Shirley Cheechoo’s first feature film Backroads is being shot six hours north of Toronto on Manitoulin Island, a rather remote locale that’s presenting the producers with some transportation and communication challenges.

Backroads, written and directed by Cheechoo, a Cree, is about a woman living on a reserve who is charged with murder and sent to jail. Her sisters reluctantly return home to help her, and in the process reconnect with each other as they deal with issues as a family.

Backroads is being shot May 3-29 on a budget of $780,000, a big chunk of which came from New York prodco Offline Entertainment Group (Slam).

Behind the camera is Jonathan Brown, an l.a. dop who recently shot feature film Pros and Cons with Bill Murray. Offline’s Ezra Swerdlow is executive producer and the cast includes Sheila Tousey (Thunderheart), Renae Morriseau (North of 60, X-Files), Max Martini (Saving Private Ryan) and Cheechoo.

Backroads had its genesis at the Sundance Film Festival a few years back when Christine Walker, a Minneapolis-based producer, saw Cheechoo’s short film Silent Tears and approached her with the idea of working together.

Cheechoo, who had a role in the cbc series The Rez, regularly performs at the Manitoulin Island theatre and has been across the country with her one-person play Path With No Moccasins.

Shooting far from the city and beyond the range of cell phones does add an element of difficulty for everyone on the film; on the plus side, Backroads is giving some Manitoulin Islanders a shot at learning the film biz. A number of First Nations tribes are financing a production assistant trainee program, which has given 23 native youths jobs on the film.

* But is it nuclear?

Executive producers Mark Johnston and Angela Jennings have teamed up to form Fusion Television, a Toronto-based prodco specifically targeting the expanding world of specialty channels.

Already in production under the Fusion banner are 13 episodes of Mark Cullen Gardening for hgtv and Sue Warden Craftscapes, a 65-part daily series for Life Network.

Jennings is heading to the Banff Television Festival prepared to pitch a dozen new lifestyle ideas for the networks in addition to a documentary for History Television on alcohol through the ages.

* Reasons To Live

Toronto’s TimeLine Entertainment (Cracked) is gearing up for a summer shoot on Reasons To Live, an mow with a message about drinking and driving.

The story, penned by producer/actor Joseph Clark, is a courtroom drama revolving around a vengeful husband and father (Clark) who loses his family to a drunk driver.

Reasons To Live is being shot entirely at Toronto locations for $150,000. TimeLine principals Joe Carso and Frank Elsasser are director and dop, respectively.

Although no broadcast deals have been signed, Magic Lantern Communications is on board for Canadian institutional and broadcast distribution and DeerCreek for home video and u.s. distribution.

* Being Witched

Producer Maryke McEwen (creator of the cbc series Street Legal) is in development with cbc on Magic, a dramatic series about Wicca, modern-day witchcraft and those who practice it. Andrew Rai Berzins is writing the scripts; no director is attached yet.

Also in the early stages of development is Fall Down Easy, ‘a Quentin Tarantino-style cop show with larger-than-life strange stories’ for ctv.

McEwen is the producer on Barna-Alper Productions/Face to Face’s Scorn, an mow about a high school boy who murders his mother and grandmother.

* Millennial moments

White Pine Pictures is gearing up for season three of its half-hour anthology series A Scattering of Seeds for History Television and Radio-Canada.

The producers received almost 100 treatments from directors across the country and narrowed them down to 13 profiles. Once all the financing is in place, White Pine will move into production on 13 shows, which are due by Christmas.

Among the filmmakers working on the series this time around is Vancouver director David Paperny who’s profiling Leonard Frank, a German immigrant and West Coast photographer in the late 1800s.

Toronto’s Sylvia Sweeney will tell the story of Italian immigrant Grace Bagnato, and Tom Radford will document a Czech couple who are figure skating coaches in Edmonton.

A Scattering of Seeds has been moved to an 8:30 p.m. slot from 10:30 on History.

Another project in the works, still in the treatment stage, is The Birth of Nations, an investigative doc about the creation of Canada and the u.s. ‘It’s about that 10-year period between 1857 and 1867, which was the American Civil War, and those forces that pushed the colonies into becoming a country,’ explains Raymont. ‘Many people say the u.s. didn’t really become a country until after the Civil War.’

Toronto Star journalist Adam Mayers has been working on the script for several years.

No Canadian broadcaster is on board yet, but Raymont has his fingers crossed for History. If that happens, Raymont, who helmed Hockey: A Year in the Life of the nhl, might also direct.

* Only the loathsome

DOP Doug Koch, director Jeremy Hindle and producer Leorra Newman recently wrapped shooting on Rusty, a 15-minute film produced with the Ontario Film Development Corporation’s Calling Card Program.

Shot over four days for $30,000 with an all-volunteer crew, Rusty tells the story of a guy who comes home to find his wife in bed with another man. In a moment of desperation he takes off with her dog, whom he loathes, and starts on a ‘misadventure.’

Accent Entertainment’s Susan Cavan was the mentor on the project, and hopes are the film will screen at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.