Multifaith religious broadcaster Vision tv has jumped into the Canadian feature film fray by prebuying Terrance Odette’s feature directorial debut Heater, skedded to begin two weeks of principal photography in Winnipeg, Dec 2.

Produced by Winnipeg’s Marble Island Pictures (The David Milgaard Story, Twilight of The Ice Nymphs), and starring Gary Farmer and Stephen Ouimette, Heater finds two homeless men wandering down Winnipeg’s Portage Avenue with a stolen baseboard heater that they hope to return for a cash refund at Canadian Tire.

Paul de Silva, executive producer, independent sector, made the prebuy and says this is the second feature the specialty channel has licensed following Imagex’s The Divine Ryans.

De Silva adds that Vision could prebuy between three and six films per year as long as they fit into the broadcaster’s mandate.

‘First of all it has to have a compelling story,’ says de Silva, ‘and it has to somewhere have a storyline that addresses the subject of the human spirt.’ Films that feature gratuitous sex or violence are not of interest to Vision, says de Silva.

Besides the Vision licence, about half the financing for the $350,000 budgeted film is being provided by Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film and Sound has committed to its full cap of 20% of the budget, with TMN-The Movie Network and the provincial tax credit rounding out the financing. West Coast pay-tv movie channel Superchannel is also expected to license Heater.

Odette will be directing his own script, with Marble Island principal Ritchard Findlay exec producing and Marc Stephenson producing.

dop Arthur Cooper will be shooting the film mostly hand-held on 35mm on the streets of Winnipeg.

No distributor has been attached to Heater – a conscious decision says Findlay. ‘We felt that the film would have a greater market value finished than in a speculative state,’ he says.

Findlay reports that in addition to its music video, documentary and Canadian feature projects, Marble Island is close to finalizing a pair of service deals for two large u.s. productions.