MONTREAL – The National Film Board of Canada is offering over 200 films by Indigenous creators for free streaming through a new collection known as Indigenous Cinema (#NFBIndigenous).
Developed as part of the NFB’s three-year Indigenous Action Plan, Indigenous Cinema makes it easier than ever to find Indigenous stories and perspectives – searchable by subject, director’s name or Indigenous people or nation – along with curated and contextualized playlists for different age levels, plus filmmaker biographies.
The titles include both feature-length films and shorts from 1968 through 2017, and the films are sharable in a web story or on social…
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TORONTO and HALIFAX – Afroglobal Television is now available to Eastlink customers after launching on channel 886 earlier this month.
Based in Toronto, the channel informs, empowers, uplifts and entertains with the best of Africa and the Diaspora, including Canadian success stories, reads the news release. Programming includes two movies daily, music, biographies, documentaries, talk shows, drama, sports, reality, faith, current affairs, and children's programming showcasing the rich heritage of Africa, the Caribbean and Canada.
Afroglobal added that it will air documentaries, current affairs and biographies from Atlantic Canada, including town hall events.
"African Canadians have contributed to the development of the Maritimes for over…
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OTTAWA – The federal government has followed through on its commitment to top up the Canada Media Fund in the face of declining contributions from broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs). Minister of Canadian Heritage Melanie Joly first made the announcement last September when she unveiled Creative Canada.
Budget 2018 has committed $172 million more dollars over five years, starting this year, to maintain the CMF’s funding” at 2016-2017 levels. CMF will receive $15 million this year, $29 million in 2019-20 and then $42.5 million in the following three years.
The Liberals noted that the actual amount of money will vary each year…
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FOR MANY DECADES, THE Canadian TV market had the luxury of being a walled garden protected by the limits of technology. We even carved out a national production industry and nurtured significant cultural achievements next door to the world’s largest content market.
Now, however, digitalized content has climbed over the garden’s walls and caused content markets to globalize and flatten.
We responded to this change with the defensive strategy of vertical integration. We tried to create barriers, concentrating our domestic market, but the problem was this just deepened our dependence on our domestic market and made us less competitive globally. We’ve…
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Part V in our series on rewriting the Broadcasting and Telecom Acts. An exclusive interview
BACK IN 1999, WHEN Pierre Karl Péladeau was the CEO of the world’s largest printer and a significant Canadian newspaper publisher, he didn’t know or care about the CRTC’s New Media Exemption Order, released that year. Why would he?
Back then, cell phones were still-new devices that primarily just made phone calls – which only about one in five of us owned.* Everyone got their TV off-air or via cable and just over a quarter of Canadians reported a home internet connection – upon which precious…
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Part IV in our series on rewriting the Broadcasting and Telecom Acts
THE CANADIAN TV INDUSTRY faces a growing crisis. Financial contributions from the broadcast distributors to support the production of Canadian stories are on the decline. This is combined with the fact that online TV providers, namely Netflix, aren’t required to pay into the Canadian system like their Canadian competitors.
Since Netflix has emerged as a major competitor to traditional broadcasting services, many have called for the U.S. company to being paying into the Canadian system. Some have suggested taxing internet service providers is the best approach. Others have simply…
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WINNIPEG – The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and APTN have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work together to strengthen relations with Indigenous Peoples and creators in the Canadian audiovisual industry.
The two organizations said Thursday that agreement will allow them to pool their respective efforts and expertise to implement various protocols, programs, training and other initiatives, such as promoting and utilizing archival materials in the NFB’s Indigenous collection; jointly developing best practices around hiring, training and retaining Indigenous employees; and sharing audience-data analysis and research.
“The NFB and APTN have a long history of working together. This…
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OTTAWA – According to the latest figures released today by the Canadian Media Producers Association, overall production volume in Canada soared to an all-time high of $8.38 billion in 2016/17.
This is a 24% rise in volume over the previous year, helped generate 171,000 full-time jobs and added $12 billion to the country’s GDP, says the association’s annual report Profile 2017: An Economic Report on the Screen-Based Media Production Industry in Canada.
“With record growth across much of Canada’s production sector, there is much to celebrate this year, including the creation of jobs and a significant contribution to the country’s economy,”…
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TORONTO – Jesse Wente has been appointed director of Canada’s Indigenous Screen Office, a role he will assume starting February 1, 2018, it was announced today.
The ISO is an initiative first announced by the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, at the Banff World Media Festival in June.
A film expert, broadcaster and cultural industries leader, Wente (pictured) has spent two decades working in the creative community and advocating for Indigenous rights. He has been director of film programmes at the TIFF Bell Lightbox for the past seven years, and has contributed to CBC Radio as a critic,…
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IT’S BEEN MORE THAN 25 years since legislation guiding the communications sector came into force. There have some minor changes, but both the Telecommunications Act and the Broadcasting Act have remained largely the same – their objectives essentially left untouched. They have stood the test of time, some say. Others, however, point to the enormous impact of the Internet in arguing for big changes to these laws.
“The Internet has really become the central communication mode in our life now, and yet we have legislation that makes a distinction between telecom and broadcasting and also between wireless and wireline. It…
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