The pitching session is one of the best-attended events at the Vancouver International Film Festival Trade Forum’s annual New Filmmakers’ Day.

This year, four b.c. filmmakers will have the opportunity to shop their projects to Telefilm Canada analyst John Dippong; cbc’s movies and miniseries development executive Bryan Freeman; Mary-Pat Gleeson, vp of marketing at Red Sky Entertainment and Wendy MacKeigan, chairperson of the Harold Greenberg Fund, as well as an audience of industry guests.

Following are profiles of this year’s pitchers and their pitches:

*Loretta Todd – Raven

Over a year ago, native filmmaker Loretta Todd took a script titled Rosie to the Sundance Film Festival’s Script Writers Lab. She had originally envisioned the story as a trilogy tracing an aboriginal girl’s experiences from childhood, through her teenage years and into womanhood.

Following the writers workshop, Todd incorporated the different stories into one film, Raven, in which a 15-year-old Cree girl living on the streets kills a man while protecting a young boy and goes into hiding to elude the police. In the woods she meets up with a war veteran and together they deal with the painful aftereffects of having killed.

‘It is a story about transformation,’ explains Todd, adding that the idea for the film was shaped by her experiences making Forgotten Warriors, a documentary about native Indian war veterans which was nominated for a Genie Award in 1997.

Todd has completed a first draft and, at the request of the writers from the Sundance workshop, is sending them a copy for feedback.

Todd intends to direct the film as well as coproduce, although she has not hooked up with a partner yet. She is also seeking an executive producer.

The budget will be roughly in the $1.2 million range, she says.

Todd recently directed a documentary on Chief Dan George (Little Big Man), a native Academy Award-nominated actor of the 1960s and ’70s, for cbc’s Life and Times strand. The program is being screened at viff.

She is currently cowriting and directing a documentary on turn-of-the-century Mohawk poet Pauline Johnson for the History Television. Smoke Lake Productions is producing.

Todd’s numerous credits include cowriting and producing Day-Glo Warrior for the cbc series Inside Stories; numerous educational and industrial films for the native community on health issues such as aids and solvent abuse; The Learning Path, an exploration of native women and the education system, produced by the National Film Board and Tamarack Productions and Hands of History, an nfb production on native women artists.

*Jacques Lalonde – Adventures In Dragonland

A depressed writer unable to get his latest books published is having trouble believing in his own abilities to create magic. A little girl who immerses herself in the make-believe world of his storybooks, is chosen by a dragon, who leaps out of the book to save the life of the dragon princess.

That’s the premise for Jacques Lalonde’s Adventures in Dragonland.

‘It’s about believing in yourself and the power of imagination as magic,’ Lalonde says of the feature film script, which he has also developed into a tv series bible and published the first in a line of related books, titled simply Dragons. The film will also feature musical scores, which Lalonde has written and is now making into demos.

The live-action, reality-based world of the writer and little girl will be contrasted by the imaginary realm of the dragons, created using an array of computer-generated and cel animation, animatronix, claymation and puppets. As yet, an animation company has not been contracted for the project.

‘There will be good dragons and evil dragons, an entire dragon smorgasbord,’ says Lalonde. And with the approaching year 2000 being the year of the dragon, the project is timely, he says.

House of Creation, a partnership between Lalonde, Ronnie Way and David Symons, write and produce for live theater, film and television, as well as publish music, will produce the project.

Lalonde is currently scouting for a coproducer. Don McCutcheon, who directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is attached to the project. The film’s budget film could run anywhere between $3 million and $10 million, he says.

This will be Lalonde’s first feature. He has written for and acted in live theater and hosted Pilot One, an underground cbc show for teenagers, and Reel tv for ctv.

Currently he is working with Coyote Films to make one of his Fringe Festival plays, A Closer Walk With Jean Chretien, into a one-hour tv special. The tv version of the political spoof is titled 22 Sussex Drive. A broadcaster has not been attached to the $50,000 program.

Lalonde is also developing a feature based on his Fringe Festival play Bonnie Dangerously: Fast Times with That Guy Clyde. This version of the Bonnie and Clyde story is told from Bonnie’s perspective, says Lalonde, who has researched the true events surrounding Bonnie’s life and found that the real story is a far cry from her depiction in previous film accounts.

*Nicholas Racz – The Burial Society

Chevrah Kadish, explains screenwriter Nicholas Racz, are burial societies made up of elderly members of Jewish communities who prepare the bodies of their dead and watch over the coffins before burial, sidestepping the role of funeral homes since Jewish law forbids people from profiting from death. Burial societies date back thousands of years, and every city with a strong Jewish population continues the tradition to this day.

Using the Chevrah Kadish as the film’s backdrop, Racz’s mystery/suspense feature The Burial Society is the tale of ‘a little Jewish man’ who has lived with his mother for 35 years. That is, until he steals a few million dollars from his crooked employers and, sensing it would be a good idea to disappear for awhile, moves to a small town where he hides out in a burial society. There he muddles his way through learning their ancient traditions while trying to hide his ulterior motives for being there.

Racz has developed the script over the past three years with financial help from B.C. Film and Telefilm Canada, and plans to produce through Big Little Picture Company, which he jointly runs with partners Richard Baumgartel and Howard Dancyger.

They are searching for an executive producer, a director, and some American marquee cast.

Racz says he has already sparked the interest of producers and agents in New York and Toronto. The projected budget is between $3 million and $5 million.

Racz is also writing, directing and producing the low-budget dramatic feature The Igloo, about an Inuit boy who, at the age of three, was taken away from his family by the Canadian government and 35 years later ends up living on the street.

Financing on the under $1-million project has not been secured. Graham Greene has been signed as the lead and Elizabeth Rosen (Baby Face) will also star.

Racz was a cowriter on Deadfire, a feature from North American Releasing. He also wrote and directed Hungarian Revelation, a half-hour which won the Director’s Guild/ Telefilm Kick Start prize, played on the festival circuit and aired on pbs and Knowledge Network.

*Adriane Polo – Whistler Extreme

A young journalist is sent to Whistler Mountain to do a feature story on the dangerous sport of heli-skiing, where she meets an extreme skier who flies a chopper for Whistler Search & Rescue.

A young doctor from South Africa, who moved to Whistler with his daughter after his wife dies of a rare disease, also takes part in the rescue missions. His little girl is showing signs of the disease, but he believes that in these mountains grows a special herb that holds the key to her survival.

While the extreme skier vies for the interest of the journalist, she is trying to form a relationship with the doctor, who is oblivious to her intentions.

These scenarios are set against a deadly winter storm in which the characters must fight for their lives.

The $1.5-million made-for-tv action film is also about the rescue of the human spirit, says writer/director Adriane Polo, who is based in Squamish, b.c.

‘The four main characters are all searching for something – perhaps themselves or something they’ve lost a long time ago,’ she explains.

Cedar Sky Entertainment, a company owned by Polo, is seeking a coproducer or executive producer for the movie.

Wild Wind, Polo’s first feature, is in post-production. The art film profiles two women going through a mid-life crisis. A rough edit is complete and Polo is shopping for a distributor.

Polo is also developing Treasure Mountain, a family film in which two young girls researching a school project stumble upon clues leading to a treasure left by pirates centuries ago and are led by wild animals of the region to the site of the loot.

Polo plans to attach cast and package the film, then presell to a distributor for a straight-to-video release.

Polo’s previous credits include directing the half-hour drama Jail Stories and numerous music videos, as well as writing short films such as Mindless Sounds.