Vancouver: Producer Robert McDonagh of Vancouver’s Fortress Films has pulled off a double hat trick with the six-part anthology Hotel he directed for Bravo!.

Each five-ish-minute vignette (used as filler by the broadcaster) takes place in a single Vancouver hotel one day in July.

The project – coproduced with Norman Armour of Vancouver’s Rumble Productions – features screenwriters Veda Hille, the collective called The Electric Company, McDonagh, and the duo Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan – all from Vancouver. Also writing for the anthology are Michael McLennan and Martha Ross from Toronto.

The $49,000 project features nearly 20 Vancouver actors, including Babz Chula, Tom McBeath and Kevin McNulty.

The shorts will air independently of each other on Bravo!, but the filmmakers hope a 30-minute compilation will entice a broadcaster with a bigger window to fill.

Fittingly, the shorts premiered at a special screening Feb. 1 at the Holiday Inn on Howe, where the filmmakers used six hotel rooms as locations. The series is also a highlight of the 7th annual Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival that runs Feb. 2-11.

Bravo!fact and the BC 2000 Arts and Heritage Fund are the backers.

•Seven-year itch

And speaking of the Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival’Victoria-boy-done-good Atom Egoyan headlines the 10-day event (Feb. 2-11) by teaching a Master Class on directing and showcasing his 53-minute film Krapp’s Last Tape (starring John Hurt).

World premieres include Cahoots by American actor/director Dirk Benedict, who also adds glitter by attending the event with star Keith Carradine. Cahoots is called a twisted take on Butch and Sundance. And singer Ami Mann’s debut feature Morning, about small-town friends whose lives take wildly different paths, also screens for the first time.

Festival director Kathy Kay oversees the full program of features, shorts and industry panels.

•Action, Lola, Action!

Wrapping in Vancouver on Feb. 20 is Lola, the second feature by director Carl Bessai (Johnny).

The film, described as a ‘loose, Cassevetes-style’ production, features an impressive cast list including Sabrina Grdevich (Milgaard), Colm Feore (Titus, The Insider), Joanna Going (Wyatt Earp), Janet Wright (The Perfect Storm), Ian Tracey (Da Vinci’s Inquest) and Chris Martin (Johnny).

The story follows a troubled woman and her search for identity. It’s the second installment of Bessai’s trilogy on the theme of ‘self-definition’ that began with the Dogma-inspired Johnny, a critical hit at the ’99 Toronto International Film Festival.

Lola will be distributed by Blackwatch Releasing and is produced in association with Telefilm Canada, Superchannel and TMN-The Movie Network.

Curious contract

mainframe Entertainment of Vancouver has struck a deal with u.s. publishing house Houghton Mifflin to develop Whiteblack The Penguin for feature film and television.

Written in 1937 by Margaret and H.A. Rey, the creators of Curious George, Whiteblack was unpublished until last year.

‘Whiteblack is great family entertainment,’ says the senior vp of creative affairs Dan DiDio. ‘We’re very pleased to be able to attain these rights and look forward to developing it to its fullest potential across several distribution platforms.’

•Apple for the iTeacher

The Center for Digital Image and Sound, a private Burnaby-based entertainment technology school, is offering a two-year program called iNet – designed for entrepreneurial ‘netcasters’ looking at the Internet as broadcasting’s future.

The program targets independent producers, and is focused on content provision, production and delivery.

‘The iNet program borrows heavily from standards developed in professional broadcast training,’ says Niels Hartvig-Nielsen, cdis ceo. Jobs are already being posted as major Web portals seek specialists to handle their streaming media needs, he adds. ‘It’s the people who get in early and are willing to struggle through the growing pains who will inevitably rise to the top of these new fields.’

The iNet course costs $11,500 per year in tuition. Courses are usually limited to no more than 12 people. (www.artschool.com)

•Runaway production

After the Edge Films, which opened for business in Vancouver on Oct. 1, has completed principal photography on the feature film Sol Goode – shot and being posted in l.a. Actually – before we break out the placards and start marching in picket lines about runaway production – After the Edge is in partnership with l.a.-based companies Immortal Films (Life Without Dick) and Newman/Tooley Films (A Better Way to Die).

Balthazar Getty, Tori Spelling, Cheri Oteri and Robert Wagner are in the cast of the romantic comedy about best friends in l.a. trying to sort out their dysfunctional lives.

Company principals at After the Edge include former film industry union organizer Steve McLellan as president, land developer/philanthropist Evelyn DiCotiis as vp, actor/producer Mar Andersons (Barbecue’a love story) as head of development and actor/filmmaker Alistair Abell as head of production.

•True tales from Lotus Land

CBC-B.C.., always trying to serve this market with few resources, started to air a documentary stream called See bc on cbc Jan. 27 for a several-week run.

The repackaged documentaries by b.c. independent filmmakers and journalists began with A Stranger in Our Home by Melanie Wood, about Internet sexual predators.

Other titles to air include Caring on the Inside by Sara Darling, about young inmates in a Fraser Valley institution caring for ill and aging inmates.

Against the Current, about a small native fishery and its five-year struggle to rebuild salmon stocks, is by Maureen Palmer and George Orr.

Julia Ivanova’s doc From Russia, For Love is about b.c. families adopting children from Russia. And Wayne Williams’ Life Sentence: The Abby Drover Story features the first interviews with an adult Drover retelling her harrowing childhood story of kidnapping and abuse.

•Winners’ circle

• Get those Leo entries in. Feb. 9 is the deadline for the May 11-12 event. (www.leoawards.com)

• On Jan. 9, b.c.-made ‘cross-cultural’ productions The Courage To Stand and Leon Bibb’s A Step Ahead were named finalist award winners from among the 3,700 entries in the 43rd annual New York Festivals. Courage is an anti-racism documentary and Bibb was recognized in the human rights category.

Both docs aired on cfmt-tv Toronto, but haven’t been broadcast here since, well, we don’t have an over-the-air multicultural station.

• And on Feb. 16, Denise Donlon – a former Vancouverite and former vp/gm at Citytv, MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic – gets an award sponsored by her old boss from the cross-Canada Wired Women Society and Women in Film & Video Vancouver. civi, the new chum station slated to begin airing this fall, sponsored the inaugural ‘Woman of Vision’ award. Donlon is the new president of Sony Music Canada.

Other film and television honorees are Mary Anne Waterhouse (past treasurer of Women in Film & Video Vancouver), Ron Harvey (associate publisher at Reel West Productions), Melanie Friesen (producer of the Trade Forum at the Vancouver International Film Festival) and Rae Hull (regional director at cbc-b.c.). •