Vancouver: What is considered the first Dutch feature film to work in British Columbia goes into production in Nelson for five days Nov. 3-7.

The Cave (De Grot) – which also shoots in Holland, Belgium and Thailand – is based on the soon-to-be-published-in-English novel of the same name by Belgian Tim Krabbe. Martin Koolhoven (Suzy Q) directs.

The story travels 20 years and traces the intertwined lives of three people: a geologist, his con-man friend and a Canadian jeweler. According to the filmmakers, the story becomes a psychological thriller about evil and fate after the geologist’s mysterious visit to a cave.

Kim Huffman (Traders) plays the jeweler and Brendan Fletcher (Scorn) is another Canadian in the cast.

Krabbe, an acclaimed Dutch writer, previously wrote The Golden Egg, which was made into the Dutch film Spoorloos and was remade by 20th Century Fox as The Vanishing.

The Cave’s producer, Amsterdam-based Get Reel Productions (www.getreel.nl), produces films in Dutch and English. It is a coproducer of the Belgian film Everyone Famous!, which played at the Vancouver International Film Festival this month.

The Cave is scheduled for release in September 2001.

*Starting point

Mile Zero, the first feature film for Anagram Pictures of Vancouver, is in production until Oct. 26.

The $1.6-million feature – a road movie about a divorced dad who kidnaps his young son – is directed by Andrew Currie (short film Night of the Living) and produced by Trent Carlson and Blake Corbet. The trio owns Anagram.

Toronto-based Michael Melski wrote the screenplay.

Shot in Pemberton and Golden Ears Park, which allows the production to claim the lucrative regional tax credit, Mile Zero stars Michael Riley (Power Play), eight-year-old Connor Widdows and Sabina Grdevich (Hard Time: The David Milgaard Story).

Funding the project are British Columbia Film, the Canadian Television Fund and Telefilm Canada.

Showcase Television, Superchannel and TMN-The Movie Network are also on board. No theatrical distributor is attached yet.

Likely the next film to go into production, as early as next summer, is Expired, an ‘absurd comedy’ by Carlson about a parking enforcement officer.

The project has development funding.

*Web enabled

Producer Vince Hemingson of Pinnacle Entertainment in Vancouver is about to turn a popular, award-winning website into a broadcast documentary – with funding from Rogers, CanWest, the Aboriginal People’s Network and British Columbia Film.

The Vanishing Tattoo (www.vanishingtattoo.com) launched a year ago and has developed a cult Internet following and 60 Web design awards. An interactive site, vanishingtattoo.com looks at the history, rituals and social significance of tribal tattooing around the world through the eyes of Vancouver tattoo artist Thomas Lockhart.

The broadcast version goes on a quest for tattooing’s aboriginal roots, seeking to capture on film many of the elderly practitioners of the ancient art form.

In other convergence news, Alter Entertainment, which recently opened for business in Vancouver, has completed a series of Web videos for Vancouver Web design company Blast Radius. The videos are found at www.radiozelda.com.

The five clips, directed by Danny Nowak (Hard Core Logo, Twitch City), will comprise an online, Blair Witch-inspired ad campaign for Nintendo.

Motivated indie production organizers Paul Armstrong and Jeanne Harco, who host the long-running Celluloid Social Club, are the principals of Alter Entertainment (www.alterentertainment.com).

*Stop the presses

Breaking News, a pilot shot in Vancouver in the spring, is back for another 12 episodes and, if ratings are kind, yet another pack of nine episodes.

Produced by New Line Television for Turner Network, Breaking News is set in a 24-hour television newsroom that is similar to Turner’s cnn. Tim Matheson plays the lead.

In other u.s. service work, uber-producers Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis are scaring up a remake of 13 Ghosts, with F. Murray Abraham and Tony Shaloub in the cast and Warner Bros. as distributor. Like the 1960 original by director William Castle, 13 Ghosts tells the story of a family trapped in a house with spirits. The Bridge Studios in Burnaby plays host to the ghosts until about Dec. 8.

And Josie and the Pussycats goes from 2D animation to 3D real life for Universal. The feature, which includes Parker Posey, Rachael Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson, Gabrial Mann and Tara Reid, wraps two months of production Oct. 26.

*A-Mused again

Lisa Richardson’s Dogwood Pictures, through its affiliation with Montreal’s Muse Entertainment, is busy again with the $5-million Class Warfare, an mow for USA Network, TMN-The Movie Network and Superchannel. Pearson has the worldwide rights. It wrapped Oct. 2.

In the film, a high school-aged girl persuades her boyfriend to kill a classmate for his winning lottery ticket. It’s described by director Richard Shepard (Oxygen) as an edgy black comedy. Toronto writer George Finch is responsible for the words.

The production – replete with big explosions, car chases and cliff-jumping stunt people – stars Lindsey McKeon (The Opposite of Sex), Robin Dunne (Borderline Normal) and Wade Carpenter (7th Heaven). Raymond Massey produces.

*Mirror, mirror

The Pacific Motion Pictures and Hallmark partnership is being, again, fruitful with the three-hour mow Snow White, based on the classic fairy tale. Miranda Richardson stars. The production, which promises to use higher-end effects, wraps two months of production Oct. 6.

*Inner workings

Jack Nicholson, singer Bif Naked and Ogopogo were among those involved in the Okanagan’s local film scene this year, says Okanagan film commissioner Mark Flett.

More than $500,000 in production has wrapped in the interior region so far in 2000.

Nicholson was walking the streets of Hedley as the lead in Sean Penn’s feature The Pledge in the spring. Naked starred in Lunch with Charles, Michael Parker’s Hong Kong-Canadian road movie that drove through Summerland and the Kettle Valley Railway, also in the spring. And a news crew from Japan’s Nippon Television searched for the elusive Ogopogo monster in Okanagan Lake.

Commercial production for Hyundai, John Deere and, interestingly, the City of Vancouver round out what Flett calls a busy shooting schedule.

Producers from the region were also busy. Kelowna filmmakers Stuart Gray and Pat Wensley (New Trends Film and Video) produced The Grand Tour, a video tour of the local wine industry. Roz McKitrick wrote and directed the short film Everything’s Rosie through Lightspeed Video Production of Penticton. And Tripod Film and Video Production shot the short video Berlin Jazz Story.

According to the Okanagan Film Commission, productions have left $3.25 million in the region over the past 30 months. *