Great North Communications president Andy Thomson is adamant that Prairie production will not be affected by Alliance Atlantis Communications’ purchase of the Edmonton-based company last month, even though as a result of the deal Thomson has been appointed exec vp of Alliance Atlantis Television Production and will be based in Toronto.

Reached at the Edmonton office of Great North, Thomson, who is set to divide his time between Toronto and Edmonton on a week-on-week-off basis for the first 18 months, said he anticipates the acquisition to have no ill effects on Great North’s fortunes.

‘My personal relationship with the Prairies is obviously not going to be as involved as it was prior to this, but Great North Productions’ relationship will stay exactly the same. Great North Productions will maintain, and hopefully expand, its current slate of about 100 hours per year.

‘Great North is the only documentary production company wholly owned by Alliance Atlantis and they/we will obviously be motivated to ensure that Great North continues to be busy. I think that Great North will continue to be the jewel in the crown of the new factual division at Alliance Atlantis, and it will be one of the major focuses if not the major focus of my new job.’

While Great North International, the company’s marketing and distribution arm, is to be folded into aac’s Toronto-based television distribution unit, Great North Productions will remain headquartered in Edmonton and focussed on the production of factual programming.

*Wheels and deals

Women from around the country are being invited to submit stories concerning their relationship with cars for an upcoming Credo Entertainment series.

Women’s relationship with their cars is the topic of Head over Wheels, which the Winnipeg-based company is calling an ‘auto’ biography doc series. The 13-parter, due to premiere on the Women’s Television Network in fall 2001, is currently looking for personal first-hand accounts from women drivers chronicling their experiences with cars. The series will include interviews with women relating the manner in which motor vehicles have affected their lives.

Series director Shereen Jerrett (Kid Nerd, Dog Stories) says she was ‘blown away’ by the response to Canada-wide newspaper advertisements soliciting tales of car capers.

‘The response has been heartfelt. Women have called in with everything from their first sexual encounter in a car to crazy traffic incidents and nightmare road trips. These women feel really strongly about their cars.’

The series goes into production Aug .8 for a fall delivery.

Funding sources include wtn, the lfp, Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film & Sound. Credo Releasing is distrbuting worldwide.

Women with stories to tell can call 1-877-434-0003 or e-mail wheels@pangea.ca.

*Solitude for Bluteau

St. Peter’s Abbey, in the town of Muenster, outside Saskatoon, is experiencing its 15 minutes of fame

The century-old abbey was the principal setting for the 20-day shoot of Solitude, an 88-minute feature film produced by Regina’s Zima Junction Productions.

Solitude tells of the relationships that develop between two women retreatants and a monk at a rural monastery. Lothaire Bluteau of Black Robe and I Shot Andy Warhol fame stars as Brother Bernard, with Vanessa Martinez and Wendy Anderson in the other two principal roles.

The feature, directed by Robin Schlaht, who cowrote the script with Connie Gault, is slated to hit the festival circuit in January 2001, with a theatrical release following in September. The $750,000 project received funding assistance from Telefilm Canada and Saskfilm, with secondary funding coming from and the Saskatchewan Arts Board and Canada Council.

Executive producers on the project were Don Copeman and Larry Bauman. dop was Patrick McLaughlin.

Distrib is Edge Entertainment.

*Playing hide n seek

Francophones in Manitoba will get some coverage in hide n seek, a short film shot last month by Winnipeg filmmaker Carole O’Brien. The 25-minute project, from Buffalo Gal Pictures, focuses on a woman’s experiences with death throughout her life and features both English and French dialogue and subtitles.

‘The dynamics of the dialogue in this film represents the reality of living as a francophone in Manitoba today,’ says O’Brien, who wrote and directed the film. ‘You are surrounded by anglophone culture and you have to struggle daily to speak your own language.’

Producer Shawn Watson says of the project, ‘I’m interested in working with filmmakers who reflect the broad cultural mix of people on the prairies. French communities outside of Quebec are often invisible to Canadians, so I believe it’s important to share their stories.’

The short has come in at roughly $67,000, funded mainly by grants from the Manitoba Arts Council, with additional assistance coming from the Canada Council for post and crew deferrals.

The film, due for delivery in December, has already received verbal confirmations from the cbc for its Canadian Reflections series and from wtn for its Through Her Eyes slot. The project, lensed by Brian Rougeau, has a day of second unit this month before editing can commence.

That’s Incredible

a homegrown kids series, already seen around the world, has expanded its horizons with a new offshore component.

The Incredible Story Studio from Regina-based Minds Eye Pictures features stories written by kids, for kids, and performed by kids. It has 125 million viewers worldwide.

For the first time the tween series’ scripts are to include tales from children living outside Canada, with submissions coming from children in the u.k., France, Martinique and Taiwan.

The series’ fourth season of 13 half-hours started shooting in Galway, Ireland in June, using stories selected from a collection of works by more than 150,000 children. After a month’s filming, the series returned to Regina for the remainder of the summer and into fall to shoot Canadian children’s stories.

Says Kevin DeWalt, executive producer of the series: ‘Incredible Story Studio is now more than just a great tv series, it’s a mechanism for kids from all nations to have a voice on one of the world’s most pervasive mediums – television. That’s powerful.’

The series airs on ytv in Canada and is distributed by Minds Eye International. *