Vancouver: Although feature film distribution is in the cards for next year, Evergreen Releasing and its management have no illusions about being a big-shot Alliance. By comparison, the upstart Evergreen is small, split in two with a head office in Regina and a management office in Toronto, and has a rather unglamorously low overhead by comparison.

At any one time, Evergreen ­ which is the cooperative effort of co-owners Toronto-based producer The Film Works and Regina-based Minds Eye Pictures ­ will have between $500,000 to $1 million out in the market through licence fees, investments and sweat equity. Its kitty is parceled out by the members of a syndicate of private sources and film-friendly banks that review projects on a case-by-case basis.

And within the last year, Evergreen has gleaned premium-priced licence fees ­ to the tune of us$50,000 to us$70,000 ­ from markets like New Zealand and Australia for the made-in-Canada miniseries Lost Daughter.

A focus on ‘quality’ programming, niche children’s markets and innovative, marketable documentaries has accelerated Evergreen’s business plan.

The company helped finance more than 10% of Lost Daughter, an $8.4-million international miniseries about cults with Richard Chamberlain that recently sold to Nine Network in Australia and TV3 in New Zealand. Domestically, Evergreen has sold 65 episodes of The Big Comfy Couch to Canal Famille.

And it is participating as executive producer ­ and has been involved from day one ­ in an innovative, 13-part documentary series called Going Solo, which is about a divorced woman who pursues her dreams such as scuba diving in the Bermuda Triangle.

Evergreen ­ through Minds Eye ­ has the distribution rights to Lyddie, a family tv movie produced for the cbc and the bbc, and Film Works’ The Planet of Junior Brown, a cbc tv movie with Margot Kidder about a piano prodigy on the verge of a breakdown.

Dean Oros, Evergreen’s managing director, says the keys to the early success are aggressive marketing and discriminating product.

Keeping up with the ever expanding world of foreign broadcasters, video buyers, cable signals and stations (especially in Europe where the television market is booming) is a primary challenge, he explains.

Oros says children’s programming is a hungry niche, especially for live-action programs geared to seven- to 12-year-olds.

For kids in that target market, Evergreen is involved in On My Mind, a kind of Degrassi High for the younger set, and Mentors, an educational series about computer geeks who are able to download historical characters from their computers.

While the company is currently focused on television, Evergreen will move into the theatrical end of the business within 18 months. Junior Brown will be finished on 35mm and will apply for spots at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Sundance Festival. Evergreen, meanwhile, has the rights to Silence, the Jack Darcus aboriginal-themed feature that shot in Vancouver until the end of June.

Evergreen has about 100 hours of programming on its shelves, which is about 20% to 25% of the big distributors, says Oros. It has output deals with distributors that cover the low-margin markets of Central and Eastern Europe and Africa.