Vancouver: The production coordinator for the Disney feature Mr. Magoo will become Victoria’s first film commissioner Aug. 1.

Kate Petersen, hired by the Victoria Film Council at the end of May, will work hand-in-hand with the B.C. Film Commission to market Victoria as a film locale.

And that will be a challenge since the island capital lacks the kind of film services to attract long-term projects. Since infrastructure has to be imported, costs go up. Her first tasks will be to build the labor pool, catalogue locations and increase awareness of Victoria Studios at CFB Esquimalt (which is still empty).

Nanaimo-based Petersen began her production career as a volunteer in Victoria in 1983 and eventually went on to work for studios such as Disney, mgm, TriStar, Paramount, Sony, Alliance and Atlantis. Her indigenous film credits include the features Whale Music, Lies from Lotus Land and Family Pictures.

For the past three years, she has volunteered with the Nanaimo Film Commission and the Vancouver Island Film Association. Also in the past three years, Petersen has attended Locations Expo in l.a. to promote Vancouver Island.

The B.C. Film Commission ­ which is trying to encourage production outside of the Lower Mainland ­ is negotiating with the council to inject some capital into the Victoria initiative. Petersen beat out 175 applicants for the job.

-Spousal benefits

Apparently afraid that the adage ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’ is a sentiment found only in greeting cards, the producers of actress Melanie Griffith’s new feature, Jane, have transmuted the original New York-New Orleans locations into something more West Coast. That’s so she can work closer to husband Antonio Banderas.

As the featured Viking in Disney’s $100-million Eaters of the Dead, Banderas will work extensively in the Campbell River area on Vancouver Island, a mere floatplane or ferry ride from Vancouver’s harbor. Some stage work for the epic will be done in Vancouver.

Jane, an $8-million feature by Ministry of Film (Time Cop) to be shot in Vancouver, is about a socialite mom who is forced into poverty with her child when she divorces, only to find blue-collar love and get a big cash settlement from her ex.

No production dates have been set for Jane.

-On deck

New nbc series Sleepwalkers ­ a kind of Millennium-esque series of 13 episodes and the first network series to shoot here for a long time ­ should start in July.

Less official but definitely in the offing ­ like Jane ­ are a number of other u.s. shows trying to wedge themselves into Vancouver this summer.

Castle Rock’s big-budget nuke movie Ground Zero is a likely go, along with Westbay Entertainment’s Wrongfully Accused, a Leslie Nielsen spoof on The Fugitive that will start after Disney’s Magoo, also starring Nielsen. Kennedy Marshall Co. is scouting options for Snow Falling on Cedars, a feature based on the novel about a murder and Japanese internment in the Pacific Northwest.

Low-budget Canadian road movie Rupert’s Land, produced by Julie Lee, could go this summer in the Prince Rupert area and equally low-budget Canadian feature Port Moody is looking at a late summer start. Producing the latter are l.a.-based Hedgehog Films and Vancouver’s Pacific Motion Pictures.

-At bat

Production began June 2 on the local feature Silence, which is about a family and a dark secret on a remote Native reserve. Produced and directed by Vancouver filmmaker Jack Darcus (Portrait, Kingsgate), the $2-million film stars August Schellenberg (Free Willy i, ii, iii), Tantoo Cardinal (Legends of the Fall) and Annike Obansawin (The Adventures of Shirley Holmes).

Silence was written by Hank Schachte. It will be shooting on the Tsawwassen First Nation reserve in Delta until June 27.

Meanwhile, Madison’s fifth season of teen and post-teen angst runs June 16 through Aug. 28, a whirlwind production schedule.

The second season of Paramount’s Viper, an effects-laden action series that was shot in Calgary last season but has moved full time to Vancouver, begins June 24 (and shoots until Feb. 13).

Five Desperate Hours, a tv movie for nbc, stars Sharon Lawrence (NYPD Blue, Fired Up). Wrapping June 27, the show is about a hostage-taking in North Carolina, a true story.

JoBeth Williams stars in the USA Network mow Access Denied, which is about a psychiatrist who is accused of murdering her patient. It, too, wraps June 27.

-TSC update

At the end of May, Burnaby’s TSC Film Distribution acquired the Canadian and international rights to Rebel with a Cause, a documentary about legendary health worker Anne Ross of Manitoba. The doc was made by Hilary Jones-Farrow of the May Street Group in Victoria and presold to Vision tv, wtn, cky and cfcf. Calgary-made feature American Beer, meanwhile, has been sold in Canada to Superchannel and TMN-The Movie Network. tsc sold an animated adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book ­ Adventures of Mowgli ­ to ytv.

And in June, tsc sold the second season of Lethbridge series Mechanic at Large to The Learning Network in Australia. Hosted by Bob Bourke, the how-to series has been previously sold to Wharf Cable and several pbs affiliates.

-Community happenings

Bree McNally, Rebecca Kaye and Amy Kazymerchuk ­ graduates of The Gulf Islands Film and Television School, the only youth summer camp in Canada dedicated to film training ­ were named as the most promising young filmmakers at the Cascadia Moving Images Festival held in May during the B.C. Festival of the Arts in Powell River On June 9.

Vancouver’s film community gathered at the premiere of Linda Ohama’s documentary Neighbours, Wild Horses & Cowboys and raised money for Manitoba flood victims. Those generously inclined can send cheques payable to the Canadian Red Cross Manitoba Flood Appeal, c/o Ohama at Wild Horse Productions, 3808 West 31st Ave., Vancouver, b.c., V6S 1Y3.

-Au contraire

Not fair, says Tom Curzon, director of communications at Baton Broadcasting. Ivan Fecan is not cherrypicking cbc’s best radio and television programs and absorbing them as Baton’s own as this column may have alluded to last ish, he says.

Air Farce, Vicki Gabereau and Double Exposure approached Baton first; they were not poached, says Curzon, one-time head of pr for the Mother Corp.