Vancouver: It’s right proper that Banff2002 will pay special tribute to the achievements of the British television industry: with the most nominations, the U.K. is the leading country vying for the polished bronze trophies at the 23rd Banff Rockie Awards Show June 10, and British star John Cleese will receive the Sir Peter Ustinov/Comedy Network Award.

Including coproductions, which represent more than 50% of the finalists, the U.K. earned 31 nominations, the U.S. 24 and Canada 12. Overall, 20 countries are up for Rockies, including Mozambique, South Africa, Tunisia and Zimbabwe, representing Africa, this year’s festival focus.

As the Banff festival’s official international competition, the Rockies showcase the best in 14 television categories: animation, arts documentaries, children’s programs, comedies, continuing series, history and biography documentaries, information programs, made-for-TV movies, miniseries, performance programs, popular science and natural history programs, short dramas, social and political documentaries, and sports. This year’s event attracted nearly 1,000 entries.

In addition, the $50,000 Global Television Grand Prize will go to the entry judged best of the festival. The $25,000 NHK President’s Prize goes to the best entry produced or post-produced on HDTV. Two Telefilm Canada Prizes, each worth $20,000, are given to the best independent English-language and French-language Canadian productions. The seven-member international jury, chaired by Canadian broadcast veteran Fil Fraser, will also hand out two Special Jury Prizes.

In other kudos, Family Ties and Spin City creator Gary David Goldberg is the winner of the Banff Television Festival’s 2002 Award of Excellence; A&E Television Network gets the Global Television Outstanding Achievement Award; and television host David Suzuki receives ACTRA’s John Drainie Award for career achievement.

On Aug. 9, CBC will broadcast highlights of the Rockie Awards Show, hosted by Canadian television personalities Patrice L’Ecuyer and Leah Pinsent and presented by Alliance Atlantis.

Among Canada’s nominees are Hugo et Le Dragon (Arico Film Communications), coproduction My Louisiana Sky (Hyperion Studio/Aviator Films), Da Vinci’s Inquest (Haddock Entertainment/Barna-Alper Productions), copro Going to Extremes: Cold (Keo Films/AAC Fact Productions/National Geographic/Channel 4), Zone Libre: Le Nepal (Radio-Canada), copro Boxing – In and Out of the Ring (Yorkshire Associated Producers/A&E Television Networks) and Shinny – The Hockey in All of Us (National Film Board).

Playback took a deeper look at five other Canadian nominees.

Ice Girls

Perhaps the one nomination of the 82 finalists that best captures the value of the Banff Television Festival is the Canada/U.K. coproduction Ice Girls, a feature-length, digital-video documentary that was a finalist in the festival’s Two in a Room commissioning contest in 1998.

Nominated in the best sports program category, Ice Girls (Screen Siren Pictures/BBC) examines the lives of young female athletes seeking world and Olympic glory in the sport of figure skating.

The three-year production was a steep learning curve for writer/producer/director Trish Dolman of Vancouver, who has since gone on to exercise that experience in other more ambitious productions – making her a kind of poster child for the Banff event and its potential for emerging filmmakers.

Inspired by articles about skating stars Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan and the fact that her niece had started competitive skating, Dolman arrived at Banff ’98 to hear that the Two in a Room commissioning editors from BBC and TVOntario wanted a ‘process documentary’ that followed a story over time and was shot on mini DV. The strength of her written proposal gave her the chance to pitch the project, and while TVO eventually took a pass, CTV picked up the Canadian side of the copro.

Dolman spent three years behind the scenes following the careers of Vancouver’s Keyla Ohs and the U.K.’s Jennifer Holmes and Vikki Hodges, as the sport took a toll on their families and personal lives.

Access was a challenge, with the powerful Canadian skating association being alternately cooperative and obstructionist when it came to Dolman covering important international competitions. Legalities, too, were an issue, as Dolman struggled with the BBC to get the coproduction contracts right. And priority shifts were also a challenge, with Dolman going through five commissioning editors at the BBC as the U.K. broadcaster became more ratings-driven and realized that skating is nowhere near as popular in the U.K. as it is in Canada.

Perseverance, Dolman observed, was also a requirement of her story subjects.

‘To do that sport, the skaters have to want it in their hearts,’ she says. ‘Only then will they be successful. When someone else wants it more, then they end up doing it for other people.’

Executive produced by Brian Hamilton, Ice Girls aired on CTV Jan. 10 against the series finale for Survivor III. Still, in Canada, Ice Girls earned an audience of 600,000.

In the U.K., the program aired as two 40-minute episodes.

Dolman recently produced director Keith Behrman’s first feature Flower and Garnet (starring Callum Keith Rennie) and produced director David Vaisbord’s documentary Britannia: A Company Town. For Bravo! and TVO, this summer Dolman is producing a one-hour documentary on Vancouver-born painter Attila Richard Lukacs, and Screen Siren is involved in two documentaries about environmentalist Paul Watson.

I Was a Rat

A Cinderella story in more ways than one, I Was A Rat was nominated for a Rockie Award in the best children’s category April 15 and a week later won the YTV Silver Sprocket Audience Award at the recent Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children.

Cut as both a miniseries (three one hours) and a 95-minute movie, I Was a Rat aired on BBC last Christmas to an audience of seven million and rave reviews, especially for the debut performance of its 10-year-old star Calum Worthy of Victoria.

The $4.5-million BBC/Catalyst Entertainment coproduction is scheduled to air on CBC this Christmas.

Adapted from a Philip Pullman novel by British screenwriter Richard Carpenter, I Was A Rat is a kind of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for kids in that the story takes the Cinderella fable in new directions with tangential characters.

In I Was a Rat, also starring Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot, War Bride) and Tom Conti (Shirley Valentine, Reuben Reuben), a couple adopts a young boy who was, before being transformed by the Fairy Godmother into one of Cinderella’s escorts, a rat. But because he went to play as the clock struck midnight, he missed the spell turning the pages back into rats.

Directed by Laurie Lynd (Virtual Mom), I Was A Rat appeals to kids as a retelling of the classic tale, but also to adults for its Princess Diana-esque take on privacy and the paparazzi, says producer Paul Brown.

Other notable cast includes Edward Fox (Edward and Mrs. Simpson, Day of the Jackal), Don McKellar (Last Night, eXistenZ), Sheila McCarthy (Virtual Mom, Emily of New Moon) and Stephen Ouimette (Diary of a Madman, Murder Most Likely).

Andy Rowley of the BBC is a coproducer on I Was A Rat. Elaine Sperber, head of BBC children’s drama, is an executive producer and Nancy Chapelle and Kevin Gillis are executive producers for Toronto’s Catalyst.

Brown is in preproduction with the CTV television movie Class Rebellion at Burger High, about a teen who unionizes a fast food restaurant. Shooting on the Cambium Catalyst International coproduction with Accent Entertainment in Toronto begins in July with Nisha Ganatra (Chutney Popcorn) at the helm.

A Child’s Century of War

War’s saddest victims are the children – the subject of A Child’s Century of War, a nominee in the best social-political documentary category.

The feature-length production by Emmy, Gemini and Rockie Award-winning filmmaker Shelley Saywell (Bishari Film Productions) travels to the war-torn regions of Chechnya, Sierra Leone and the West Bank, where children reveal the emotional and physical scars they bear from living in a battle zone. Their voices are blended with the stories of young victims of earlier wars from diary entries penned by children in England, Germany, Japan, Vietnam and Armenia.

Christopher Plummer, the only adult voice in the production, narrates. The $500,000-plus project was among the 10 finalists vying for an Oscar for best feature-length documentary earlier this year and was an official selection at this year’s Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto.

‘The resilience of these children is as heartbreaking as their distress,’ says Saywell, who produced, directed and wrote the chilling documentary. ‘Unfortunately, with the world’s current political climate, children will continue to be the ones who suffer the most during times of war and insurrection.’

The genesis of the project, says Saywell, stems from her experience with her previous documentaries – especially a piece on Kim Phuc, the subject of the iconographic photograph of the girl fleeing napalm in Vietnam, and another documentary on Zlata Filopivic who, inspired by Anne Frank, wrote a diary of her life among the war ruins of Sarajevo.

‘It’s always the children that haunt you the most,’ says Saywell, reflecting on her previous conflict-zone work. ‘It’s not a documentary that I wanted to make, if you know what I mean.’

Instead of protecting children from war, society is making children the targets: as victims, fighters and perpetrators of atrocities. At the beginning of the 20th century, 90% of war’s victims were soldiers, says Saywell, while today 90% of the victims are civilians, mostly children.

‘We’ve reached a kind of moral crisis,’ she says.

Turned down by the Licence Fee Program for not being Canadian, A Child’s Century of War went on to get funding from CIDA, SCN, Knowledge and Vision TV.

‘What these children live through defies imagination,’ says commissioning executive Sydney Suissa, senior VP of factual programming at Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting. ‘Seeing their faces and hearing them speak so honestly captures the true tragedy of warfare.’

Saywell is just finishing Street Nurse, a documentary about the homeless in Toronto, and is finalizing funding on the CBC Witness documentary about Iraq called Generation of Hate and Girl Gang, commissioned by TVO for A View From Here.

Previously, Saywell won a Rockie for the NFB documentary Rape: A Crime of War.

A Child’s Century of War debuted on History Television May 6.

Lucky Girl

Director John Fawcett continues his exploration of teen girls with secrets in the CTV MOW Lucky Girl (Triptych Media/AAC), nominated in the best television movie category.

This time, the filmmaker behind the cult feature Ginger Snaps takes on the theme of teen gambling: a straight-A student becomes addicted to gambling.

Elisha Cuthbert, suddenly famous for her role in the hit drama 24, plays Katlin Palmerston, whose life spins out of control as her gambling obsession takes hold. She and Sherry Miller (Due South, Traders), who plays her mother, won Genies this year for best actress and supporting actress, respectively.

Evan Sabba (Wild Geese, PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal) and Greg Ellwand (The Five Senses, Justice) costar.

Genie-nominated John Frizzell (Dance Me Outside) and Graeme Manson (Cube) wrote the screenplay, which was recognized as one of the Writers Guild of Canada’s top 10 scripts.

‘Lucky Girl ups the ante on the realities of teen gambling – the growing numbers of compulsive addicts, the influence of the Internet on teenagers’ access to gambling, and the devastating effects on families,’ says Louise Garfield, executive producer.

Anne Marie La Traverse was executive producer for Alliance Atlantis.

Lucky Girl was shot on location in Toronto in fall 2000 and delivered shortly before it aired in April 2001. It recently aired on Lifetime in the U.S.

Previously, Triptych won a Rockie for the CBC special The Tale of Teeka, based on the Quebec play about physical abuse and shot in both English and French.

Lucky Girl is the fifth film in CTV’s Signature Presentation Series, which has enjoyed critical and ratings success with its previous offerings (Milgaard, The Sheldon Kennedy Story, Dr. Lucille, The Lucille Teasdale Story and Blessed Stranger). Established in 1997, the CTV Signature Presentation Series is a $6-million fund that seeks to develop new programming that deals with provocative social issues.

Triptych has just completed the feature Bay of Love and Sorrows with director Tim Southam, and is developing two features that are Canada/U.K. coproductions: The Republic of Love, based on the Carol Shields novel and directed by Deepa Mehta, and Falling Angels, based on the Barbara Gowdy story and directed by Scott Smith.

Dracula – Pages from a Virgin’s Diary

In Dracula – Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, the world’s most famous vampire rises again from the dead to jet across the stage, in hopes of winning a Rockie in the best performance program.

Directed by celebrated Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin and produced by Vonnie Von Helmolt, Dracula is a screen adaptation of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet production choreographed by Mark Godden. The 75-minute program aired on CBC’s Opening Night Feb. 28.

‘When you see the asymmetries of dance – the flexing of muscles, the ripping of tutus, dripping of sweat, the mini grimaces concealed – it became something that mattered to me,’ says Maddin, who was introduced to the original stage work with a personal performance by the ballet company.

The filmmaking process allowed Maddin, new to the world of television production, to add in story elements and characters that Godden had to omit in the more two-dimensional stage version. He also filmed it in a studio with new sets and props that gave the work a more 360-degree perspective.

‘I pointed myself in a certain direction,’ says Maddin of his approach in blending the dance and film art forms, ‘but it really evolved. I wanted to re-inject the gothic themes of Dracula. [The finished production] is jittery, jagged, primitive – an antidote to HDTV.’

Maddin, his associate director Deco Dawson and cinematographer Paul Suderman shot the performers simultaneously with Super 8, Super 16 and Bolex cameras to achieve a rate of 100 shots per day in the 20-day schedule. Dawson cut together the 2,000 shots in the final edit.

Though David Cronenberg was Von Helmolt’s first pick as director, Maddin turned out to be the natural choice, as a filmmaker with both a Gothic sensibility and a talent for storytelling without dialogue. ‘I knew Dracula would work for television because it has a storyline,’ she says. ‘It’s not just choreography, but about characters.’

Godden’s take, says Von Helmolt, also focused on the women and Victorian-era misogyny, which made the story fresh.

Next, Maddin is directing 10 short movies for The Power Plant art gallery in Toronto and he will direct The Saddest Music in the World, based on the story by Kazuo Ishiguro, in Winnipeg in January. Working with the Royal Liechtenstein Theatre comedy troupe, Von Helmolt is executive producing the Winnipeg installment of the six-part comedy special commissioned by the CBC.