The City of St. John’s Council. Photo lifted from Shannie Duff’s website.

The City of St. John’s has just launched a program called Next Up! to inspire youth to participate in city politics. The program places people aged 19 to 35 on the City’s Advisory committees. Now, the people chosen to sit on these committees are referred to as “Nexters” in City press releases, but you can look past that hipster lingo, right?

Anyway, only one person has applied to sit on the Arts Advisory Committee as part of the Next Up! program. Gah! If you’re interested, or you know someone who is interested, have a look here. They’re happy to accept late applications, especially for the Arts Advisory Council.

No, really, you should. Ingrid Veninger – yep, that’s her – was just Tweeting from the Toronto conference, and it looks like Telefilm has a lot on the go that people in the industry should know about. (Ingrid’s tweets from the conference are posted below.)

Ruth Lawrence is going. Here’s why: “This consultation is a great way to learn from established filmmakers and a major funder. It sounds like a great opportunity- a creative exchange of ideas where Telefilm would say what they are interested in funding and filmmakers would say what they are interested in creating. But unless a wide range of people from the industry are there to contribute, that exchange will be limited. It’s very important now for local creators to have a voice in shaping our industry’s future and to encourage Telefilm’s contribution within it.”

The St. John’s Telefilm Canada Industry Information Meeting is taking place on January 30th, at 3:00 pm, at the Sheraton Hotel. You need to secure your spot, preferably today, by contacting Helene Comstock at helene.comstock@telefilm.ca, (902) 426-8425 x2710 or 1-800-565-1773. More information about the sessions can be found here.

Here are Ingrid’s tweets, from her Twitter feed @punkfilmsnow:

Toronto @Telefilm_Canada Industry Conference is kicked-off by Anne Frank. Lots of producers in the crowd.

Michel Pradier has the mic now. @Telefilm_Canada wants to be less bureaucratic. Talking ‘new success index’ now #profilms

Allowing 1 applic per co/year. Revising eligibility-must have produced at least 1 feature in last 5 years. Want diversity #profilms

Focusing on revamping development @Telefilm_Canada currently 10 Dev. programs currently cost 1.5M to administer/year #profilms

Focussing on track records @Telefilm_Canada will remove creative content analysis & no development deadlines #profilms

Development is moving to envelope system: if co. made 1-2 films in last 5 years could be eligible for 75,000… #profilms

Opening floor for Q&A #profilms 1st question is what about exceptions for TV producers w feature projects in Dev? #profilms

Dave Forget answers Q’s & says guidelines will be out early Feb and in effect April. Docs not eligible for Dev. Slate funding #profilms

#profilms plans to respond to new guidelines in writing early next week @Telefilm_Canada says ok & says there have been extensive consults.

@Telefilm_Canada Not able to confirm Ontario allocation today #profilms

Benchmarks to calculate theatrical are generous. If features hit big screen co. is eligible. Box office $ will affect ranking

Talking about Micro-Budget now @Telefilm_Canada to support next generation. $100-$120k/project (max.) #profilms

Talking ‘Industry Promotion’ Program. One applic. per co./year. Will absorb current Alt. Distribution Fund #profilms

Other news ‘recoupable advance removes @Telefilm_Canada as participant in copyright ownership’ #profilms

The goal is to develop a portfolio that @Telefilm_Canada will ultimately want to fund in production #profilms

Ontario presentation just wrapped. If @Telefilm_Canada is doing this in a city near you -GO! And ask questions #profilms

You’re almost out of time to submit your films to the 2012 Nickel Independent Film Festival – the deadline is Sunday, February 19th. We caught up with festival founder, filmmaker and novelist Roger Maunder to ask him what inspired the Nickel.

So, hey, you founded the Nickel Film Festival, huh?
Mm hm.

Rumour has it that you started it in response to perhaps a bit of er… well, in response to the, uh, St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival. Being a man and all.
[Laughs] It was more that I was a filmmaker here in St. Johns and the only way I could show my work was by having it screen in a bar or at the LSPU Hall. With the Women’s Film festival, it’s for films that women have produced, directed or wrote. Myself, a man that was writing and producing and directing my own work, and a lot of my other filmmaker friends didn’t fall under that. So I felt that there was a void there, and I created the Nickel

So, it’s not because of the Women’s Film Fest… well, I suppose it is, in a way. [Laughs again]

What are you working on these days?
I stepped away from the Nickel a couple of years ago; I wanted to make films again and I found that, especially for the first couple of years, the Nickel took up all of my time and took me away from the reason that I created it.

Right now, I have two features that are in development, Mundy Pond and Sweet Cove, and I’m developping a television series with my partner, Colleen Power, called Downtown Freaks.

Odds are, your first drinking receptacle was attached to some form of nipple, which you suckled on for many a dozy, bliss-filled month. Eventually, you were upgraded to the sippy cup – a marvel of engineering, and a sheer joy to use. The drinking experience, 2.0. Beverage consumption, perfected.

Why on earth we ever saw fit to move past the sippy cup and on to glasses and mugs is beyond me. I mean that. I just don’t get it.

My grasp of the concept breaks down even further when I consider how inconvenient the common coffee-to-go cup is. The lid has about a 50/50 chance of creating any sort of seal with the cup, often resulting in scalding coffee tears pouring down over your fingers. Try as you might to adjust that lid, your efforts only ever make the situation worse.

Then you’ve got the drinking slit, which can turn your hot beverage into a hot geyser springing forth from the cup holder of your car upon even the most subtle application of the brakes.

What’s a coffee-loving citizen to do?

Travel mugs help overcome these obstacles to good clean coffee enjoyment, but they present their own set of problems, such as complicated drinking mechanisms, cumbersome cleaning requirements, incompatibility with espresso machines requiring the dirtying of another cup (thus negating their supposed environment friendliness), and ugliness to name a few.

Thanks be to Australia that something has finally been done to rectify this whole messy situation and make coffee drinking on the go the delight it ought to be, and then some.

Behold (next to its less evolved ancestor, the to-go cup), the Keep Cup.

Or as I like to call it, the sippy cup 2.0.

I’ve been using the Keep Cup for just over a week now, and I’m convinced there’s no going back. I liken it to the time I switched from Windows PC to my first Mac – oh, so you mean I can just use my computer to do things? How novel!

Unlike other to-go cups, with the Keep Cup, there’s no asking your coffee if you can enjoy it, working around an unwieldy receptacle in the process. You simply carry, drink and enjoy.

That enjoyment carries over to the barista crafting your beverage, too. The cup was designed to fit into the espresso making process, so the person serving you your coffee will always be happy to see you coming with your Keep Cup in hand.

The cup is made of plastic (32 uses later and you break even with the environment – every use thereafter makes you a hero for the day), making it lightweight and virtually indestructible. The only moving part is the doohickey at the top which slides over to seal the drinking slit for times when you might foresee a momentum-endused spill.

It’s by no means a thermos — in my experience the Keep Cup offers just about the same level of thermal beverage protection as your standard to-go cup. If there’s any difference, it appears to me to be nominal.

But the real joy of this thing is in the drinking. The packaging touts the Keep Cup’s “pleasing surface and shape to drink from,” but that’s just marketing department safe-talk for it’s like a sippy cup for grownups!

You can get your own sippy cup – I mean, Keep Cup – at Post Espresso Bar on Water Street. They come in a whole range of totally rad colours, and cost a totally reasonable $16.

Happy sipping!

Hawks eye view as the place quickly fills up.