NFB to Unveil New Partnerships at MIPCOM

MONTREAL, October 5: At MIPCOM, the National Film Board of
Canada (NFB), led by new commissioner Tom Perlmutter, will unveil a number of
new alliances in archives, documentary series and mobile content, among other
genres.

In the mobile content arena, NFB is set to present mobiDOCS:
Confessions in a Digital Age, a
co-production with Film Australia. The experimental series features ten
2-minute shorts created for mobile, online, TV and cinema. In this series, five
filmmakers from Canada and five from Australia share confessions covering
relationships, nature and technology. Two titles from the series,
Marree Man and Begging for Change, are nominated for Mobile Awards at MIPCOM.

The NFB has also inked a new archives deal with Germany’s
Framepool, a supplier of footage to commercial houses. The new deal will enable
the NFB and its archives of more than 4,000 hours greater access to Germany and
other markets. This new partnership with Framepool follows other international
agreements with archival organizations announced by the NFB at MIP in previous
years, including National Geographic and Gaumont Pathé.

Highlights of NFB’s offerings for MIPCOM this year include
the 2×1-hour Fatal Passage, which tells
the story of the doomed Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage.
The program is a co-production with producer-director John Walker (Hand
of Stalin, Men of the Deeps, The Fairy Faith),
independent producer Andrea Nemtin of PTV Productions and BBC Scotland. Other
co-productions available in Cannes are the acclaimed animated shorts
Tragic Story with Happy Ending, co-produced
by the NFB with France’s Folimage and Portugal’s Ciclope Filmes, and
Conte de quartier, co-produced by the NFB
with ARTE France and Les Films de l'Arlequin.

Additional NFB product include the 83-minute Driven by
Dreams, which offers a joyful look at a
group of people 72 to 94 years of age, and the 90-minute HD program The Bodybuilder and I, which takes viewers on a journey into the strange
subculture of geriatric bodybuilding. Driven by Dreams won the Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Hot Docs,
while The Bodybuilder and I picked
up the Best Canadian Feature Documentary award at Hot Docs.

Rounding out NFB’s MIPCOM highlights are two other
high-definition releases, the one-hour The World’s Largest Studio, and the 85-minute documentary/drama hybrid
Radiant City.

“The NFB and our partners are developing projects that are
helping to shape the vocabulary of media for the 21st century and responding to
the needs of today’s media-savvy audiences,” said Tom Perlmutter, the new
government film commissioner and chairperson of the NFB. “It’s an exciting time
at Canada’s public producer and distributor. As the new head of the NFB, I’m looking
forward to sharing these new initiatives with the world audiovisual industry at
MIPCOM.”