For the first time since making Warrior Songs: King Gesar in 1996, the first film ever to receive Film nb financing, director Lesley Ann Patten of Ziji Productions in Halifax and producer Cecile Chevrier of Productions du Phare-Est in Moncton have reunited to develop a dramatic series with ctv.

Titled Refugee Status, the 13 one-hour episodes will chronicle the lives of three different immigrant groups seeking asylum in Canada and the lawyer who oversees their cases. Each week, the dynamic events of their settling into a new world will be interwoven with the progression of their cases.

Top immigration lawyer Lee Cohen, who is based in Halifax, is consulting on the script, and Patten says the lawyer character in the series is based on his persona and experiences.

But the whole idea – which seems rather timely given the recent Kosovo situation – is derived from Patten’s childhood experiences. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, she spent much of her time trailing her mother who worked for the Council of World Affairs helping refugees settle in the area.

Her memories are still vivid. As she recalls, ‘Sometimes their anxious eyes would relax as they smiled at me and their hands stroked my hair. Sometimes we were invited into their crowded homes and I sniffed the foreign vapors of their kitchen.’

The project is in phase one of development. With a budget of roughly $100,000, the three initial scripts are being developed with the help of the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, Film nb, Telefilm Canada, ctv and Vision tv.

Writers on the series include Patten, local playwright Michael Melski and Renee Blanchar. Production is expected is to kick off June 2000 in Nova Scotia and on the soundstage in Moncton.

In the meantime, Patten is heading into production on The Voice Set Free, the first high-definition documentary from the Maritimes.

Providing the technology and expertise is Leigh Robertson of Halifax-based Networx, who says, ‘hd is becoming quite attractive to producers in this neck of the woods. It saves time and money, there’s no logistics, there’s immediate results, you don’t have to depend on processing houses, and you can repurpose hd much easier than film.’ As the Atlantic provinces continue to attract international coproducers and as the Internet continues to become a popular mass medium, repurposing material for different standards is becoming more and more necessary for Maritime producers.

Salter Street’s Lexx will also be making the switch to hd for its next season, which goes into production mid-July.

* Moonstruck in Moncton

In its third week of shooting in and around Moncton is Lunatique, a 13-part, French-language, sci-fi anthology series from Productions du Phare-Est. And it’s about time. Originally titled La Lune Nous Reconte, the project’s production and air dates were pre-empted a year ago due to the near-past disarray at Film nb. But now that the production is up and running, it will most certainly be seen on tfo this coming September.

Set in the year 2017, the series is narrated by Luna (the earth’s moon), the only moon that’s been able to preserve life. Thanks to her, humans have evolved to the point of colonizing other planets, namely Mars, where Phobos the Martian moon is left totally confused about life.

The thread of the series is Luna explaining the anthropology of humankind to Phobos. Historical moments are played out and scenes explaining human behavior are enacted, incorporating pirates, sorcerers, secret agents, extraterrestrials, animals and plants.

With a budget of only $1 million for the entire series, the team is made up of 45 people, including producer Cecile Chevrier and local writers Paul Bosse and Chris LeBlanc, who is also directing. Approximately 50 actors, mostly amateurs, will play 300 roles and more than half the crew is under the age of 30.

Because the budget is relatively low for such a lavish production, which will use image treatments of all kinds including blue screen, Chevrier says they’ve had to be extra resourceful. The crew, for instance, built a massive space ship out of pvc tubing and bubble wrapping – the first of its kind in Moncton.

* The Springhill `bump’

Blood on the Coal, a one-hour doc on the Springhill mine disaster of 1958, is one of three films shortlisted for the International Federation of Television Archives award, taking place this year in Santiago, Chile, in October.

Produced by Haligonian Geoff D’Eon, field producer for cbc’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, the doc, which aired on the The Passionate Eye and the cbc network last October, commemorates the 40th anniversary of the ‘bump’ which trapped 170 men underground and ultimately killed 75. Dozens were trapped for six and a half days with no food, water or light, while the rest of the nation gathered around their sets watching the tragedy unfold as it happened.

It was a seminal event in Nova Scotia history and Canadian television history, as it was the first disaster ever covered live on Canadian tv.

Twenty-four hours of footage was preserved on Kinescope at either the Nova Scotia Public Archives or the cbc collection. But once D’Eon retrieved it, he realized that none of it made sense – he didn’t know who was who or what was what – so he tracked down Bill Harper, an old cbc reporter who was on the scene, and by sheer coincidence Harper happened to have a detailed log of the events of those nine days.

D’Eon then married the footage with the log to come up with a full picture and interspliced it with interviews he conducted with a rescuer, two miners, a miner’s wife and a cbc journalist.

Blood on the Coal, which cost $60,000 in total, has already received an Atlantic Journalism Award as well as a Hot Docs Award.

* Writers picked for Script Development Project

Among the 38 contenders, four emerging Atlantic Canadian screenwriters have been selected for the Atlantic Film Festival’s fourth annual Script Development Project, commencing Friday, July 9.

They are Warren Jefferies for The Spin (short), Michael Boyd for Smoked (short), Josh MacDonald for Prez’s Turn (feature) and Amy Burt for This Boy (short).

The Project, sponsored by cbc, deluxe toronto and the Harold Greenberg Fund, is aimed at developing the talents of first-time, Atlantic Canadian writers. Through a series of workshops conducted by story editor Allan Magee of Mainline Pictures in Toronto, the amateur writers have the opportunity to develop their scripts from first to final draft. They also learn how to put together pitch and marketing packages and at the end of the process, each script is showcased at the Script Out Loud event on Sept. 19 (the first Sunday of the festival), to which producers, broadcasters and literary agents are invited.

And in the very end, finished drafts are presented to cbc as a kind of first-look option, as well as to the Harold Greenberg Fund for further development funding.

Launched in 1996, the Project has already yielded a handful of successes, including Christian Murray’s Our Daily Bread, which was recently completed; Gretchen Wilson’s 106 Fire Hydrants, in development; and, Donna Morrissey’s Clothesline Patch, which heads into production mid-July.