Silver screen comes to Big Nickel, makes sizable deposit.

Hotel operators and restauranteurs rejoice: Cinefest is back.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

It is that time of year when around 27,000 people push their way into a Greater Sudbury theatre complex to see and be seen at screenings of some of the year's best short films, documentaries, features and gala presentations.

The nine-day festival treats film fans from all over the North, enhancing the city's cultural landscape and infusing in the region of $5 million into its economy each year.

Cinefest executive director Jason Beaudry says the festival generated about $2.5 million each year while it was only five days long in the 1990s, so the $5-million estimate for the current Cinefest incarnation is probably safe.

"Try and get a hotel room in Sudbury during the fesitval," he says. "Good luck."

Restaurants of all shapes and sizes are packed during the event as well, adding to the spinoff economic activity.

During the third week in September, over 200 volunteers and 15 paid workers heed the call to make the party a success. During the rest of the year, a full-time staff of about three or four gets things together. In the months leading up to the event, numerous contract workers are hired for specific tasks, for periods of anywhere from six months to a week.

About a quarter of the attendees are from out of town, he says. Hotel and ticket packages available at www.cinfest.com/tickets are very popular with that group, according to Beaudry.

A festival passport good for admission to any film costs $150. An industry pass will gain the bearer admission to all the industry forums, gala presentations and after-parties and films for $250. Individual tickets are $10, but film goers can save a few bucks by picking up a book of four or 10.

Cinefest is screening some big films starring some big names again this year. The second gala presentation, for example, was a pre-mass release screening of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, a dark animated adventure about a man who is whisked away to the underworld and wed to a mysterious corpse bride as his real finacee waits in the world of the living. It stars the voices of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson and Albert Finney.

Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang starts Robert Downey Jr. as a petty thief that stumbles into a Hollywood audition and is so convincing the executives send him to Los Angeles to prepare for his role. There, he is partnered with a gay police investigator played by Val Kilmer. Hilarity ensues.

The festival is sponsored by several government partners, including the government of Quebec, which flows money to the festival for its promotion of film from French Canada.

C.R.A.Z.Y., for example, is the story of a Quebec family of five sons which centres around the second-youngest's love-hate relationship with his father before and after he comes out to the old-fashioned head of the house. The film starts with his birth on Christmas Day, 1960 (and his brother dropping him on the floor) and runs to about 1980.

The festival also receives funding from FedNor, the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp., the National Film Board and the Ontario Media Development Corp.

www.cinefest.com

By CRAIG GILBERT

Northern Ontario Business