Filmmakers with features in the Toronto International Film Festival’s Perspective Canada lineup are going to be mighty busy over the next couple of weeks, but that is only half the picture. While these talents are being run ragged at screenings and barraged by interviews, a multiplicity of new projects are being put on hold. Here is a glimpse of what the filmmakers, who are based in Ontario, are working on these days.

– Rude director/writer and coproducer Clement Virgo is developing his award-winning short Save My Lost Nigga Soul into a feature titled Tracks, with Rude coproducer Damon D’Oliveira producing.

The duo is also working on a feature called Full Frontal Nudity, a film Virgo has wanted to write for a couple of years, about a day in the life of a disintegrating city.

Virgo is also writing a film with Cameron Bailey based on the Virginia Hamilton book, The Planet of Junior Brown.

Rude coproducer Karen A. King will be busy in the fall with her new baby (literally), but she says she will still have the time to shop for scripts.

– Soul Survivor director/writer Stephen Williams has just finished directing some episodic tv for the cbc series Liberty Street and is heading out West in October to direct one episode of the WIC Western International Communications series Madison.

After that, he says, ‘I’m going to stop doing episodic tv and go back to writing and working on developing two features.’

In the latter stages of development is a sequel to The Harder They Come, a Caribbean cult classic. Williams is cowriting the tale of Jimmy Cliff 20 years later with original writer Perry Henzell. Cliff, now in his forties, plays himself once again, this time coming out of jail to find what Williams calls ‘a Jamaica 20 times meaner and 20 times harder.’

Survivor producer Paul Brown of Miracle Pictures is producing, and Williams says it will likely be a coproduction. Plans are to shoot on location in the spring of ’96.

taboo is a feature script Williams is writing that revolves around a number of relationships and an after-hours club. ‘It tells a story of seduction and betrayal and kinky sex,’ he says. Brown is again producing, and Williams says the ideal scenario would be to shoot this feature directly after The Harder They Come.

– John L’Ecuyer, director/writer on both Curtis’s Charm and Use Once and Destroy, has a narrative feature and a feature doc in the works.

The feature, produced by Curtis’s producer Sandra Cunningham, and titled The Horror of My Soul, is an amalgamation of three scripts L’Ecuyer wrote in the summer of 1994 when he scripted Curtis’s Charm.

It’s still in early stages and he says he needs ‘a couple weeks of quiet’ in order to settle some fundamental points of the narrative, so he doesn’t want to talk storyline. He is looking to explore narrative structures. ‘I want to do something a little more nonlinear, and I’m interested in seeing what my capacities are now that I’ve grown a little through the experience of my first feature.’

L’Ecuyer is also writing and planning to direct Confessions of a Rabid Dog, a feature documentary for tvontario’s doc strand The View From Here, with Julia Sereny producing. He describes it as ‘a very different offbeat take on heroin addicts’ in Montreal and Toronto.

An ex-junkie himself, L’Ecuyer is interested in creating a film of some ‘poetic understanding’ that examines what attracts people to heroin and keeps them on the streets. ‘There is a certain kind of fascination and an artistic current that excites people,’ he says.

He also wants to make a short documentary about a visit to Missouri to talk with William Burroughs, but he doesn’t see much hope of getting it financed.

– Blood & Donuts director Holly Dale is teamed up once again with her longtime documentary partner Janis Cole (P4W, Hookers on Davie) on one mow and one feature. Dale is directing Dangerous Offender, a cbc mow written by Cole and based on the true story of Marlene Moore, once declared the most dangerous offender in Canada. Cole and Dale met Moore in the early ’80s when they were making P4W. ‘Then she came into our lives,’ says Dale.

Stage actor Brooke Johnson plays Moore in her first leading role on the screen. Shooting starts Sept. 24 and continues for four weeks in Toronto.

cbc’s Bonnie Seigel is producing, and Dale says without the help of cbc exec Jim Burt the film would not have been made.

Also in the works is a long-term labor of love, Guy’s Story, an experimental documentary feature that deals with the subject of aids. Production has been underway for a couple of years and plans are to have it done in early 1996.

First up for Blood & Donuts producer Steve Hoban is a gig line producing an imax Solido 3D animated film for the new Omnimax screens. It’s untitled at the moment and Hoban’s lips are sealed about the scenario, except to say it’s a comedy and it takes place in different dimensions. ‘It’s not your standard animated tale, it’s going to be mind-blowing,’ he says.

Roman Kroitor is producing and the search has started for animators, a writer and a director for the 35-minute piece.

Owls in the Family, based on the Farley Mowat book, is a family adventure feature Hoban is developing with writer Brian Morey (who did some story work on Blood & Donuts). The tale of a young Saskatchewan boy and the two orphaned owls he brings home is at the first draft stage.

Hoban is aware that producing a family entertainment feature is a bit of a rarity in this country. ‘It is an indication of how stupid most Canadian producers are,’ he says. ‘It’s one of the only genres you can have a stab at an international hit without a major star and all the added costs.’

The feature he is developing with Claire Ross Dunn about Elizabeth Smart is still deep in development.

– House director Laurie Lynd is working on the third draft of a musical feature called Move Over Moon, with an original score by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. It’s a romance about a young girl coming of age in contemporary Canada.

Development continues on the mow Bad Boy for cbc, with Kim Todd and Winnipeg’s Credo Group producing. House writer Daniel MacIvor is writing the screenplay based on the novel by Diana Weiler and Lynd is directing.

The story is about two teenage boys, best pals on the hockey team. One of them is gay, and when he comes out to his friend, there are repercussions to their friendship. It’s at the treatment stage.

Last but not least, Lynd is at the second draft stage of Persuasion, a gay romance set against the gay political climate of the ’70s and ’80s which he plans to direct.

House producer Karen Lee Hall is in development on Squawk Box, the Salter Street series created by John May for ytv. Hall will be line producer once the series is rolling – either this fall or next spring, depending on financing.

Hall also has three features – all with writer/directors – that she hopes to produce through her company, Water Pictures. The projects are all in preliminary stages of development and she says it’s too soon to discuss details. What she will say is that she and Lynd are in discussion on a number of properties and she is working with Canadian Film Centre graduate Brendan Smith on his first feature.

– Skin Deep director Midi Onodera and coproducer Mehernaz Lentin are developing a second feature called Dead Love. The dark comedy set in the dawn of the new millennium is at the first draft stage.

Harriet hits T.O. in Oct.

In other production news, Paramount Pictures has a feature prepping in Toronto with plans to start shooting Oct. 3 and continuing for nine weeks. Remember the bespectacled little girl who spied on her friends and neighbors, recorded her juicy findings, and was discovered to be none other than an insatiable sleuth?

Harriet the Spy, based on the children’s book by Louise Fitz Hugh, is being produced by the Mariette in Ecstasy team of Nava Levin and MaryKay Powell for Paramount.

Directing is commercial director Bronwen Hughes, who divides her time between Toronto and New York and will join the Directors Guild of Canada when she directs this picture.

Production designer is Lester Cohen and production manager is Brian Parker. Neither the dop nor any cast has yet been signed, although Parker reports ‘a zillion’ casting agents working on the job in the States and Ross Clydesdale working up here.

Lyddie heads West

Word is Lyddie, The Film Works mow for cbc, is heading to shoot in Saskatchewan instead of Toronto because of the Ontario Film Development Corporation freeze. The $3.1 million mow starts rolling Oct. 10. Also caught in the funding freeze is the six-part $1.4 million series for tvo, On My Mind. The Filmworks moved it to Saskatchewan earlier this summer.

Providence pushed back

Providence, the Barryman Films feature that was supposed to go to camera Sept. 25, has been pushed back to Nov. 1. The Canadian feature, which is part ancient chop suey, part contemporary romance, will shoot for five weeks. Allan Levine is line producer, John Caliendo is producing, director is David Rotenberg, casting agent is Jon Cumerford and dop is Rudy Blahacek.

Love Letters lost?

Love Letters, the much-anticipated Marstar Entertainment feature for Universal which was headed for Toronto later this fall and featured Hollywood veteran director Stanley Donan, has gone down for the time being. Word up here is the new regime at Universal was not keen on the project.