Montreal: Primesco International and producer Goulam Amarsy are shooting two new imax films, Bears, directed by Sudbury, Ont.-based Science North biologist and filmmaker David Lickley (Shooting Star), and the nature adventure Lost Worlds: Life in the Balance from director Bayley Silleck (Cosmic Voyage, Exploring the Deep Ocean).

The films are simultaneously originated in the imax 15/70 format and on the new Sony hd 750-A camera for parallel hdtv distribution, at the request of various clients including pbs affiliate wgbh Boston and Discovery Channel. ‘We’re looking for good Canadian stories in hd,’ Amarsy says.

Lost Worlds is a 40-minute imax 2D film produced with scientific and funding support from the National Science Foundation, with the participation of the American Museum of Natural History. Six weeks of aerial and vista shooting in Venezuela are complete, with more to come in Panama, New York City and Guatemala.

Tax credits, an advance (25%) from a u.s. distrib, sponsors and museum presales, and a gap-financing deal with fidec make up the film’s $8.9-million budget. ‘imax is expensive,’ says Amarsy. ‘And thanks to the creation of fidec we’re able to do these features.’

Primesco has world rights except the u.s.

Bears (grizzlies, polars and giant pandas) costs $6 million and is being filmed in Churchill, Man. and Montana starting next month, Resolute Bay in April, and Alaska in June, July and August. Chris Palmer is exec producer and James Marchbank is producing with Amarsy.

Primesco is the international distrib for Stephen Low’s Super Speedway and the David Douglas film Wolves, as well as for Discovery Channel Pictures’ imax 2D movie Wildfire.

‘There is a cottage industry of imax filmmakers here [in Montreal],’ says Amarsy, ‘and I would like to salute two of the best imax directors – Stephen Low and Colin Low – and Pascal Blais (producer of Alexandre Petrov’s The Old Man and the Sea), who is nominated for an Oscar.’

*Slater, Hyderdahl star in Nowhere in Sight

Principal photography is complete on the latest Doug Jackson thriller, Nowhere in Sight, produced by Kimberley Berlin of Blackwatch Productions.

Jackson says Nowhere in Sight was shot over 20, 11-hour days, ‘with not a minute of overtime and lots of special effects,’ including a fire-burn and a high-window fall.

Nowhere in Sight stars Helen Slater in a convincing character portrayal of a blind, then kidnapped woman, Andrew McCarthy and Fargo-esque bad guy Chris Hyerdahl, ‘who in my opinion is the best actor in Canada,’ says the director.

‘After doing all of these thrillers, the thing that makes this film stand out, and the reason I believe it will do very well, maybe even a theatrical release, is the blind element in the story, the depiction of a sympathetic woman blinded in a traffic accident,’ says Jackson. ‘What we tried to do besides make it a thriller was create a drama about what it’s like to be suddenly blinded. It’s also an opportunity to showcase the new tools and support blind people have these days.’

James Lemmo wrote the screenplay, which Jackson adapted. Bruno Philip was the dop and Csaba Kertesz art directed.

Jackson has penned a feature script called The Chinese Sex Secrets, a romance-comedy based on ancient Taoist sex writings, which he hopes to direct for producers Don Carmody and Dimitri Samaha, and another project for Muse Entertainment producer Michael Prupas.

Jackson spent more than 20 years doing docudramas with the National Film Board and has directed on many tv episodics (Wiseguy, Emily of New Moon, Psi Factor).

And he’s become one of the city’s busiest directors, working on a slew of low-budget thrillers (in the $2.2-million range) including Someone Is Watching (Filmo Bandito), starring Margot Kidder; Requiem for Murder (Allegro/Motion) with Molly Ringwald; Random Encounter; False Pretense (Allegro), starring Eric Roberts; the higher-budget feature Natural Enemy (Filmline International), starring Tia Carrere, Lesley Ann Warren and Donald Sutherland; and Deadbolt, starring Justine Bateman. In all, Jackson has completed nine films for Allegro/Motion, with new deals pending with Blackwatch, Motion and Pierre David for w.i.n. and producer Claudio Castravelli of Taurus 7 Film Corp.

Nowhere in Sight received additional funding from Super Ecran and TMN-The Movie Network.

*Wild Heart has APTN comedy

Wild Heart Productions has finalized development on The History of North America (working title), a 30-minute native ‘sketch and streeters’ comedy series for aptn.

‘The series will feature many of the top talents from across the country,’ says exec producer Catherine Bainbridge. ‘Now that their [aptn’s subscriber] money is starting to come in they’re making decisions, and they’re going for a native comedy series with us. I’m thrilled. A lot of people don’t know just how funny natives are, how close comedy is to tragedy.’

Bainbridge, a former reporter with the Winnipeg Free Press and cbmt-tv, cbc’s affiliate in Montreal, and a legit theatre producer, will produce in association with Beesum Communications, which she also owns.

Beesum’s Cree director/producer team of Ernest Webb and Neil Diamond are also developing Cree Spoken Here, a half-hour aptn doc on the resurgence of native language in Northern Quebec.

Bainbridge’s partner Katerina Cizek is just back from Belgium where Wild Heart – Europe and a u.k. outfit coproduced three stories for tv on the water crisis in central Europe.

The house is in post on Jess Goes West, a Guylaine Dionne (Fantomes des trois Madeleine) doc on jazz musician Jessica Vigneault (daughter of famous singer/composer Gilles Vigneault), who heads west on a cross-country quest for her roots. The film is budgeted at $190,000, with funding from Telefilm Canada, sodec, the National Film Board (services) ‘and a very large licence fee from wtn.’ It airs on the wtn series Through Her Eyes.

Directors/producers Bainbridge and Cizek (Power of the North, The Dead Are Alive: Eyewitness in Rwanda) are the recipients of this year’s WIFT/Kodak Award for most-promising new filmmakers.

*Moscow story wraps Living in the City

Macumba International director Patricio Henriquez and dop Andrei Khabad start two-and-a-half weeks filming in Moscow March 7 on Moscow: un ville en suspens, the final episode in the 13-hour series Vivre en ville/Living in the City. The episode looks at the winners and losers in the New Russia and, like earlier installments, is based on an impressionistic, strictly non-tourist view of the world’s major mega-cities through the lives of ordinary, dynamic working people.

In ’99, Henriquez, director Robert Corneillier and Macumba producer Raymonde Provencher taped episodes in New York, Mexico City and Hong Kong.

Episodes of Living in the City are budgeted at under $300,000, with funding from Tele-Quebec, TV5, Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund. International distrib The Multimedia Group of Canada is versioning the entire series in English.

mgc has sold 11 Septembre 1973 – Le Dernier combat de Salvadore Allende, Henriquez’s riveting ’99 chronicle of the final 24 hours of murdered Chilean president Salvador Allende, to 17 countries. Buyers include Tele-Quebec, scn and History Television in Canada, France 3, Discovery-Europe and public broadcasters in Taiwan, Portugal, Denmark and Italy.

The doc has been invited to more than 20 international festivals, taking top honors at Mumbai in Bombay and at Hot Docs! (best history), and was voted best tv doc by Societe civile des auteurs multimedia in France.

Henriquez, like many others in the local doc sector, is very preoccupied with the ctf’s new ‘visibly Canadian elements’ regulations.

Docs represent only a fraction of the overall information landscape, dominated by the American media, and the director says ‘Canada has to maintain its landmark documentary window on the world.’

In project evaluation meetings with pubcasters like Tele-Quebec and Radio-Canada, Mucumba’s internationally oriented proposals start out with a 15-point ctf deficit, he says. ‘Even with the best of efforts there are no international projects which can score higher than [about half the maximum number of points]. And we already know broadcasters have a lot of [locally filmed] projects which are close to [the maximum].’

Henriquez says Tele-Quebec and src are doing all they can but can’t substitute extra-high licence fees on every international project. If he’s right, and the new ctf ranking system effectively excludes international docs, producers will be looking at a 20% budgetary shortfall, and an important element of our social and political understanding will be reduced.

*Upcoming Quebec film action

documentary director Bernard Emond makes his feature film debut this month with La femmme qui boit. acpav’s Bernadette Payeur, producer on the just-wrapped Pierre Falardeau historical drama 15 Fevrier 1839, is producing. Sylvie De Grandpre is art director and Jean-Claude Labrecque is the dop.

* Director George Mihalka (Dr. Lucille: The Story of Lucille Teasdale) and Motion International producer Claude Bonin begin filming March 27 for six weeks on new episodes of Radio-Canada’s high-tech spy adventure series Haute Surveillance. Francois Lamontange is the art director and Valerie Allard is pm.

* Director Allan Moyle (Rubber Gun Show, New Waterford Girl) is helming Xchange, a Locomotion (Xchange Productions) tv movie for Home Box Office. Jean Desormeaux and Marc S. Grenier are producing. stcvq shoot dates are March 13 to April 15. Martha Fernandez is pm and Andre Chamberland is the art director.

* On n’est pas la pour s’aimer, a Production Filmguard feature from Transfilm producer Claude Leger and director Daniel Janneau, is slated to shoot Feb. 24 to March 13.

* Yul Films producer Francois Pouliot and France’s Alterego Productions are coproducing the Michel Welterlin feature debut Des cheins dans la neige. The suspenser stars Jean-Philippe Ecoffier and Montreal actors Marie-Josee and Romano Orzari. Filming goes from March 19 to April 20 with dop Yves Belanger and art director Dominique Desrochers on board.