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There’s no burgeoning business quite like show business in Canmore where the key phrase is “lights, camera, location.”

Canmore and the Bow Valley have been featured in enough high profile films to warrant their own section at the local video store.

“We’re a great location for a film that wants a small town in a beautiful mountain setting,” says Canmore Economic Development Agency executive director Teresa Mullen. “The film industry wants to come here so we want to make it attractive and easy for them to come here.”

Partners in Economic Development

  Town of Canmore
  Tourism Canmore
  The Biosphere Institute
  BOWDA
  Mountain Arts Foundation
  Canmore Community Housing Corporation
  MD of Bighorn # 8
  Chamber of Commerce

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Canmore Business Registry

Canmore film locations consultant, Charles May, accredits the work of the Canmore Economic Development Authority and the Town of Canmore for developing a long overdue FILM POLICY, making film permitting and processes clear and manageable for the industry and the community. “I can tell you that I was able to attract 6 productions since this policy was put in place. And that’s only since July of 2003.” Charles May is ecstatic.

Canmore appears in the credits for “The Edge” starring Anthony Hopkins, “Mystery Alaska” with Russell Crowe, and Snow Dogs, featuring Cuba Gooding Jr., to name a few.

Production crews for Kevin Costner’s “Open Range” and “X2” starring Halle Berry, both due in cinemas this year, also used Canmore as a service community for their projects in nearby Kananaskis and Morley.

But Hollywood is not the only production farm compelled to film in Canmore for mountain scenery and relatively low costs.

Bollywood, the Indian film industry famous for its extravagant musical scenes in exotic locations, is making more of a name for itself in Canmore, while the pilot for the U.S. television series “Everwood” was shot for more than a week in the downtown core last year.

And Mullen expects Canmore’s appeal to grow as the town develops a strategic film policy and markets itself more aggressively to the filmmaking world. “What the film policy does is it makes it clear to anybody within the film industry who’s coming into Canmore how to proceed,” Mullen says. “So we have a consistent and open approach to the film industry.”

She says Canmore has already been identified, along with Drumheller and Calgary, as a model locale for filmmaking in southern Alberta. “But we certainly want to be working stronger with those areas and the Alberta Film Commission to really put us on the map even more,” she says.

A mountainous locale is not the only resource Canmore offers to the film industry. Technical support is available through the Banff Television Foundation, located in Canmore and The Banff Centre.

“I know that the production crews that I work with through the Banff Centre have been very much into coming to Canmore and shooting,” says Pete Landry, a technician at the Banff Centre’s Creative Electronic Environment Department. “Definitely the economy is another factor, especially for American crews coming here.”

Landry is also the festival director for Canmore’s annual Seven-Minute Film Festival.

Running for its third year last September, the festival is fast becoming a forum for aspiring and independent film professionals to connect with one another and the wider industry.

Inspired by Sydney’s Trop Fest, which attracts up to 100,000 attendees watching short films in an outdoor setting, the Canmore version received 51 entries and 350 viewers at its finals in 2001, its inaugural year.

Last year the Canmore festival received 100 entries, including films from Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., and nearly 900 attendees to the finals.

“Judging by the response we definitely think there’s a niche for us here,” Landry says. “We had people from Edmonton last year... we had a lot of people from Calgary, some from BC. People love to come to the area anyway but it also brings arts and culture into Canmore. It’s kind of nice to have a burgeoning industry in Canmore and get Canmore recognized - making Canmore a destination worthy of the world’s attention.”

Landry says he hopes to stage the festival in Canmore’s Centennial Park by 2004, while simulcasting from the original location at the Drake Inn.

“[Film] is an industry that is certainly already here in Canmore but has been underutilized,” Mullen says. “The spillover from the film industry into other sectors of the community is tremendous. It certainly is growing and certainly we’re just scratching the surface so it will grow more.”