Montreal: Highly sought-after actor Brent Carver (Lilies, Whiskers) plays Maurice in the film adaptation of Michel Marc Bouchard’s winning stage play The Tale of Teeka, a one-hour children’s drama special produced by Arnie Gelbart of Galafilm in association with Triptych Media executive producer Anna Stratton.

The film is the third collaboration between Galafilm and Triptych following John Greyson’s Genie winner Lilies and Thom Fitzgerald’s, The Hanging Garden, nominated for 11 Genies.

Teeka is being shot in English and French (L’Histoire de l’oie) for broadcast on cbc, Radio-Canada and tvontario, with Gemeaux-winning actor Benoit Briere (Cher Olivier) playing Maurice in the French version.

Montreal-based Tim Southam is directing. Southam’s feature-length doc Drowning in Dreams is also in the race for a Genie.

In this story, described as ‘an imaginary exploration of the hereditary nature of physical violence within families,’ a grown-up Maurice recalls a time from his youth when he made friends with a white goose called Teeka. While his parents are away, Maurice reveals his scary alter ego, Tarzan, leaving poor Teeka frightened and all too aware of the harm that has been done to Maurice and what her own destiny on the farm is to be. Bouchard wrote the screenplay.

The perfectly bilingual kid in Teeka is played by Maxime Desbiens Tremblay.

Interestingly, Gelbart says ‘it’s good’ Briere and Carver came up with rather different renditions of the main character.

dop Eric Cayla shot on 16mm film. Mario Hervieux was the production designer. Teeka is budgeted at $1.1 million, with funding from Telefilm Canada, sodec, the Quebec tax credit and ctcpf lfp. The 15-day shoot wrapped Nov. 5

The stage version has literally played around the world and Gelbart sees a similar fate for the tv adaptation.

Also very active on the documentary side of the business, Galafilm’s current slate includes Les Dames du 9eme for Radio-Canada and Le Corps: journal intime, a 20-hour ‘cutting-edge medical series’ for Discovery and Canal d, coproduced with Workweek and Laszlo Barna of Toronto’s Barna-Alper. The $3.4-million mega medical series has been presold to French educational network La Cinquieme.

Gelbart is also producing Brian McKenna’s new four-hour historical doc series The War of 1812, prelicensed by tfo, tvo, History Television and cfcf-tv. The first phase of the digital Betacam wide-screen production is complete, with the winter leg set for February. A couple of major (u.s. and u.k.) foreign sales are in the works, says the producer.

*Busy season for Mariani

Blackwatch Communications exec producer Bill Mariani has his hands full with back-to-back shoots. First up was Captive (Asylum), a suspense thriller starring Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers, Seaquest dsv, er), Erikka Eleniak (Tales from the Crypt, One Hot Summer Night) and Adrienne Ironside, the esteemed actor’s daughter in her screen debut.

Craft credits go to director Roger Cardinal, screenwriters Richard Stanford and Rodney Gibbons, and dop Bruno Philip, who is shooting on 35mm film. The production designer is Csaba Kertesz.

In this intrigue, a young woman played by Eleniak is widowed when her husband is brutally murdered on their wedding night. Admitted to a hospital for emotional distress, she finds herself the prisoner of a dark conspiracy to deny her of her late husband’s estate. Ironside plays the murky detective in charge of the murder investigation.

Stephen Maynard and Holly Simpson are the producers. Yaniko Palis line produced and Glenn Talent handled the casting.

As Captive wrapped Nov. 13 after 19 days of filming, Mariani began prepping on his next movie, The Hunter, ‘the first Hong Kong-style action film to be shot in Canada.’ Good chopsocky fare is definitely a growth industry; witness the 70,000 who showed up for this fall’s Fant Asia Film Festival in Montreal. Christian Viel is slated to make his theatrical debut on this one, which Mariani says will go as early as January. The film has a worthy $2.5-million budget.

Mariani will also exec produce on Ironside’s feature directorial debut The Arrangement, slated to shoot in l.a. in ’98. He also exec produced Reluctant Angel, a John Helliker film shot in Toronto last summer and produced by Michael Doherty. It stars Megan Follows and Jaimz Woolvett and will be released by Blackwatch in May. And there’s a deal to produce another film with an unnamed u.s. outfit.

In a move heralding many more Mariani movies to come, first ad Kim Berlin has joined Blackwatch as the house’s new vp production.

Mariani (Obstruction of Justice, Dead Innocent) has created an investment package for a multi-film slate in 1998/99, a strategy he says will allow him to concentrate on exec producing ‘and bringing all the partners together.’

‘That means I can’t hang around the set,’ he says. ‘I don’t want that to be my role. What I love doing is sitting in a restaurant somewhere in Germany talking to the buyer.’

Blackwatch Releasing, Toronto’s Oasis Pictures and l.a.-based foreign sales outfit imf pitched in with presales on Captive, budgeted at $1.8 million. Screen Partners in the u.k. provided the film’s gap financing.

*Boyd opens Les Films de I’Ile

The launch of Montreal producer Ian Boyd’s new house Les Films de I’Ile coincides with the company’s first feature film, Les Casablancais, currently shooting on location in Casablanca in sunny Morocco.

The film is the first under the Canada/Morocco coproduction agreement and is being coproduced with France’s Arcadia Films and Morocco’s Ecrans du Maroc.

Boyd says the new house will develop coproductions, feature films and tv documentaries with the focus on arts and culture. Boyd’s credits include Jean-Pierre Gariepy’s Le Violin d’Arthur, Diane Poitras’ L’Alchimiste er l’enlumineur (’97) and Lea Pool’s Gabrielle Roy, new feature-length documentary on the internationally acclaimed Canadian novelist, coproduced with Phyllis Laing of Buffalo Gal Pictures, Winnipeg.

The new Pool doc premiers on Tele-Quebec in French and Bravo! in English.

A caustic, fictionalized New Wave commentary on Moroccan society, Casablancais takes the form of a trilogy, with young Montreal actress Karina Aktouf (Jasmine, Lobby) playing a young teacher disturbed by the traditional role of women in Islamic society. Abdelkader Lagtaa is the film’s writer/director.

A $20,000 development grant for the director from Programme d’incitation a la coproduction (Vues d’Afrique) helped get the production up and running, with the Canadian share (Telefilm Canada, sodec and the tax credits), making up 30% of the $1.5-million budget.

On the house’s mission, Boyd says, ‘We’ll be following up on what we’ve being doing, either very specific coproduction ventures like the one we’re doing with Manitoba, which is quite interesting because it gives us an opportunity to do both English and French versions and access funding on both sides. And we’ve always had a bent to do production on the arts and that’s something we will continue.’

Casablancais will be released by distributor Prima Film.

*A very queer sketch comedy

Taping runs Nov. 16-21 on a one-hour pilot for ‘the world’s very first all-gay and lesbian sketch comedy television show,’ In Thru the Out Door. The program is being produced by Nul Man’s Land and Distribution Rozon (the good folks behind the Just For Laughs series) in association with cbc and Showtime Networks.

jfl ceo Andy Nulman created the show and says he’s lined up a great ensemble cast including Elvira Kurt, Jonathan Wilson, Maggie Cassella, Craig Francis, Bob Smith, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Jaffe Cohen, stand-up diva Robin Greenspan and Lea DeLaria, who starred in this summer’s off-Broadway performance of On the Town.

The studio portion of the taping takes place Nov. 20 and 21 at the east end Le Lounge, in the heart of Montreal’s gay village, and Nulman says the producers are actively soliciting a live studio audience.

Dan Redican (Kids in the Hall, circa 1990-92) is producing. Michael McNamara is the director and Carole Pope wrote the show’s original music. Will the $400,000 pilot for In Thru the Out Door lead to a gig on mainstream tv? Stay tuned.

*Our talented kids

In the Who can keep up with these kids? department, we offer you, and their mothers, the case of two talented but still not very well-known Montreal actors, 18-year-old Jacob Tierney and 12-year-old Michael Caloz.

Tierney has landed no less than, count ’em, five leading roles in the past year.

It started in February when the son of La Fete producer Kevin Tierney traveled to Toronto where he scored a lead role in Straight Up, the new Alliance Communications miniseries produced for cbc. Then he played Eric Roberts’ son in the Allegro Films feature Adam and Smoke, before shipping out to Ireland to shoot the Filmline International feature This is My Father.

He’s currently a member of an outstanding cast in the Cinequest comedy Hyper-Allergenic directed by Shimon Dotan. And last week, Tierney got the all-important second casting call for director John Hamilton’s next feature project.

On this other Quebec star, there’s plenty o’ buzz around Caloz, at least from industry types.

Caloz is the colead in Marc Voizard’s Escape from Wildcat Canyon, a new Telescene Film Group feature, and has screen-tested at Paramount Pictures with producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall and director Frank Oz.

He starred in the a&w boy and the bear campaign and last year won rave reviews for his role in the Tele-Action drama Les Orphelins de Duplessis. He’s had a lead role in the abc/TriStar Dennis Rodman autobiography Bad as I Wanna Be and won kudos for his ‘luminous’ performance in Jimmy Kaufman’s Whiskers, a Showtime movie produced by La Fete.

Caloz’s voice animates d.w. dolls on the top-rated Cinar/wgbh series Arthur, while his latest v/o outing is in the role of Christopher in the new Disney Christmas video release The Toys Who Saved Christmas.