Vancouver: Late last month, Vancouver’s City Council unanimously passed a proposal to create space dedicated to Vancouver’s domestic production community – thanks in large part to the efforts of the Vancouver International Film Festival Society and the city’s cultural planning department.

The 13,700-square-foot Vancouver International Film Centre on Seymour Street (across the alley from the new Scotiabank Dance Centre) will feature a 170-seat multimedia screening room that will be able to accommodate a variety of formats.

‘The whole spirit of the facility is forward-looking,’ says Vancouver International Film Festival director Alan Franey. ‘We want to become known as a space for independent Canadian production and art cinema.’

While the centre will be home base for VIFF and the Trade Forum, it will also serve as a festival venue and there will be room for local production companies to have offices. On-site production space might include a stage or edit suites.

The facility will be located in a new twin-tower residential complex constructed by developer Amacon Group, which gets a density bonus (it can build a bigger building) by accommodating the film center.

Construction could start next spring, with occupancy two years after that.

A woman with influence

Vancouver-based Prophecy Entertainment is engineering what it hopes will be its biggest (or at least most important) production to date.

If the planets align, production on The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie could begin in November in Victoria, says Prophecy spokesperson Loveena Chera. The budget will be in the magnitude of $3 million to $6 million.

Gena Rowlands (A Woman Under the Influence) and Trevor Morgan (Hardball) star in the coming-of-age story about a troubled boy who spends his summer working as a handyman for an elderly woman who has had an unfortunate life. Prophecy is also negotiating with actor James Caan to play the school principal.

Paul Johansson (Conversations In Limbo) will direct and Nick Cassavetes (The Sky is Green) will be an executive producer.

This year’s man

Vancouver-made mini-DV feature The Sons of Cohen has completed post-production, according to producers Meghan Ciana (Old Man in the Crosswalk) and Patrick Thomas (44 Productions). The feature was shot Dogme-style.

Todd Witham and Kennedy Goodkey star as two daydreamers who believe they are the sons of Leonard Cohen and go on a road trip from Vancouver to Montreal to meet the poet. Along the way, they encounter a bag of pot, a drug dealer, a tireless cop and beautiful women. The soundtrack features nine Cohen songs covered by nine Vancouver indie bands.

Ciana also directed.

Let’s be Frank

Local post house Lost Boys Studios has completed the in-house animated short Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance. The three-minute-plus production, made over two years between ‘paying gigs,’ is adapted from the story by children’s author and illustrator Keith Graves of Texas. Frank is a monster whose lack of co-ordination and tendency to literally fall apart does not deter him from dancing at a local theater.

Boy-meets-boy

Filmmaker Quentin Lee may drift between Vancouver and L.A., but the Canadian’s first feature Drift will stick around the Cinemark Tinseltown Theatres for a big-screen engagement Oct. 19.

The gay film – about a screenwriter who questions his relationship – debuted at the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in June. It cost $110,000 to produce on digital video and blow up to 35mm, and that includes the $60,000 that Lee got from the Canada Council for the Arts. Along with the Tinseltown gig, Drift has sold to PrideVision and will get a promotional push in November through Rogers Video First Rights Canada program.

Blow the lid

CHUM’s The New VI (CIVI) launched Oct. 4 in Victoria with its first independent production. The Building of Pandora’s Box, a half-hour by Victoria producer Howard Markson, tells the story of how CIVI got started in the heritage building it occupies at Broad Street and Pandora Avenue.

The New VI has committed $7 million over four years to Vancouver Island’s independent production community.