Long-term planning and an organizational development strategy for the Mountain View Regional Film Office is being supported by a $50,000 grant from the province of Alberta.
The grant funding is through the Northern and Regional Economic Development (N-RED) program.
Jonathan Allan, Economic Development Officer with the Town of Sundre, says they are super appreciative of Alberta’s government for supporting the province’s first rural film office and they look forward to continuing to promote this region as one of the premier destinations for filming in Alberta. He says “We need to determine what were are going to look like as we move forward. Currently, the film office operates as a sort of marketing device where we use our website as our biggest tool. Of course, the website features a collection of resources, cast and crew directory, and locations. However, we would like to be able to make the film office and the funding for promoting it self sustaining, as opposed to using tax dollars. So we need to come up with a strategy that will create a plan toward how we do that, as well as extra objectives like an eventual film festival. This $50,000 will allow us to hire a qualified consultant and they will work with us to make the development of our organization happen.”
A media release notes that the grant is being awarded to the Town of Sundre on behalf of the Mountain View Regional Film Office, but all three founding communities – including the Town of Didsbury, and Mountain View County – are contributing to the project.
According to Allan, there is going to be an independent TV series coming to film in the Sundre area on May 19th. He believes it can be found on Apple. Allan says “Abracadavers is going to be filming at least, I think, one episode out of their third season in the Sundre area. So we are excited about that because it represents yet another film production in our community, which prior to the existence of the film office it was very rare to have film productions come to our area. We are very eager to welcome the producers for Abracadavers.”
The film office was launched in May of last year and it recently was presented with a trophy for the best Innovative Approach to Economic Development Project in the small community category. The honours were presented in Kananaskis at the Economic Developers Alberta Xperience 2024 Leaders’ Summit & Conference. Previously, the Mountain View Regional Film Office had picked up a pair of national economic development awards in autumn of 2023.