Sea 2 sea - Canadian movie production

East CoastparAs the late summer turns into early fall, the Atlantic Film Festival (AFF) rolls out the region's major film offerings. Stephen Reynold's long-awaited The Divine Ryans is set to lead the East Coast pack. Starring 22 Minutes' Mary Walsh along with British star Pete Postlethwaite, The Divine Ryans is the screen version of Wa Johnson's acclaimed novel about an eccentric early-1960's Newfoundland Catholic family. It's a wonky costume drama punctuated with earthy humour complete with some wild surrealistic touches. Producer Chris Zimmer has been gently positioning the film for almost a full year while he considers the best way to launch the quirky, general-audience film and it's presenting some of the challenges that his earlier feature, Margaret's Museum, faced. How do you sell a film that is so rooted in a specific region? As a Nova Scotia/Newfoundland coproduction that bears all the baggage of a prestige picture, much is riding on The Divine Ryans.... Allan Moyle's New Waterford Girl, from Cape Breton native Tricia Fish, will also hit the screens this fall. With a cast of (mostly) unknowns led by former brat-packer Andrew McCarthy, New Waterford Girl tells the story of a free--spirited young woman who yearns to transcend her small town Cape Breton origins.... A much-anticipated feature to be unspooled at the AFF will be Clement Virgo's One Heart Broken Into Song. The first Nova Scotia dramatic feature to be written and directed by African Canadians and sporting an almost exclusively black cast, One Heart Broken Into Song is a rich poetic and very sensual story of two young lovers who escape from rural Nova Scotia during the deepest recesses of the Depression only to find a dead end in the legendary village of Africaville. Producer William D. MacGillivray and screenwriter George Elliot Clark struggled for seven years to get the project realized. The CBC can take some of the credit. One Heart Broken will eventually be broadcast as one of the Mother Corp.'s Sunday Night Movies sometime in the fall.... A steady stream of Cancon guest stars have trooped through Halifax making cameo appearances in Rick Mercer's next 13 installments of his corrosive film-biz burlesque, Made in Canada. So far Sarah Polley and Margot Kidder have been spotted. There's no word yet whether William Shatner, Jim Carrey or Anne Murray have been booked, but with only a few more episodes to go before the end of this round of production, there aren't many guest spots left.

Ron Foley MacdonaldparMontreal

Quebec has been experiencing a tremendous boom in its film industry over the past two years. All trades in the industry are touched by this rejuvenation, from the independents to the mainstream. This summer, John Travolta brought his Battlefield: Earth to Montreal and the Saguenay region for 11 weeks. In the fall, two other major blockbusters, one starring Bruce Willis and the other Eddie Murphy, will take over our studios for six to eight weeks. But Americans are not the only ones hitting the streets. Two major Montreal-born Anglo independents also shot their own latest opuses here. Arto Paragamian (Because Why and one of the directors on Cosmos) shot his second feature, Two Thousand and None, a dark and ironic tale of life, death and memory about a dying paleontologist. In a bold coup, Paragamian and his producer, Galafilm's Arnie Gelbart, cast American John Turturro, one of today's most intense and brilliant actors, as the lead. Also starring Katherine Borowitz and Oleg Kisseliov, the film is distributed internationally by Paris-based Pandora Cinema. Fresh off the success of acclaimed TV series Da Vinci's Inquest, Montreal-born John L'Ecuyer returned to his filmmaking roots with Saint-Jude. Shot over a six-week period in Montreal, Saint-Jude tells the story of Jude, played by fresh-faced newcomer Liane Balaban, a thick-skinned, wise-beyond-her-years teenager thrown out on the streets by her father, who contemplates life through her eclectic vision of her neighbourhood's quirky inhabitants. Alongside Balaban, L'Ecuyer cast veterans Nick Campbell and Louise Portal, to bring to life this original and edgy script by Montrealer Heather O'Neill. On the francophone side, films currently in postproduction include indie Claude Demers' L'Invention de l'amour, Charles Biname's untitled latest and, of course, Denys Arcand's 15 Moments.... On a sadder note, this summer marked the passing of one of Quebec's truly great directors. When Pierre Perrault, the poet and ethnological historian of Quebec cinema, died in June, we were left with the indelible black-and-white images of the Ile-aux-Coudres fishermen from Pour la suite du monde (1963) and his remarkable vision of Northern Quebec culture, from the hunters in La Bete lumineuse (1982) to the mystical beast sought in L'Oumigmag (1993) and Cornouailles (1994). But beyond that, were left with the memory of an artist and humanist who preferred to always go his own simple way rather than buy into any system, who loved the land that he defended so well through his films and his extensive essays and literary works.

Claire Valade

Toronto

Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey opens the 24th annual Toronto International Film Festival while Jeremy Podeswa's second feature, The Five Senses, leads off this year's Perspective Canada program. Also included in the program are Lea Pool's Emporte-moi, Reginald Harkema's debut feature, A Girl is a Girl, Allan Moyle's first Canadian film in years, New Waterford Girl, John Paizs's much-anticipated Top of the Food Chain, and Mort Ransen's Touched (formerly known as Shagella.... Film and television production continues to keep the crews busy in Toronto despite the fact that Vancouver and Montreal have surpassed the city that the rest of Canada loves to hate in terms of volume of production. One of the more interesting projects is a live-action version of the very popular Marvel comic, The X Men, with Patrick Stewart (of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame) as the mysterious Dr. X who brings together a misfit band of superhero mutants to fight the evil Magneto, played by Oscar-nominated (Gods and Monsters) Ian McKellen. Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) directs.... With three of its own multiplexes in Toronto, one in Vancouver, and plans to expand to Ottawa, Edmonton and Victoria, Alliance Atlantis is slowly becoming the only Canadian-owned film producer/distributor with its own movie house chain.... As the World Wide Web becomes an integral part of the way many do business or research, several Canadian film organizations are now on the Web and provide valuable information in a sector that has been tremendously undeserved. It used to be that accurate information about the Canadian film industry was extremely difficult to find, available only to the few who knew where to look (the most reliable sources being the Cinematheque Quebecoise in Montreal and The Film Reference Library in Toronto). Now, all that has changed. The National Screen Institute has recently launched a very sophisticated and informative site (www.screentradecanada.ca) with all sorts of up--to-date stuff on the Canadian film industry; Telefilm Canada has had its own site (www.telefilm.gc.ca) for some time now; and Take One now has a site which, when finished, will have a complete archive of all its back articles in addition to the listings contained in its Essential Guide to Films & Filmmakers in Canada.

Paul TownendparWinnipeg

Two important independent features by Ontario filmmakers were shot in Winnipeg recently. Colleen (Shoemaker) Murphy's Desire, is a coproduction between Elizabeth Yake (bp: Pushing the Boundaries), Winnipeg's Buffalo Gal Pictures (The Genius of Lenny Breau) and Bloskop Film of Germany (which helped produce the films of Margarethe von Trotta and Volker Schlondorff's The Tin Drum). The film is a love story about a grade-three teacher who falls for a failed concert pianist and features German actress Katja Riemann (The Pharmacist, Bandits), Alberta Watson and Zachary Bennett. Also John (Lilies) Greyson's Law of Enclosures, written by Greyson and Dale Peck, features rising star Sarah Polley (Go, The Sweet Hereafter). Coproduced by Buffalo Gal Pictures and Damon D'Oliveira, the film is the story of a couple at the beginning of their relationship again, 40 years later.... Along with the increasing support for independents, the provincial film and television funding agency, Manitoba Film and Sound, is setting up a new fund for low-budget independent features budgeted at $500,000 or less. Alexandra Raffe, producer and former CEO of the Ontario Film Development Corp., was brought in to advise and draft the guidelines for the program. Film and Sound CEO, Carole Vivier, says the program will be in place by September.... A $7 million film and television production studio, The Prairie Production Centre, is being built on three acres of land in the west end of Winnipeg. The studio will house three sound stages and postproduction facilities and is scheduled for completion in September of 2000.... Someone to watch out for--Winnipeg filmmaker Darryl Kinaschuk. Using the stage name "Deco Dawson," this resourceful young artist has written several plays as well as shot some beautifully photographed b & w Super 8 films in a style heavily influenced by the silent cinema and German expressionism. Darryl recently won a Blizzard Award for his short film Luster and a Best Editing Award at the National Film and Video Festival in Regina. Guy Maddin has called him "the most promising artist I've encountered in Manitoba in the last 15 years." Another Winnipeg artist, Erika MacPherson, recently premiered her incredibly ambitious, lesbian-themed video Disobedience using a large film-style crew for technical support. Erika is currently writing a feature to be shot in 35mm in Iceland.

Dave BarberparThe Prairies

Productions and location trips are keeping Prairie producers reaping rewards for their talents and hot pitches. Four Square Productions anticipates its current international coproduction will take it to China and Hungary within the next year and to Israel, Rome and Saskatoon to finish up another production. Prairie Berry Pie, a musical / comedy series for kids two to five by Minds Eye Pictures and Moose Jaw Light & Power Artistic Productions has financial participation from 12 backers. Minds Eye Pictures' and Verite Films' Incredible Story Studio enters its third season of the half-hour youth-drama series. Reel Eye Media has a coproduction with Trimark for August filming in Regina Beach and Indian Head. A number of documentary programs are also in production.... SaskFilm reports that production in 1998 was $58 million and that it will be holding steady for 1999. In Alberta, an estimated 1,000 Alberta film folk from experienced crews to extras combined with "one-stop shopping" facilities are credited with attracting $199 million in production activity by the end of June. This is a rebound from 1998 when total activity was only $98.5 million.... Local and American productions are moving into hangars converted to sound stages and commercial space at CFB Studios (formerly Studio Centre). Sixteen of the 47 buildings at the former military base have been taken over by film productions while film services are housed together in Building B8. Along with the expected, such as union offices, recording studio and independent film companies, a personal trainer is also on site with a fully equipped gym. Walt Disney Productions' Honey, I Shrunk the Kids television series shoots there throughout the year while other productions come and go--Bradshaw MacLeod & Associates's Bad Faith and The Sheldon Kennedy Story, Miramax's Texas Ranger, East West Pictures' Shanghai Noon, and Paramount Pictures' Snow Day. Other productions in and around Calgary are The Virginian for the Turner Network which also has Crossfire Trail, another western, in production; the North of 60 folks are prepping their new picture Trial By Fire written by Andrew Wreggitt; and Riverwood Productions continues with the Just a Kid television series until December. In Edmonton Josh Miller's and Margaret Mardirossian's series Mentors is ongoing. The Alberta Film Commission says a number of "other shows are circling".... And speaking of things in the talking stage, the 20th Banff. Television Festival attracted nearly 2,000 TV producers, writers and broadcasters from around the world. The top winner was Amongst Women, produced by Parallel Films for BBC Northern Ireland. The same production also took the Air Canada Grand Prize. Martin Short accepted the Sir Peter Ustinov Comedy Network Award with sharp quips and one heartfelt comment about the significance of "recognition from home." Amen!

Tim ChristisonparWest Coast

A talk with Canadian Images programmer Ken Anderlini at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) leads one to believe that Western Canadian and indigenous B.C. filmmaking are in the throes of a production boom. Referring to Sheila Copps's film production proposals, Anderlini notes, "The films are there. Where added impetus is needed is on the distribution and exhibition fronts. So many films that deserve a shot will never make it on to Canadian screens." Local features at the festival will reach an all-time high this year with at least eight so far confirmed (with many more still to be seen) as we go to press. These include: Marc Retailleau's Noroc, notable for being the first North American feature to adhere to the "Dogma 95" principles espoused by the likes of Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg; the Christine Haebler-produced A Girl is a Girl from Bruce McDonald's longtime editor, Reg Harkema; Mort Ransen's follow-up to Margaret's Museum, Touched, is also set to bow. Ransen and Raymond Massey have also produced My Father's Angel (a.k.a. West of Sarajevo), a deeply moving story of Muslim refugees from Sarajevo trying to carve out a life for themselves here on the coast. Longtime local filmmaker Oliver Hockenhull will bring his latest documentary, Building Heaven, Remembering Earth: Confessions of a Fallen Architect, to the festival while other locals presenting features will be Scott Smith (rollercoaster), Ryan Bonder (Day Drift) and Ross Weber (No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed). Alberta will be repped by The Suburbanators and Kitchen Party-producer John Hazlett's directorial debut, Bad Money, while Winnipeg's Terrance Odette will bring Heater to the coast.... With many of the features mentioned using the digital video format, it is no surprise that one of the hottest panels at the VIFF's Trade Forum promises to be "The Revolution in Filmmaking," featuring Dan Myrick, director of The Blair Witch Project, Bennet Miller, director of The Cruise, Todd Verow, director of Shucking the Curve and the aforementioned Marc Retailleau, all of whom will give local filmmakers the benefit of their experience with this most democratic of production formats ... Finally, as the summer sun beats down--at last!--Vancouver crews are working at a ferocious pace. Having reached the billion-dollar mark for the first time last year, the local industry looks likely to repeat that feat given the sheer volume of features, TV movies and series currently shooting. One local DOP told me that there is so much work that crews are short-staffed--he had to film a five-camera explosion without the benefit of a single trained focus puller--while a production designer friend had four films offered to him within four days.

Jack Vermee

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