Lights, cameras, action at annual Manitoba TIFF party By: Randall King Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Sep. 9, 2019

TORONTO — In past years, the Manitoba Party at the Toronto International Film Festival has been used as a launch pad for Winnipeg films playing at the fest.

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TORONTO — In past years, the Manitoba Party at the Toronto International Film Festival has been used as a launch pad for Winnipeg films playing at the fest.

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TORONTO — In past years, the Manitoba Party at the Toronto International Film Festival has been used as a launch pad for Winnipeg films playing at the fest.

But in the absence of Manitoba product at this year’s TIFF, the party, sponsored by Manitoba Film & Music and On Screen Manitoba, served as a symbolic launch pad for MFM’s acting CEO Rachel Rusen Margolis, who took over the job from Carole Vivier, who just retired after 26 years from the statutory corporation in charge of developing film, television, video and music projects in the province.

Rachel Rusen Margolis, Acting CEO of Manitoba Film & Music. (David Spowart photo)

Clad in an unmissable silver sequinned blazer, Margolis took to the shmoozing requirements of the job like a seasoned pro, facilitating meetings like she’s been doing it all her life in the Drake Hotel’s open, breezy Sky Yard.

Margolis attended the TIFF party as a guest multiple times in her former job as entertainment lawyer, but she says her new position has demanded a shift in focus.

“As an entertainment lawyer in Manitoba, I’ve always been producer-centric and so I’ve attended the festival to represent and show support for my clients,” she says.

Since taking the job, she’s committed to a wider perspective. “Having that 360-(degree) view allows me to do the job in a very authentic and transparent way to make sure that every decision I make, I can validate.

“So it’s actually very heartwarming to be here, because I know everybody in this room, practically, and it’s very welcoming.”

Margolis says she is keenly aware of the challenges ahead, even as the film industry expands in Manitoba, with $269 million of production clocked last year.

Manitoba Film and Music CEO Rachel Rusen Margolis and Kenny Boyce, manager of film and special events for the City of Winnipeg. (David Spowart photo)

“We’re piercing the ceiling of what we’ve accomplished so far and we’re going to do it even better,” she says. “My mandate is to focus on infrastructure and labour force, while continuing to grow our film and music industry.

“We’re going to have to be able to keep up,” she says. “We have some outstanding crews and we want to build more, and the natural evolution of that is to have more stage spaces, so I’m very excited about having those conversations.”

Demonstrating some hometown savvy, Margolis arranged to mix up the usual appetizer offerings at the party with samplings of Jeanne’s cakes brought in for the occasion from the Notre Dame Avenue bakery — a source of great amusement for former Winnipeg actor/writer Jonas Chernick.

“I grew up on Jeanne’s cakes, obviously… I had it every birthday,” Chernick says. “I love it so much. It has so much nostalgia and I think it’s delicious.

“But anyone you try to introduce Jeanne’s cake to, who did not grow up eating it, they think you’re crazy,” he says, laughing. “They don’t get it. ‘What is this?’ They think it’s weird and flavourless and the cookie is stale, and I say, ‘Yeah that’s the point!'”

From left, ex-Winnipegger Corey Marr, Jonas Chernick and Mark Gingras, executive producer of James Vs. His Future Self. (David Spowart photo)

Chernick has just wrapped production on the fourth season of the CBC series Workin’ Moms, playing a new “Russell Brand-type character,” and later this year will be hitting to road to première a sci-fi-infused, time travel/romantic comedy he wrote and produced titled James Vs. His Future Self. Chernick also stars in the film, which will be released theatrically before getting a berth on Crave TV.

The Toronto International Film Festival wraps up on Sunday.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

Bob Odenkirk stars as Jimmy Mc Gill in Better Call Saul.

Manitoba movie news

The buzz at the party always includes news of big things coming down the pike. Some of the more salient tidbits at the Sunday night shindig include:

Bob Odenkirk, the star of Better Call Saul, is set to star in a Winnipeg-lensed movie titled Nobody, about a bystander who intervenes to help a woman being harassed by a group of men and subsequently becoming the target of a vengeful drug lord.

The film will be directed by Russian filmmaker Ilya Nayshuller, who made the amazing, relentless point-of-view action movie Hardcore Henry (2015). If that film’s violent precedent holds, this film may be a bonanza for stunt performers.

Last year, Variety reported Odenkirk was set to both star in and produce the film, with John Wick scribe Derek Kolstad attached to the screenplay. The production schedule of the Directors Guild of Canada states the film will commence shooting in mid-October through to the end of November.

• • •

Producer Juliette Hagopian was tight-lipped about a thriller she’s producing for director Shawn Linden titled Hunter Hunter, scheduled to shoot throughout September.

In its very early stages, the project surfaced in 2009 as a National Screen Institute bursary winner, which described the plot being about a trapper who stumbles upon the dumping ground of a serial killer, and sets out to trap the maniac himself.

Linden shot a movie in Winnipeg in 2007… also titled Nobody.

• • •

Nicholas Hirst, former Free Press managing editor and now Toronto-based producer with Original Pictures, shared that the recently wrapped Amazon sci-fi series Tales from the Loop (which was shot in Manitoba and whose list of directors included Jodie Foster) was looking good enough that another season was a distinct possibility.

• • •

After making serious dramas such as Passionflower and Into Invisible Light, director Shelagh Carter revealed that she’s developing a horror film, a ghost story that touches on the Holocaust with the curious title The Woman Who Swallowed West Hawk Lake.