Vancouver: American producers may be taking a break these days, but not so Paperny Films of Vancouver. The aggressive documentary company – which has had significant success with its Showcase documentary series Kink – has five new projects scheduled for summer shoots. The slate of business is worth $2.8 million in budgets.

Having led the trend in reality TV with its CBC docusoap Brewery Creek in 1998, Paperny is back at it with Singles, a reality show for Life Network. Over 13 episodes, Paperny will follow 10 unattached Vancouverites in their quest for love and romance. Production begins this month and producers are still looking for subjects. Call the Singles Hotline at 604-837-4769 or e-mail info@papernyfilms.com.

In other production, Vancouver-based celebrity chef Rob Feenie, whose star is soaring in the world of fashionable cuisine, gets his own cooking show for Food Network Canada. The 13-part New Classics with Chef Rob Feenie will be shot primarily at his kitchen at Lumiere in Vancouver.

Production is already underway for Global’s documentary Daredevils and Dreamers, which tells the story of Grant McConachie and Gordon McGregor, the pilots who created Canadian Pacific Airlines and Air Canada. Daredevils and Dreamers is a 50-50 coproduction with Vancouver’s Lightship Media and filmmaker Terry McKeown.

For CBC, Paperny begins production this month on The Life & Times of Ivan Reitman, the Czech refugee who came to Canada as a child and grew into a director of Hollywood blockbuster comedies.

And Paperny has hired Vancouver-based indie film directors James Dunnison and Carl Bessai to do two one-hour documentaries about two genres of independent film. Indie Truth will examine non-fiction film and Indie Fantastic will boldly go into the world of sci-fi. Together they comprise Indie Exposed, Paperny’s expandable series for the Independent Film Channel. Production also begins this month.

Later this year, meanwhile, Paperny’s documentary To Love, Honour and Obey, which chronicles the sad story of a young Sikh woman from Vancouver murdered for marrying the wrong man, will air on CTV.

And Forced March to Freedom, Paperny’s ambitious war documentary about the 10,000 Allied airmen at Stalag Luft III, airs on History Television on Remembrance Day.

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The producers of Vancouver-made interactive movie Point of View are claiming to be the first to offer their feature freely through streaming media to Internet users visiting www.povthemovie.com – that is four of the 12 chapters in the story about a woman and her obsession with a male neighbor. For the whole experience, you will have to ante up US$29.95 (or $46) to get the whole story on DVD.

POV is the second interactive feature for director David Wheeler and producer Rob Landeros, who made waves in the world of DVD and multimedia in 1998 with Tender Loving Care, one of the first interactive features. TLC, based on the book by Andrew Neiderman, told the story of a family devastated by the loss of a child and introduction of a live-in nurse. Shot in Oregon on film, the story was adapted by Wheeler, starred John Hurt, and cost $2 million to deliver on DVD.

With the success of TLC, Toronto native Wheeler and American Landeros decided to expand from their base at Aftermath Media in Ashland, OR to open sister company Digital Circus Entertainment in Vancouver to take advantage of, among other pluses, Telefilm Canada’s multimedia funding programs.

POV, meanwhile, was shot in Vancouver 15 months ago on DV and cost private investors about $1 million to deliver to distributor DVD International in New York.

Written and directed by Wheeler, POV features the acting talents of locals Stefanie von Pfetten, Chris Bradford, Paul Jarrett, Christopher Shyer, Samantha Crew, Sarah Rodgers and Larry Musser.

Rather than simply asking viewers what should happen next, the POV DVD compiles a kind of psychological profile of the viewers. Those answers direct how the story proceeds and ends.

Digital Circus is in discussions with investors to produce four interactive movies over the next 24 months. In the meantime, the producers are returning to their interactive gaming roots to produce Diddley, a multimedia crossword.

New beat

Vancouver’s Force Four Productions, well established as a documentary maker, is making its first foray into drama with the $3-million CBC MOW Jinnah on Crime – Pizza 911. Pitched at Banff 2000, the TV movie is based on Don Hauka’s novel Mr. Jinnah and tells the story of an Indo-Canadian crime reporter. Hauka is a reporter for The Province newspaper in Vancouver and cowrote the screenplay with husband-and-wife team Bartley and Margaret Bard.

Dhirendra Miyanger, originally from the U.K., stars and Canadian Pamela Sinha (Traders) costars in the mystery involving the charred remains of a human body in a pizza oven.

Production runs July 16 to Aug. 21. Force Four has a second Jinnah storyline in development as part of a potential series or an ongoing collection of MOWs.

Crime and punishment

Vancouver filmmaker Glynis Whiting has wrapped principal photography on When Girls Do It: The Story of Female Sexual Predators, a hard-hitting, one-hour documentary exploring the motivations of women who abuse and the devastating effects of their crimes. A 19-year-old woman convicted of drugging and molesting children, serves as a case study in the production that shot in Prince George, Vancouver, Vancouver Island and Dallas.

Maureen Prentice is the producer; CTV will broadcast.

And the cheque goes to…

Vancouver writer/director Cameron Labine took top honors at the third annual Shavick Awards, which recognizes emerging directors in Western Canada. His 10-minute short film Room, was funded in part by the Kick Start program sponsored by the Directors Guild of Canada and Telefilm. The Shavick prize gives the UBC film grad another $10,000. Room is about two couples who betray each other.

Howie Woo from Coquitlam won second prize and $5,000 for his 16mm black-and-white short film Reveries and Rocketships. Set in the 1940s, the film features a dying amnesiac and his surreal journey through fractured memories. Previously, Woo received production grant awards from the British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council.

Third prize and $2,000 went to Vancouver writer/director Boris Ivanov for his first production, Seven Storeys. In the short film, a man checks himself into a clinic only to find himself at the mercy of the hospital staff and their mysterious agenda. Ivanov is a one-time child actor from Moscow.

The winners were announced June 26.

I am a filmmaker

Alter Entertainment of Vancouver produced two 20-minute videos for the Molson Canadian Big Birthday events held across the country July 1. Directed by Jeanne Harco, who coproduced with Paul Armstrong, the videos are called a rock-and-roll celebration featuring Canadian acts such as Alanis Morissette, Nelly Furtado, Bif Naked, Econoline Crush, 54-40, Wide Mouth Mason, Gob and others. *