studio comprises three sound stages and twelve and a half acres. Included in the deal is a lease on 120 acres-of Jand owned by the Metro Toronto Conservation Authority. Although press reports stated that Drabinsky had taken a ninety-nine year lease on the Conservation Authority land, this was denied by Dennis Price ~ of the Authority, who reported that the lease on the land wasa one year lease which comes up for renewal in October. The value of the lease was placed at between $12-13,000, but because the: lease was being renegotiated, the rental on the land would probably increase. The length of the lease was confirmed by another source. Drabinsky told the Toronto Star that his company was acquiring the studio because the establishment of pay-TV would increase the demand for studio space. Tiberius’ production The Amateur, was shot in large part on sets constructed at Kleinburg, and On the Brink, to be helmed by Michael Ritchie, will go into production at Kleinburg in January, 1982 upon the completion of Tijuana, a youth comedy scheduled to shoot in Southern California next month. Both films, according to Linda Friendly of First Performance Public Relations, will be made under Tiberius’ production and distribution deal with 20th Century-Fox. Twentieth will also be releasing The Amateur in the U.S, February 2, concurrent with the film’s Canadian release through PanCanadian films. Tijuana will be shot entirely in the U,S., and will not qualify as a Canadian film for purposes of certification, UA Classics, N WM buys Ticket TORONTO-Roland Cohen’s $4.5 million movie, Ticket to Heaven, has been acquired for American distribution by United Artists Classics, the specialty arm of the United Artists distribution chain. In Canada, the rights were acquired by New| World-Mutual, which intends to open the film on October 23, following the gala premiere scheduled for the Toronto Fes * tival of Festivals. Ticket to Heaven was recently screened in competition at the Taormina Film Festival in Italy, where it walked away with the Best Film Award and an acting prize for lead Nick Mancuso. The picture was also awarded the BNL-AGIS parchment, which will underwrite the cost of ten prints for whoever handles the film’s Italian distribution. Elsewhere on the distribution scene, Garth Drabinsky’s 1977 production, The Disappearance and Film Consortium’s Circle of Two have been scheduled for American distribution by World-Northal, which has slated the films for “fall release of more than a thousand prints. Canadian productions, Cineplex to open Quebec site MONTREAL — Quebec’s first Cineplex opens here in September at 2001 University and de Maisonneuve. The nine-theatre, 828-seat cinema complex is located on. the track level of the McGill Metro Station. Montreal's Cineplex contains the largest num ber of cinemas under one roof . in the province. The new cinema complex will feature international films from around the globe, including cinema classics, art films, retrospectives and, for young audiences, children’s films. It echoes, on a smaller scale, the 'multi-theatre concept originat ed by Cineplex, Toronto Eaton Centre with 21 screens — the world’s first and largest Cineplex under one roof, as noted in the Guiness Book of Records. Cineplex Corporation is the Canadian company that pioneered the multi-screen concept of film viewing in Canada and the U.S. Cineplex now operates 88 screens across Canada and expansion plans include a total of 200 screens by the end of this year. U.S. expansion plans are now in progress, with locations already confirmed for Los Angeles, Houston and Denver. September 1981 Cinema Canada/?