Three people from the film and TV sector with connections to Sudbury — Mark Montefiore, Tammy Frick and Reynold Mastin — garnered a spot in a national newspaper’s list of the 25 Most Influential People in Canadian Television.
The list was created by the Globe and Mail, in advance of the Canadian Screen Awards on April 23. The newspaper describes the list as a roundup of “the gatekeepers and the ground-level instigators, the power players and scrappy provocateurs.”
It states that they are “starting conversations, making waves, provoking change and not always earning friends along the way.”
Tammy Frick is the former executive director of Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival (1995 to 2022) and in late 2022, was appointed as CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. As an associate director of Cultural Industries Ontario North in 2019, she won an award from the Toronto chapter of Women in Film and Television International in honour of her achievements in the film industry.
Sunday’s awards ceremony will be in her hands, quite a feat for the first big celebration since the pandemic. Not only did she secure Samantha Bee as the host, but she created genderless acting categories for all upcoming screen awards.
Mark Montefiore runs New Metric Media and if you love Letterkenny or Shoresy (or both!) it’s thanks in part to his work. Both shows are, of course, filmed in Sudbury.
Letterkenny began as a web series on YouTube and as president of New Metric, Montefiiore help turn the web series into an award-winning comedy with 12 seasons and an international following — not to mention the slew of merchandising, including Puppers Golden Lager from Stack Brewing of Sudbury.
Now working on a second season of Shoresy, Montefiore and New Metric Media are currently working on the second season of Kurt Smeaton’s Children Ruin Everything. A show about two parents struggling to hold onto their identities while raising their two young children, it is currently up for six Canadian Screen Awards.
Reynolds Mastin, meanwhile, is the president and CEO of the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA), He is also the son of lawyer Arthur "Rennie" Mastin and his wife, Lynne. The elder Mastin started his law career in Sudbury, where he met his future wife, who worked in the firm and was from Creighton Mine. The elder Mastin lived an interesting life, which you can read out in this piece from the Manitoulin Expositor.
As head of the CMPA, the younger Mastin is leading the industry charge against Bill C-11. Ostensibly, the act aims to modernize copyright law in Canada, but has run afoul of those in some creative industries. The Globe article calls Mastin the industry's "top general" in the fight over C-11. The reason, there is concern the bill would create a system that would allow foreign streaming services to "such as Netflix and Disney+ to get away with investing less in Canada’s creative industries than domestic production companies, undermining the entire point of the bill," the article states.
Editor's note: Originally, the story only listed two connections but has been updated to include Reynolds Mastin after Sudbury.com was informed of his connection to Sudbury.