Shostak joins La Fête

Montreal distributor La Fête has beefed up its management team by hiring Murray Shostak for the newly created position of senior vice president of corporate development, and promoting Xiao Juan Zhou to vice president of distribution.

A thirty year veteran of the entertainment business, Shostak's list of credits includes international co-productions, movies-of-the-week for CBS, features for Universal and 20th Century Fox, plus award-winning animation.

With partner Gerald Potterton, he founded Potterton Productions and together they produced a series of feature films including part of the Beatles' classic toon Yellow Submarine, regular segments for Sesame Street and animated specials for television such as Oscar-nominated The Selfish Giant.

He also established Universal Productions Canada, wholly owned by MCA, and became its ceo.

At La Fête, Shostak's responsibilities will include exploring new corporate growth opportunities, new affiliations, joint ventures, financing opportunities as well as overseeing some in-house projects and developing projects for the international market.

Shostak will also head up a major project he developed called Equestrian Planet, a new digital television network which will now become part of La Fête.

Xiao Juan Zhou's promotion is effective immediately, following the exit of Jean Vézina, who left the company to pursue other professional goals.

Zhou started her career as international sales and acquisitions executive at the China Film Export/Import Corporation in 1990. She has been with La Fête since January 1998, and specialized in selling to the Asian territories.

In her new position, Zhou will oversee the international exploitation of La Fête's 1000+ hours of programming.