Based on a play by Cape Breton Island’s Daniel MacIvor, with an almost entirely local cast, Marion Bridge is the first feature for both Bill Niven’s Halifax-based Idlewild Films and for Toronto director Wiebke von Carolsfeld. Coproduced with Toronto’s Sienna Films, it wraps five weeks of shooting primarily in Halifax at the end of May.

‘Our director is a dream,’ says Niven, who was initially concerned about working with a first-timer. ‘She wants to be involved in every detail along the way and has a very keen sense of aesthetics.’

An editor by trade, Carolsfeld has worked on a few shorts, including one with Vancouver’s Molly Parker (Men With Brooms), which Niven says helped the production team land the brand-name actor for a leading role in this fairly small picture, with a crew of about 80 people and a budget in the $2-million range.

The film tells the story of three sisters and the unspoken family secret that surfaces when one sister returns to Cape Breton from Toronto after their mother falls ill. ‘It’s a well-deserved look at human nature, but always with a laugh on the side…it’s never too earnest,’ says Niven.

The entire cast, aside from Parker and Rebecca Jenkins (Black Harbour), are from Nova Scotia, including Stacy Smith (New Waterford Girl), 15-year-old Ellen Page (Touch and Go), Emmy Alcorn, who acted in the original stageplay, and appearances by East Coast musicians Ashley MacIsaac and Heather Rankin.

‘We felt that if they were local it would give the film an authenticity,’ says Niven. ‘There’s an authenticity in the voice that’s irreplaceable.’ Authenticity will also be developed through establishing shots filmed in Cape Breton, where the story is set, that capture the juxtaposition of the island’s natural beauty and the post-industrial feel of its hulking rusted steel plant.

With funding from Movie Central, The Movie Network, the LFP, EIP, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation and the Harold Greenberg Fund, Marion Bridge will be delivered to distributor Mongrel Media on Nov. 30. Niven says although the film will miss the Toronto and Halifax festivals, ‘if it is as good as we think it’s going to be, then we might have a shot at Berlin and Cannes.’

Collideascope expands into live action

Collideascope Digital Productions, which started as a multimedia production company and moved into television two and a half years ago, working primarily in animation, is now developing a full slate of live-action projects as well, extending its production reach to the full spectrum of mediums.

Although Suzanne Chapman, Collideascope’s newest executive director, left Alliance Atlantis as VP television production to head up the live-action division, her first project was creating Delilah and Julius, a highly stylized, action-adventure animated series targeted at teenagers, with 13 half-hour episodes in development for Teletoon. Chapman is also producing a slate of live-action programs, including Larry’s Party, based on a Carol Shields novel, which is in the final stage of development with backing from the Harold Greenberg Fund and Telefilm Canada. David Gilmour is penning the script.

Continuing to pursue its roots in multimedia, Collideascope is in production on Creaturesphere, a $250,000 educational new media project where kids create creatures and the environments they live in.

‘It’s kind of like SimCity, but you build an ecosystem,’ says Collideascope partner and principal Steven Comeau. ‘The aim of Creaturesphere is to make an interesting and engaging world where kids can have fun and learn first-hand the importance of ecology.’ With assistance from the Banff Media Centre, Telefilm and the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, Creaturesphere launches in the fall.

Collideascope is also in production on the first full season of Olliver’s Adventures, after receiving a 2001 Gemini for the pilot episode. Olliver’s Adventures, distributed by Decode Entertainment in Toronto, will be a regular fixture on Teletoon this fall, with 13 half-hours that air as three seven-minute stories at a production cost of about $300,000 an episode.

‘Olliver is packaged in a way that doesn’t talk down to kids,’ says Comeau. ‘We just want to make a kids’ television show that doesn’t suck.’ The animated series follows the hyperactive imaginary adventures of a young boy who Comeau says is clearly and consciously situated in Halifax.

Documentary director learns to shoot

While directing Homicide, a $400,000 feature-length doc providing an anthropological perspective on murder, St. John’s-based Morag Productions principal Barbara Doran got a surprise crash course in the use of handguns. One of the subjects she wanted to interview would not go to camera until she completed his four-day course in defensive handgun use.

‘I’d never even seen a gun in my life, much less spent four days shooting live ammunition,’ says Doran. ‘It was the toughest thing that I’ve had to do as a filmmaker.’

Four weeks of shooting Homicide took Doran to Israel, the U.S., Western Canada and her home in Newfoundland. Morag delivers two one-hour episodes to CBC’s The Nature of Things in October, which will be released as a feature-length doc by the National Film Board.

Morag is also in coproduction with Invisible Entertainment out of St. John’s on a one-hour documentary, The Invisible Machine, which will be in production by early summer for CTV and Discovery. First-time director Jon Whelan tries to trace the source of a mysterious blast that occurred on Belle Island, NF 15 years ago.