In February and March, six teams from the Canadian Film Centre will be descending on Toronto neighborhoods producing a veritable bounty of new shorts. First up is Uncle from writer/director Chris Grismer and Cape Bretoner Michael Melski, a playwright-turned-screenwriter and former writer in residence at the Shaw Festival.

Uncle, which begins production on Feb. 17 and which Grismer says he’s furiously trying to pare down to the 20-minute mark, is the story of a teenage girl who’s staying with her recently separated uncle while her parents are on vacation.

Grismer says the soundtrack will be rife with musical Cancon, including an original tune from Halifax’s Jale.

With the big day closing in, Grismer says the crew is falling into place (dop Kim Derko is already on board) but location ‘is an ugly topic right now.’ They have a house available near Windfields, but it’s completely empty (which would require the team to lug in lots of furniture) and it has no running water (which would make for a very unpleasant five-day shoot). Grismer’s working on plan b.

Speaking of the cfc, Justine Whyte, project manager for the Feature Film Project, says keep those scripts and proposals coming for feature film number six. Whyte says that while the project as a whole is moving into an evaluation and redesign period, it is by no means defunct.

‘Phase ii of the Feature Film Project expired Dec. 31, 1996, so we’re taking this opportunity to evaluate what we’ve been doing. Things have changed a lot since the program was designed in 1992, so we’re trying to plan for how we can best facilitate production and nurture talent in the future.’

Whyte’s currently engrossed in working on a proposal for the program’s funders, and she’s optimistic: ‘We’re hoping we can renew funding on a more permanent basis so that we don’t have to stop and start every two years or so.’

Meanwhile, Colin Brunton, who was executive producer of the Feature Film Project for nearly five years, is back in the indie filmmaking biz and Vincenzo Natali’s Cube, the project’s fifth feature, is heading into post, on time and on budget.

Brunton has also forged a partnership with D. Nightingale Associates to lead workshops.

-Novel ideas

Literary-based projects are the order of the day at Toronto’s Stornoway Productions.

Suzette Couture has adapted Wild Geese, a novel by Canadian author Martha Ostenso, and Sarrazin/Couture is coproducing with Stornoway. Set in the Manitoba marshlands, it’s the story of Caleb Gare and the iron fist and cold heart with which he dominates his family and community.

Baton will air the mow, and Stornoway’s Martha Fusca says there’s interest from a u.s. net. Production is expected to start sometime this summer.

Further down the line is Mistaken Identity. Norah McClintock’s novel by the same name features Zanny Dugan, the 16-year-old daughter of an overprotective, constantly moving father. After her father’s death, Zanny starts a search which turns up a strange and twisted murder mystery.

Fusca says Baton is onside, and George Jonas is currently working on a first draft.

Hugh MacLennan’s Each Man’s Son, the story of a doctor in the coal-mining towns of Cape Breton during the early 1900s, is the basis for Stornoway’s third project. The novel is being adapted by Kathleen Turner (no, not that one) and Dan Petrie is on board as story editor. ‘Of course,’ says Fusca, furiously dropping hints, ‘we’d love for him to direct.’

It’s early in the development stage (the first draft is currently in the works), but Fusca says cbc is enthusiastic.

-What’s the plural of Elvis?

Elvi maybe?

A legion of polyester-clad impersonators of The King figure prominently in Matt Cohen’s novel Last Seen, currently being adapted by David Young for Carnelian Films. Carnelian’s Elke Town says she hopes a first and second draft will be completed by year end in order to start production in the spring of 1998.

Triptych Media is the executive producer behind the project, the story of Alec Constantine, an academic who returns from Europe to tend to a dying, cancer-ridden brother. The two brothers ­ one dead, one grieving ­ are later reunited in a bar which hosts the aforementioned Elvi.

Town is actively looking for a British coproducer, and she says the budget could range anywhere from $2.5 million to $5 million. Telefilm Canada has already chipped in to the development pot, and Town is still waiting on some kind of yea or nay from cbc.

Young, a screenwriter and playwright, adapted Carol Sheilds’ novel for Swann and penned the plays Love is Strange, Fire and Glenn.

-Those globe-trottin’, award-winnin’ doc makers

While keeping a careful watch on his veggie burger lest it burn to a veggie crisp, Associated Producers’ Simcha Jacobovici says, ‘Things are going well.’ Let’s recap, shall we?

Associated’s documentary Ebola: Inside an Outbreak recently picked up five Gemini nominations to add to the u.s. Emmy for outstanding investigative journalism and, most recently, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award ­ hence capturing two of what Jacobovici calls the ‘big three’ of American investigative journalism awards.

Jacobovici and partner Elliott Halpern are now launching another foreign adventure in the form of Quest for the Lost Tribe, a $1 million project for a&e and cbc. The duo will spend 10 weeks on location in Israel, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan looking for evidence of the 10 lost tribes of Israel, the sister kingdom to the two tribes which eventually formed Judaism.

‘We’re trying to answer the question of what happened to the descendants of the other 10 tribes, why they disappeared,’ says Jacobovici.

Alliance will distribute the project.

Meanwhile, work is just about completed on their doc Hollywoodism (at look at Jewish players in the entertainment industry which Malofilm will distribute). The Dancing Game, a look at the sport (their words, not mine) of ballroom dancing and its quest to become an Olympic event, aired earlier this month on Witness.

-Coming up

The rebirth of Alliance’s youth series Straight Up is skedded for March 2 with a production schedule that runs into mid-April. Jerry Ciccoritti, a ’97 Gemini nominee for his previous work on Straight Up and for the tv movie Net Worth, is directing six of the seven new episodes. Adrian Mitchell, one of the series’ producers, is calling the directorial shots on the other.

Now that bbs has picked up Gene Roddenberry’s Battleground Earth for the fall, Atlantis says production on 22 one-hour episodes will get underway in May. Producer John Calvert and producer/production designer Stephen Roloff will be reunited, harkening back to the days of TekWar.

Pebblehut Productions is launching into a small feature in mid-February called Johnny 2.0. Neill Fearnley is directing.