The Montreal World Film Festival's blog

The 36th Montreal World Film Festival announces that it will honour Mel Hoppenheim with its Grand Prize of the Americas. "There are few men in our cinema with the Mel Hoppenheim's stature," declared MWFF president Serge Losique. "He is among the men most responsible for the concrete development of Quebec and Canadian film industries. As a builder and entrepreneur but also as a generous philanthropist, Mel was a prime mover in the establishment of a true domestic film industry."

Born in Montreal in 1937, Mel Hoppenheim grew up in humble surroundings on St. Urbain street, but never let the milieu limit his horizons. Mel Hoppenheim founded Panavision (Canada) in 1965 to provide cameras and other shooting equipment, to among others, such pioneers as Jean-Pierre Lefebvre and Roger Frappier. Before long Mel moved his company into the offices of Bellevue Pathé where Harold Greenberg became his mentor.
Mel was soon traveling all over the world to equip ever more elaborate productions. A Toronto facility was established in 1972 and a Vancouver facility followed in 1977. Always committed to what he saw as Montreal's vast and largely untapped potential and possibility for the production industry, in 1988 Mel acquired the historic Expo Theatre in Cité du Havre. Building five state-of-the-art studios, he soon had created the most modern of facilities available to the Canadian film and television industry. Mel's Cité du Cinéma was born.
In 1997, Mel donated $1 million to Montreal's Concordia University, which was subsequently used to open the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. Mel and his partners have also helped in the development of the Institut national de l'image et du son (INIS), a school for the development of writers, directors and producers for film and television.
Together with his partner, Michel Trudel, Mel expanded the Cité du Cinéma's facilities with a second set of studios, enlarged again in 2002, which have attracted some of the biggest Hollywood films and other foreign productions to be shot in Montreal.

In 2010, Mel received an honorary Genie Award for his contribution to Canadian cinema. He is also the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Concordia University.

The Montreal World Film Festival will be held August 23 to September 3, 2012.