The Toronto Animated Image Society is hosting its annual holiday party. This year's party will also include our first-ever silent auction. Start your holiday season up right at the only party in town where you can get cool holiday gifts and drink eggnog at the same time. The party will take place at the National Film Board from 7:00 to 11:00 pm. For more information, call (416) 533-7889, visit e-mail: Tais@bellnet.ca or visit www.awn.com/tais.

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF 05) is North America's oldest and largest animation festival. The festival is broken up into four umbrella categories. The first is for animated feature films. The New Media Competition covers Animation Short Made for the Internet, Internet series, interactive animation and "Machinima," films made with videogame software. Commissioned Films Competition covers educational, scientific or industrial film, advertising film, station-program identification, music video, television special, television pilot, television series for adults and television series for children. Independent Short Films Competition covers narrative short film under 35 minutes, non-narrative short film under 35 minutes, first film and films made for children. Founded in 1976, and held biennially ever since, the OIAF attracts international animators, producers, broadcasters, and enthusiasts to Ottawa to view films entered in and out of competition, and attend special screenings and workshops that ponder the current state and future of animation. For more information, visit www.animationfestival.ca or www.awn.com/ottawa, e-mail info@animationfestival.ca or call (613) 232-8769.

The Banff World Television Festival celebrates the art and business of television production. The event will offer a full slate of sessions on the issues that are central to those working in international co-production and genres. Conference sessions will address successful collaborations and business models for co-financing, funding and marketing television programming as well as emerging genres and burgeoning technologies such as HDTV. There will also be major sessions around treaty and international co-production issues across genres, with the goal of finding solutions to open more doors on co-production among treaty and non-treaty partners. Case studies and master sessions will also examine the anatomy of recent successful co-production projects. BANFF continues its tradition of facilitating new business opportunities with the continuation of its famous pitching competitions: Market Simulation, New Players Pitch, iPitch for interactive projects and the world's most lucrative pitch - CTV Canadian Documart. These competitions offer producers the opportunity to pitch their hot new ideas to a distinguished group of international broadcasters and decision-makers. Sessions also encourage broadcasters to share programming needs as well as discuss programming trends and emerging technologies with producers from around the world. The Banff World Television Festival is owned by the Banff Television Festival Foundation and is produced by Achilles Media Ltd. on behalf of the Foundation's Board of Directors and Board of Governors. The Foundation's Board of Governors is international in scope and represents the cr

The Gemini Awards is the top honor in television from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. Programs eligible for this year's event must have aired between May 1, 2004 and April 30, 2005. The event brings together more than 3,000 craftspeople, producers and decision-makers from across Canada to honor, celebrate and promote the talent and accomplishments of the Canadian television industry. This year a new category for Best Original Music Score for an Animated Program or Series has been added. For more information, visit www.academy.ca.

The Toronto Jewish Film Festival (TJFF) will celebrate its 13th anniversary this year

The Glitch Fest, is comprised of short films of three to 10 minutes in length and in all categories: French or English, from Quebec or elsewhere, be they parodies, fake publicities, dramas, horror films, press reports, animations,

Ai-Kon is Manitoba

The goal of the Montreal World Film Festival (Montreal International Film Festival) is to encourage cultural diversity and understanding between nations, to foster the cinema of all continents by stimulating the development of quality cinema, to promote filmmakers and innovative works, to discover and encourage new talents, and to promote meetings between cinema professionals from around the world.

The World Film Festival - Montreal 2005 will include the following sections: World Competition, First Films World Competition, Hors Concours (World Greats, out-of competition), Focus on World Cinema (Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania), Documentaries of the World, Tributes, Cinema Under the Stars and Canadian Student Film Festival. The event also contains seminars, workshops and a film market.

The new animated short by Oscar-nominated director Chris Hinton is in the official competition, as well as three other animated shorts from the NFB in the World Greats category. As part of our continued partnership with the festival, the NFB will once again present the Norman McLaren Award in the Canadian Student Film Festival.

For more information, visit www.ffm-montreal.org.

The World of Comedy International Film Festival has put out a call for feature film and shorts entries for its fourth annual event in Toronto March 8-12, 2006. In addition to the film competition, the 2006 festival will host a series of workshops and panels to foster the further development of those interested in comedy filmmaking.

The festival is looking for submissions for both features and shorts in the following categories: narrative, animation, mockumentary, experimental and documentaries about comedy and/or personalities involved in comedic filmmaking. The deadline for submissions is October 26, 2005. For further information go to www.worldcomedyfilmfest.com.

The World of Comedy International Film Festival is a non-profit organization created to celebrate the artistry and power of comedy films.

The Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema (WFAC) is a film festival for animated feature films, founded to promote appreciation for animation as a narrative medium for mature cinematic storytelling, and to review and celebrate animated feature films in the venue they were meant to be seen in: a theatre.

The 2005 Festival consists of three programs: world cinema, retrospectives and tidbits. The World Cinema program features contemporary feature films from around the world. The Retrospectives program looks back at films of a certain theme or artistry, which have contributed to the films of today. Last but not least, the Tidbits program features films from small creative teams challenging the limits of what can be accomplished, to tell the stories they want to tell. WFAC 2005 will be running November 17th-20th at the Princess Twin Cinemas in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

For more information, visit www.wfac.ca.