New Brunswick producer Bruce Dennis has a full plate heading into fall. Under the banner of his Fredericton production house, Millbrook Productions, Dennis has two feature films currently on the go.

The first project is a comedy/thriller titled Now You See Her. The film, an international coproduction with Critical Mass of Toronto, Spice Factory in the u.k. and Snowfall Films in l.a., is about an adman’s search for his wife after they become separated at a lobster festival. When he fails to find his spouse, local law officials begin to suspect he has murdered her.

James Thorpe wrote the script and John Doyle is slated to direct.

Producer Dennis says the project is being very well received.

‘It is moving very fast right now and we are very excited about it,’ he says. ‘We have a lot of excitement from a number of distributors. It is just getting the financing together, but I think it’ll come together fairly well. It’s a good story and it is generating a fair amount of excitement.’

Budgeted at approximately $3 million, the film is set to go into production next spring.

The second feature in the works at Millbrook is aimed more at family audiences. Hi Mom, I’m in Africa will be a Canadian/Danish coproduction with M&M Productions of Denmark.

The story is about a young boy who tires of listening to his parents bicker all the time. Just before Christmas it seems certain his parents’ marriage is doomed, and to avoid the heartache of seeing them split, the boy and a friend stow away on a plane headed for Africa.

‘They end up spending Christmas there,’ explains Dennis. ‘Then his family ends up going to Africa to spend Christmas as well, and in that environment they discover what the real meaning of Christmas is and the value of family. It’s a feel-good story and there are little twists on a few things.’

Denmark’s Viveke Muafya penned this wholesome project. Muafya is currently flirting with the idea of directing her story.

Dennis says a Canadian cowriter will probably be brought in to add a North American lilt to the film. ‘[Muafya] is Danish and she may want to work with someone from here,’ he says. ‘Her English is good, but she is still kind of a native writer, so we are looking for a cowriter to be able to put kind of a North America shine on the story. We want to aim it at a world market, but we also want it to work well in North America.’

The producers will split the shoot between locations in New Brunswick and Africa. Dennis grew up in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and now resides in New Brunswick, so he is ‘fairly well acquainted with the conditions [in both areas].’

‘It’s hard to simulate Africa in New Brunswick,’ he laughs. ‘Hi Mom is set at Christmas and we want to get snow, so we’ll do that portion here in the winter and the rest in Africa. I guess we don’t have to worry too much about snow there.’

*Trailer Park invaded by Tough Guys

Barry Dunn of Trailer Park Productions in Halifax is very excited about some very tough guys. Tough Guys, in fact, is the title of a new documentary he is producing with fellow Haligonian Mike Volpe of Topsail Entertainment for ctv.

The one-hour doc examines fighting in the sport of hockey as seen through the eyes of the players themselves.

‘There is so much talk about violence in hockey and a lot of it has sort of an academic bent to it,’ says Dunn. ‘It is not a point-of-view doc, but it is the point of view of the players. We let the players tell the story, follow their lives and see what drives these guys.’

The subjects of the film are not, however, National Hockey League players, but rather what Dunn calls third-tier minor professional players.

‘These guys are pros,’ assures Dunn. ‘They get paid for their jobs, but it’s not glamor in the sense that it is not nhl. The chance of these guys actually making it to the nhl is probably really slim, but not impossible.’

He says Don Cherry will be proud.

‘It’s all-Canadian boys. We’re talking about Canadian hockey players who, when they played in their home towns, were probably stars in their own right, who for one reason or another haven’t made it to the big leagues.’

The doc is being written by Dunn and directed by Mike Clattenberg, who worked with Dunn and Volpe on Topsail’s soon-to-air series Trailer Park Boys.

Dunn is excited to be again working with Clattenberg , who, oddly, isn’t a big hockey fan.

‘I can’t think of anybody better to shoot this documentary,’ says Dunn. ‘In some ways I think it is perfect because he doesn’t come in with any preconceived notion about hockey or tough guys or anything. I think he’s going to come in and do his quirky view of the world.’

Dunn says he, Clattenberg and Volpe will be heading out to training camps in September and October to scout prospects for their film. He hopes to begin shooting in January.

*Pittman’s Making Love in St. Pierre

Ken Pittman will be parking himself in a director’s chair for the first time in more than five years when his new feature Making Love in St. Pierre begins shooting. Pittman, president of St. John’s-based Red Ochre Productions, will not only receive a director credit for his efforts, but also those of producer and writer.

The story, says Pittman, is about a young married couple whose relationship is falling apart for a number of reasons, one of which many Newfoundlanders will remember not so fondly.

‘It takes place in the early 1990s when the cod moratorium was announced by the government and 30,000 people in this area lost their jobs,’ says Pittman. ‘This event is taking a toll on the relationship.’

The couple decides to rekindle their relationship by taking a trip to St. Pierre, an island owned by France off the coast of Newfoundland and cherished throughout The Rock as a destination for a romantic getaway because of its French culture and architecture.

‘I was trying to combine the trauma and the feelings of personal catastrophe many people experienced in the closing of the fishery,’ says Pittman of his script. ‘I put a lovers’ getaway up against the cod moratorium to try to explore the kinds of ways people deal with things that are outside their scale, which they are confronted with but have no control over. It’s about how they sometimes purposely and sometimes subconsciously explore their more intimate world as a way to protect themselves from the onslaught on the outside.’

To date, all funding has been internal. The film, tentatively budgeted at $800,000, will be coproduced by Fredericton’s Cinefile Productions and producer Barry Cameron.

Pittman’s script, reportedly in its eighth draft (after a four-year writing process), will be shot on digital video when production gets underway. The born-again director, whose last film was No Apologies in 1995, is hopeful shooting will begin next summer.

‘I’ve done this before [directing], but it has been a while and I’ve missed that experience,’ says Pittman. ‘This is a scale of a project where I’d like to do it again. If it were a much larger project, I’d probably be much more sensible about it.’

Pittman says his affiliation with Cinefile opens a number of vital casting opportunities. Because of New Brunswick’s large francophone population, Pittman hopes he and Cameron can find the right cast members to fill some important roles for the St. Pierre-based portion of the film. *