Heartland Motion Pictures of Regina is winding down its operations and closing its doors after 13 years of production.

Stephen Onda, the company’s president, puts the move down to his desire to be a hands-on producer, something managing the 15-employee company left him little time to pursue.

‘We created the company around ourselves to protect product. The company was never designed to be some kind of corporate empire. The tail began wagging the dog. The infrastructure that was built to facilitate product was requiring more attention and care than actual production. We had a very slick infrastructure, but only one person was out pursuing new projects and that’s me. The company became the priority, not the projects.

‘It’s an orderly wind-down, not a bankruptcy. No one’s forcing us to do this. There’s a bit of reluctance because I’ve been very proud of Heartland.’

Among Heartland’s major projects is the feature Borderline Normal, which premiered at this year’s Montreal World Film Festival.

Heartland was a coproducer with Toronto’s Shaftesbury Films on the romantic comedy feature Conquest, which premiered at wff in 1998 and won for best Canadian feature film at the Atlantic Film Festival that year.

Onda’s involvement with another Regina company, interactive producer Tyndal Stone Media, which he co-owned with Leif Storm and where he held the title ceo, is also coming to an end, although the company will continue in a ‘downsized’ state, Onda says.

‘I enjoyed the learning curve; the last five years have been great in the new media area and I think Tyndal can grow from here, but I’m not a new media guy, and though I enjoyed the adventure in creating [the company], Storm can take it from here.’

Onda is not likely to let his creative brain get stale, with several projects already in development.

Among these new projects is Better Than Sex, a feature to be made with Borderline Normal director Jeff Beesley.

‘It’s a comedy about selling your soul,’ Onda says. ‘Three car salesmen are invited to a luncheon to sell themselves to a luxury car dealer who is offering one job to the three of them to be his next star seller. It’s about how we all want to be accepted.’

The project, budgeted at $3 million, has been prelicensed to TMN-The Movie Network and Superchannel, with production tentatively scheduled for summer 2001.

Other films he has planned include Eliza’s Secret, a low-budget dramatic feature in development with Citytv and Rig Town Pictures of Ontario, and The Living End, another a low-budget dramatic feature, to be coproduced with Toronto’s Victorious Films, set and to be shot in the Prairies.

Onda is also in development on a series called North Central, a drama set in inner-city Regina concerning two women, one a white reporter, one a native Canadian defense lawyer, who were raised together and are now raising their children together in a shared house.

Also in development is a three-part documentary series called Play that ‘looks at play, at the big picture. We look at infant play, adolescent play and adult play and explore the similarities and differences in different play all over the world,’ explains Onda. ‘At first you think everyone’s so different, but after you’ve been somewhere for a while you realize everyone’s really the same. Play is a fascinating thing to look at.’ *

-www.heartlandmotionpicture.com