Halifax’s Salter Street Films has acquired the Michael Maclear library, consisting of more than 100 hours of documentary and series programming. With the acquisition, Salter has also been granted first negotiation rights on future Maclear television productions.

Salter president and coo Catherine Tait says the company had been in discussions with the renowned filmmaker and journalist for six months before closing the deal, just in time for Salter to represent the library at mipcom. According to Tait, Salter is very excited about the new partnership, saying that it is ‘an honor’ for the company to distribute his films.

Says Maclear: ‘I’m proud of the library and Salter Street has a terrific profile. I really wanted to know that the programs would continue with a company that I feel wants to be identified with quality programming.’

Tait says the Maclear acquisition represents the first steps in a new initiative for Salter.

‘For us, the acquisition is part of a strategy to build our distribution business and to build the business in terms of programs that we believe have a long-term library value,’ says Tait. ‘We are looking for high-quality, evergreen programming, and one of the areas where Canadians have been most creative and most excellent in their output is the non-fiction area.’

Tait says Salter is also looking to expand its distribution division into other areas as well, and is on its way with its recent distribution agreement with Chris Zimmer’s imX communications.

The Maclear library includes the 13-part doc series Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, the 2 x 60-minute Acts of War, and 52 hours of Flightpath, currently airing on Discovery Channel in Canada.

*Bingo bumblers

Bingo robbers from Newfoundland filmmaker Lois Brown will begin shooting on digital video in and around St. John’s on Nov. 21. The feature will be shot over 20 nights, which will make up one night in the life of petty thieves Nancy and Vallis, played by the film’s writers Brown and Barry Newhook.

The characters are childhood friends who have endured arguably miserable adult lives. Nancy is recently divorced, with a child who is a constant source of worry, and Vallis is a musician who lives out of the back of his car. The two plan a big heist at a local bingo parlor during its 24-hour bingo marathon, but run into trouble along the way as they fail to pull off a number of practice robberies, thanks largely to their constant need to talk things out.

The buzz around the film began after Brown and Newhook’s script was named one of four recipients of Telefilm Canada’s new Emerging Filmmakers Program at this year’s Atlantic Film Festival. The budget for the project is approximately $200,000 and is financed through the Emerging Filmmakers Program, the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation and various arts organizations.

Bingo Robbers producer Dana Warren hopes the film will be ready for April 2000.

Warren is buoyed by the current upswing in production in Newfoundland. ‘It’s really exciting to see more action here and people getting trained,’ says Warren. ‘From a producer’s point of view, it’s exciting to be able to employ people. From a personal point of view, it is really exciting to have people involved in your project.’

*Halifax takes centre stage

halifax-based Mentor Films’ Michael Greer is set to start production on a new half-hour drama for CBC Maritimes on Nov. 27. The film is called Dealer (previously Son to Son) and will be directed by Greer, who is coproducing with Andrew MacVicar.

Budgeted at $40,000, Dealer will shoot over five days on location in the north end of Halifax, with the city playing itself, something of a rarity, according to the director.

Dealer is the story of an angry mother who vows to exact revenge on the drug dealer she credits with the death of her son. The dark tale will star Martha Irving (The Hanging Garden) and Gordon White (New Waterford Girl), and is penned by Josh MacDonald, who also wrote Greer’s last film, the acclaimed Tie That Binds.

Dealer is funded by Telefilm Canada’s Emerging Filmmakers Program, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation and CBC Maritimes.

*New producer at imX

ImX communications has hired Alan MacGillivray as executive producer. MacGillivray joins the Halifax-based production company after a 13-year tenure with Salter Street Films, where he handled a number of different roles.

MacGillivray started at Salter Street in 1986 as gm and treasurer and eventually held posts as senior vp of production, acting as the executive in charge of production for This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and as associate producer on the mow Life With Billy.

*Vision tells the story

After screenings at the Atlantic Film Festival and the St. John’s International Women’s Film and Video Festival, St. John’s, Nfld.-based Codlessco’s docudrama The Untold Story will air nationally on Vision tv on Nov. 18.

Made for under $600,000 The Untold Story was written by Marian Frances White and coproduced by White and her sister M. White. Greg Malone directed. The 54-minute historical film examines the struggle of Newfoundland women to win their right to vote, telling the story with dramatic recreations, documentary footage, rare photographs and interviews.

Life after The Untold Story sees Marian Frances White currently in development on a new one-hour documentary, tentatively called Circus on the High Seas. Backed thus far by Vision, the doc will begin filming in summer 2000 at the Great Northern Peninsula. White says the film will document circuses of all sorts throughout history, incorporating live performances, old footage and photographs. A director for the project has yet to be named.

*Loyalties pays off

Congratulations are in order for Ziji Productions. The Halifax-based production company will be receiving the prestigious Canada Award at the Gemini Awards for its critically acclaimed film Loyalties.

The documentary, produced and directed by Lesley Ann Patten, is a coproduction of Ziji and the National Film Board’s Kent Martin in association with ctv. It also picked up the best social issues documentary award at this year’s Hot Docs festival in Toronto.

The hour-long film is about a pair of women named Carmelita and Ruth who find they are connected historically through slavery. The two venture to South Carolina to explore their ancestral past.

Patten says much of the film’s success is owed to its two subjects. ‘Without their generosity, above and beyond the call of duty, the film wouldn’t have the kind of poignancy that it has,’ says Patten. ‘Because they were willing to just be themselves, they sort of opened other people’s minds to the issues of slavery and also to the issues of racism as it exists today.’

Patten and Martin will be in Toronto to receive the award at the live broadcast of the Geminis on Nov. 7.