Steeped in a heritage rich and rife with storytelling and yarn-spinning, the indigenous production industry in Atlantic Canada could hardly avoid turning the cameras on itself – there’s just so much to say. But as the sector expands and producers grow less content with working within the region’s boundaries, the onus shifts to producing projects with longer legs.

‘Next to being able to consolidate regional financing bases, the next priority for producers is wanting to internationalize their projects,’ says Ralph Holt at Telefilm Canada’s Halifax office.

John Doyle, president of the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Co-op, sees a maturation of the production community and a desire to take on larger and perhaps more marketable projects, which aren’t necessarily built around themes unique to the region.

‘A lot of the senior membership are looking to make features, miniseries, tv series,’ says Doyle. ‘There’s a sense that there’s been a long period of development. The co-op is 20 years old now, the time is ripe. The experience is there and we hope it will just take a couple of indigenous features to get the momentum going.’

Ken Pittman of Red Ochre Productions, St. John’s, hopes that, if all goes as planned, he’ll be shooting a feature in the province in August. Great Heart, a piece based on Labrador as treated in the 1980s New England novel of the same name, would be a collaboration with Silver Productions of Boston. Budgeted in the $2.5 million range, Pittman says he wouldn’t rule out a third production partner on the project.

Pittman is also developing a script of his own, which was read at the recent Hollywood North symposium, a Canadian Screenwriters Alliance event tied into the Atlantic Film and Television Conference.

Making Love in St. Pierre is the story of a fisherman and his fiancee who find themselves on the French island off Newfoundland contemplating their marriage plans in light of the cod moratorium. Pittman is carefully looking for a partner to distribute what he plans to be a low-budget feature. ‘I want to do it right, but I want to keep the budget on the scale of the story.’

As for ‘internationalizing,’ Leslie Ann Patten of Nova Scotia’s Great Eastern Cine Productions is currently producing a performance film about the legendary Tibetan warrior, King Gesar. Warrior Songs: King Gesar features operatic narrator Omar Ebrahim and musicians Emanuel Ax, Yo Yo Ma and Peter Serkin performing compositions by Peter Lieberson. Intercut with the performances, dramatic enactments tell Gesar’s story from his youth.

A duo from New Brunswick filled the roles of director and dop. Renee Blanchar, a member of the Grand Jury at the 42nd Cannes Film Festival, directed while her husband, Didier Maisgret, was behind the camera. Warrior Songs will air on Bravo! in the fall, coinciding with the release of a book on the Gesar legend and a Sony Classical cd release of the performances.

Financing for the film, executive produced by Tom Perlmutter of Toronto’s Barna-Alper and coproduced by Cecile Chevrier of New Brunswick’s Phare-Est Productions, came from Bravo!, Vision tv, cfcf-12 in Montreal, Telefilm Canada, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, Film NB and the National Film Board.

The nfb’s Documentary East has four projects in various stages of completion, including Warrior Songs. Prince Edward Island filmmaker Donna Davies is in preproduction on Kitchen Goddess, a film about the hidden culture of fortune tellers in the Celtic heritage. And in Newfoundland, Anita McGee is in preproduction on Seven Brides for Uncle Sam, a documentary about seven Newfoundland women and their love affairs with u.s. servicemen during the war years.

The fourth project – a one-hour documentary from Halifax director Peter d’Entremont – is now in post. The film, tentatively titled Bronwen & Yaffa, follows two teenagers as they try to organize an anti-racism event. ‘It’s a film about what the anti-racism movement has accomplished,’ says d’Entremont.

D’Entremont’s company, Triad Film Productions, will begin working on an hour on Cyrus Eaton for the cbc biography series in August. Eaton, a native Nova Scotian, was the inspiration behind the Pugwash Movement. Triad is also developing a feature doc about Canadian poets titled Various Persons Named Alden Nowlan. Brian Nowlan will direct and Vision tv and the nfb are on board.

Documentaries are also the order of the day at New Brunswick’s Productions 166 Acadie. Well on the way to completing Cuisine d’Ici, Culture d’Ici, a film about the relationship between food and culture, Shirley de Silva and Elio Pereira have begun development on Tintamarre. The film, which will be shot in the village of Caraquet, n.b., explores the tradition of the tintamarre, an Acadian noise-making celebration that takes place in August. Produced with a grant from the New Brunswick Department of Municipalities, Culture and Housing, de Silva says two broadcasters have shown interest in the project.

The Screen Star Group of New Brunswick, owned by Tony Foster, Jerry Arbeid and Richard Zurawski, is working on three one-hour docs for Discovery Canada called Oceans. With a budget of $1 million, the three hours are slated for delivery in September.

Evangeline, a three-part miniseries based on the classic Wordsworth poem, is in negotiations for final funding. The project, a $6-$8 million love story built around historical events, has support from Acadian federations in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Louisiana. Zurawski says he is in discussions with Canadian and u.s. networks and hopes to cast an American star for the lead. Ideally, shooting would begin late this summer in Nova Scotia, Louisiana and the Caribbean.

The company is also working on 13 half-hour docs on the world’s catastrophic extinctions.

Back in the hub of Supercity, the Halifax/Dartmouth area where city council recently declared a Tug Day, Cochran Entertainment recently completed the 100th episode of Theodore Tugboat and is looking at handling its own licensing for a line of merchandise. The company is also working on a second season of Life on the Internet for Discovery Canada and pbs.

New on the slate for Cochran is Pit Pony, a family movie for cbc based on the book by Nova Scotian author Joyce Barkhouse. President Andrew Cochran says the budget is in the $2-$3 million range and a presale in Germany has been secured. The feature, about an 11-year-old and his Sable Island pony, could be set to shoot in the spring.

For Discovery Canada and Germany’s zdf, the company is producing an hour on the Oak Island Mystery, a mysterious, sophisticated and booby-trapped underground structure believed to be hundreds of years old. The hour will be one episode of a six-part series.

Also for Discovery, Cochran is working on an hour about Chris Hadfield, nasa’s first Canadian mission specialist and the first Canadian to operate the CanadArm. Directed by Rae Hull and written and narrated by Robert Duncan, the hour is a sequel to Space For Four, a previous Cochran production about the astronaut selection process.

Citadel Productions, which recently formed an arm called Topsail Entertainment to handle film and tv production, leaving Halifax-based Citadel with the corporate and industrial work, is coproducing Black Harbour, the 13-episode series from Barbara Samuels and Wayne Grigsby for cbc. Budgeted in the area of $12.5 million for 13 episodes, the series is expected to begin shooting in August for delivery mid-November.

Also on the slate is a comedy pilot/special coproduction for cbc. The Playground features local comic Bette Macdonald and her brother Ed, one of the writers behind This Hour Has 22 Minutes. ‘It’s character-driven comedy, in the vein of Carol Burnett,’ says Citadel president Barry Cowling. The pilot will be produced by Mike Volpe and shooting is expected to start in Cape Breton in late August.

Chris Zimmer of Halifax’s Imagex will be heading to London in August to post Love & Death on Long Island, which wrapped at the end of May. Starring John Hurt and Jason Priestley in a screenplay written by Gilbert Adair and directed by Richard Kweitniowski, the picture was a coproduction between Imagex and Skyline Films of the u.k. The two companies also collaborated on Margaret’s Museum.

Imagex may have another feature in production this fall, but first up is Divine Ryans, which will shoot in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Based on Wayne Johnston’s novel, a black comedy about a child’s view of his eccentric St. John’s family, Zimmer says it’s a look at ‘sex, politics, death and hockey.’ Coproduction negotiations are underway with two u.k. companies and Zimmer expects the budget to run about $4 million.

Also in development is a youth-oriented animation series with an unnamed Irish company. Based on a comic book about an evil dwarf, each of the expected 13 episodes would run about $350,000.

As for the other major Halifax player, Salter Street has the first four episodes of Lexx in the can for Citytv and is working on the second season of the children’s series Works. Thirteen episodes of Emily, a series based on the work of Lucy Maud Montgomery and coproduced with Cinar of Montreal, is expected to go into production in August. Locations have been scouted in both Nova Scotia and p