Canada’s west has long been an attraction and a challenge for filmmakers since 1919 when Alberta’s Lesser Slave Lake provided the beautifully cruel backdrop for Nell Shipman’s Back to God’s Country, and the bitter climate proved too much for even a swaggering leading man (who died of pneumonia during the shoot).

Now Prairie producers are bringing sweeping productions back to the region; productions that are less about landscape and more about the industry of filmmakers who are attracting national and international partners and assembling big-budget, infrastructure-building, high-profile shoots.

Minds Eye’s The Lost Daughter

The Lost Daughter is the largest production to date from Regina’s Minds Eye Pictures, which is producing the $8.4 million, four-hour miniseries with Swiss partner Condor Films.

The project was inspired by the strange events of 1994 when over 50 members of the so-called Solar Temple cult participated in a murder/suicide spree in Quebec and Switzerland. Big tv gun Richard Chamberlain (The Thorn Birds, Shogun) plays the lead character whose daughter, portrayed by Montreal actress Claire Sims, is absorbed into the religious sect.

Lost Daughter began shooting July 12 in Zurich, moved to Regina in mid-August, and will end in October with a week of production in Montreal.

The project is the culmination of an ongoing relationship between Minds Eye ceo Kevin DeWalt and Condor president Peter Christian Fueter, who met 10 years ago when they both served on the board of directors of International Quorum, a worldwide organization of producers.

DeWalt says The Lost Daughter provided Fueter valuable insight into the regulations and complexities of Canadian coproduction. He says while many European producers deal with one financier, there are typically six or seven parties involved in financing a Canadian production – with a commensurate amount of legal work.

Financing partners on The Lost Daughter include Saskfilm, Germany’s SAT.1 TV Network, Westcom, WIC Western International Communications, Allarcom Television (Superchannel), Telefilm Canada and the Cable Production Fund. The project is also backed by Regina-based Evergreen Releasing, the newly created distribution company headed by DeWalt and Victor Solnicki of Toronto-based The Film Works. ‘Evergreen represents a milestone for us, an opportunity to have a direct link to the market,’ says DeWalt.

DeWalt says the project has capped the best year ever for Minds Eye and Saskatchewan production in general, production which he says has outgrown the capacity of Saskfilm. He says industry production has nearly doubled every year for the last three years, but it does not follow that it has developed to a point where a film corporation is unnecessary.

With less money available, DeWalt says Saskatchewan producers like those everywhere are evolving as coproducers.

Arrow takes flight in Manitoba

The Arrow, a four-hour, $7.8 million miniseries, was initiated in Toronto by The Film Works and Mary Young Leckie’s Tapestry Films and brought to Manitoba for a summer shoot.

Arrow executive producer Solnicki says the project was originally set to shoot in Ontario, but when it came to putting financing together, discussions were undertaken with producers from elsewhere in Canada and a partnership with Winnipeg’s John Aaron Productions was struck.

The miniseries, which tells of the legend of the ill-fated Avro Arrow fighter plane and stars Dan Aykroyd, was a huge challenge in terms of scope and tight timelines, says Aaron executive producer Jack Clements. Clements says John Aaron was approached with the project in January, shooting began June 12 and wrapped in mid-August for delivery to cbc in January 1997. John Gajdecki Visual Effects in Toronto was called on for cg assistance in bringing the Arrow back in all its unexploited glory.

Solnicki says the project was met with great enthusiasm by an excellent Manitoba crew and by Manitoba Film and Sound, which he says provided substantial funding and support for the production. Clements attests to the tight crew situation in Manitoba and says producers are constantly aware of crew availability and production overlap.

The Arrow is John Aaron Productions’ first coproduction with a private company, an arrangement Clements says is becoming increasingly necessary in order to complete big projects.

The project was assembled in association with the cbc, with the participation of Telefilm, the cpf, Manitoba Film and Sound and wic.

Solnicki says The Arrow, distributed by Norstar, is selling well across Europe and Australia and is generating high interest from the u.s.

Naparima’s unique partnership

Edmonton-based Great North Productions is also gearing up for its own major miniseries production, Voyage of the Naparima. The $8.5 million project, which tells the story of the Irish emigration to Canada following the famine in Ireland in the mid-1800s, is a coproduction with Fand Productions of Ireland and Montreal-based Les Productions La Fete.

Shooting will begin in Ireland in March 1997 and will move to Quebec in May.

Great North head Andy Thomson says a Quebec partner was brought into the picture with the closure this spring of provincial funding agency the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation and the loss of the Ontario Film Investment Program.

The Canadian half of the project’s financing picture now consists of Telefilm, sodec, the Quebec tax credit, the federal tax credit, the Cable Production Fund and a distribution guarantee from Atlantis. Broadcaster CanWest came on board during this year’s Banff Television Festival after the original broadcaster, ctv, bowed out. Ireland’s rte is also on board.

Thomson, an active supporter of the Alberta film industry, says while the industry is bustling, government initiatives are still important. ‘If the industry is doing well, the government tends to think that support isn’t necessary. And if that happens we’ll continue to do well but we won’t do it here,’ says Thomson. ‘Like (this) miniseries shooting in Quebec; that will happen more and more. The production company will be here but we’ll employ crew elsewhere.’