Hi Walter just upvoted, followed and Resteemed.

What a great lineup of talent! thank you for sharing this - it's great to see pics from the night and to be able to follow the links. I'm in Australia so I don't know if Sam Pollard's Sammy Davis Jr film will be shown here. I'd love to see it in a cinema if it is.

I just shared Olenka's video on Facebook, well done for helping young artists get noticed. I hope she makes it!

It seems to me that Canada's film industry alongside India's are probably the most interesting in the world right now because there's such a strong sense of pride in your film industry. All of the the best Sci Fi shows and independent films seem to coming out of Canada. Canada has always been cheap location filming for Hollywood but you managed to also retain a big creative industry and the ability to generate your own projects without it all being controlled by Hollywood.

I wish Australia's film industry had taken some different turns over the years. It had so much potential in the late 70s and 80s to be one of the world leading Independant film Industries but nowadays Australia is mainly being used as a location service without our own indigenous industry being built up.

Most of our film-makers are employed in Aussie TV sitcoms and in the TV commercials industry or they just head to LA as soon as they get noticed. We had a couple of really big studios built (Warner Bros in the Gold Coast) on the back of massive Government (taxpayer) subsidies and they turned out to be just satellites of Hollywood studios with very little meaningful interaction happening with the Australian film community.

There was an interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of years ago talking about our lack of passion in film-making and about our film-makers losing the will to take a chance and it was really accurate to what is happening here today.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/The-passion-lacking-in-the-film-industry/2004/11/24/1101219615000.html

Most of it comes down to financing. Distributors see the Australian market as too small and won't fund the majority of projects.

We are capable of making the best Indie films too (The Year My Voice Broke, Lantana, The Castle, Rabbit Proof Fence, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wolf Creek, Razorback, Mad Max etc) but it's just not currently as vibrant as it should be because most of our best talent disappears to Hollywood. I think Australia is desperately overdue a resurgence. There are hardly any Australian Sci Fi, Horror, Family Films, Road Trip movies being made which is crazy because we have talent and some of the best locations.

It's great to see Canada getting it right. It means we still can too.