A small yet auspicious force in the Canadian entertainment industry, Triptych Media hits this year’s Toronto International Film Festival without a film to screen but looking to shore up financing and coproduction deals for its slew of projects in development.

And while Triptych’s three principals, Robin Cass, Louise Garfield and Anna Stratton, will be schmoozing potential partners on their own films and tv shows, the Toronto-based company is also host of this year’s Producers’ Lounge, which aims to create a safe haven and fruitful atmosphere for other producers to do the same.

‘Last year we decided that the festival was lacking a place for producers to meet. Most festivals are not very inviting to producers and there was a need to have an opportunity to meet each other, particularly in light of the current financing difficulties that we all have,’ says Triptych producer/ partner Garfield.

Entering its second year, Triptych’s Producers’ Lounge is an official part of the Rogers Industry Centre with a mandate to enhance opportunities for feature producers attending the festival from around the globe to foster long-term and creative partnerships.

The lounge is free to all producers holding Industry Centre passes and this year consists of a series of five nightly ‘working cocktails,’ Sept. 13-1 7. The opening-night cocktail was held at The Bamboo Club on Queen Street; daily happy hours take place from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Ba-Ba-Lu’s Tapas Bar located around the corner from the Industry Centre at 136 Yorkville.

Triptych’s Producers’ Lounge has also published a catalogue listing development projects and contact names and numbers of producers registered for the Lounge. The catalogue is also accessible via the Lounge’s Website – www.producerslounge.com.

New this year, producers who are Industry Centre pass holders may take advantage of the Producers’ Desk. Located in the Industry Centre, the Producers’ Desk is staffed by consultants from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. throughout the festival and provides business services including phone, fax, photocopy and Internet access.

Having enjoyed past successes as a coproducer on Lilies (1996 Genie for Best Film) and last year’s festival hit The Hanging Garden, which won best Canadian film and most popular film at tiff as well as four Genies, Triptych’s financing and coproduction structures can be used as a blueprint for Canadian and international coproducers alike.

Formed in 1994 with the production of their first feature, Zero Patience, Triptych’s current development slate assures the company’s ascent to the proverbial ‘next level.’

It appears Triptych is now focusing on projects based on works by high-profile Canadian writers as the prodco is currently working in association with Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields, Barbara Gowdy, Susan Swan and Michel Marc Bouchard.

The u.k.’s Dogstar Films (Mike Newell) and Triptych are working on a Canada/Europe coproduction big-screen version of Shields’ Republic of Love, adapted by Shelagh Stevenson. The contemporary urban romance still hasn’t nailed down casting, a director or key crew.

Former festival darling Lynne Stopkewich, whose Kissed prompted a bidding war at tiff ’96, is on the second draft of Falling Angels, which will be produced by her own Boneyard Film Company and Triptych.

Like Kissed, the funny and moving story of three sisters’ coming of age in the ’60s is based on a work (this time a novel) by Barbara Gowdy. Stopkewich will write and direct the production that hopes to secure u.s. star casting.

Stopkewich is consulting on another Triptych project, The Biggest Modern Woman Of The World, based on the novel by Susan Swan. Screenwriter John Frizzell is on a second draft of the Victorian-era romantic drama in which Nova Scotia giantess Anna Swan grapples with the implications of her size as she chooses between domestic bliss with a Scottish giant or life with the legendary showman P.T. Barnum.

How Could You Mrs. Dick? is a feature being packaged to shoot in Canada, with a coproduction opportunity for a u.k. director, about an impossibly beautiful daughter born to working-class parents. Sociopathic Mom spots a commodity and steers her daughter towards marriage with a wealthy business type. When the daughter marries a mere bus driver, things go horrifically awry. Doug Rogers is the writer.

Paul Carrier is attached as director on writer Katherine Shlemmer’s Peach Land, ‘an acerbic love story that tells what happens when sexual awakening strikes parents and children at the same time.’

Lilies screenwriter Michel Marc Bouchard is developing Flesh with Triptych. Currently at the treatment stage, the film is a romantic tragedy set amidst the Spanish Flu epidemic in Quebec in 1918. The French-language coproduction is looking for an Italian partner, director and key cast and crew.