True to its strategy of following a year or two of development with a period of intense shooting, Toronto prodco Rhombus Media is underway or soon to embark on a diverse slate of new projects.

An Idea of Canada is the working title for a one-hour doc, produced by Rhombus partner Niv Fichman and Jody Shapiro, that follows Governor General Adrienne Clarkson on regional visits across Canada. The occasion is the 50th anniversary of Canadian citizens being appointed to the governor general post previously occupied by British appointees. The doc focuses on Clarkson’s stops in smaller communities on Canadian coasts, and so far the crew has shot in the Arctic, yielding 30 hours of footage, in St. John’s and along the Labrador coast, and it will soon head off to B.C.’s Queen Charlotte Islands.

Kevin McMahon, who helmed the experimental doc McLuhan’s Wake, is directing the film in verite style. The National Film Board is coproducer and the CBC will broadcast. Additional funding on the $580,000 doc comes from Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Television Fund and tax credits. Shapiro expects the project to be delivered at the end of the year or early next year.

Rhombus partner Larry Weinstein has just wrapped on Stormy Weather, a doc about Harold Arlen, the staff composer at Harlem’s Cotton Club in the 1930s who went on to collaborate with singer/songwriter Johnny Mercer and write songs for The Wizard of Oz. The $1.8-million project mixes a traditional doc style with dramatic reenactment and performances of Arlen’s tunes. Rhombus will cut one-hour and feature-length versions. CBC will broadcast, and it will air on ARTV in Quebec.

Rhombus partner Barbara Willis Sweete will be remounting and filming a performance of Firebird by the National Ballet of Canada, with choreography by James Kudelka and music by Stravinsky. Producers are Fichman, Rhombus partner Daniel Iron and Jennifer Jonas. The 10-day shoot on the $1.3-million one-hour special begins July 1, with a CBC airdate in the 2002/03 season.

Later in the summer, Willis Sweete will roll on a CBC special, half doc and half live performance, featuring Aselin Debison, the 11-year-old singing sensation from Cape Breton who was recently signed by Sony.

In November, the ever-busy Willis Sweete will direct Elizabeth Rex, produced by Fichman and Iron, a $2-million TV adaptation of the Timothy Findley play of the same name about Queen Elizabeth I and 16th century gender politics. Iron says he hopes to have the original Stratford cast perform. CBC and Bravo! have broadcast windows.

Rhombus hopes to place the Willis Sweete-directed feature Perfect Pie, from a play and script by Judith Thompson, in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Odeon is slated to release the film later in the year.

Rhombus expects to roll this fall on six one-hours of a comedy series about life at a theatre company in a small town not unlike Stratford. The program, written by Bob Martin, Mark McKinney and Susan Coyne, is for Showcase, The Movie Network and Movie Central.

Rhombus also has features in development with the likes of Guy Maddin, Don McKellar and Francois Girard, and it continues to move forward with an adaptation of Carol Shields’ award-winning ‘fictional autobiography’ The Stone Diaries, which it hopes to shoot next year.

Puppy Love’s Devine

Toront’s Devine Entertainment, producers and distributors of family TV programs including The Artists’ Specials, will shoot its first feature, Puppy Love, this summer. The family comedy, budgeted at $7 million, is being distributed in Canada by Remstar and Canadian broadcast windows have been bought by Movie Central, The Movie Network and Super Ecran.

Company president and CEO David Devine (Beethoven Lives Upstairs) will direct, and he will also produce with CFO Richard Mozer (The Inventors’ Specials). The film is coproduced by Debbie Nightingale of Toronto’s The Nightingale Company. The script is written by This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ Mary Walsh and Emmy Award-winner Heather Conkie (Galileo: On the Shoulders of Giants). Devine expects Puppy Love to be delivered by end-of-year.

GAPC films life of Plummer

Ottawa-based GAPC Entertainment has nearly finished principal photography on a one-hour bio on Canadian actor Christopher Plummer to air this fall on CBC’s Life & Times. Tentatively titled A Man for All Stages, the doc is timely given the 74-year-old Oscar-nominated Plummer’s return this August to the Stratford Festival to play King Lear for legendary director Jonathan Miller. Shooting on the bio, which tracks Plummer’s time in Montreal, New York and London, will wrap at the celebrated stage fest prior to an October delivery.

The writer is Lois Segal (Baseball Girls) and director is Ron Allen (20th Century Gals), with GAPC president Ken Stewart exec producing and Hoda Elatawi producing. Interviewees include Julie Andrews, William Shatner and Plummer’s daughter, actress Amanda. GAPC retains the international rights for the $250,000 special, and distributor Jan Rofekamp of Montreal’s Films Transit is particularly keen on the U.K. and U.S. markets. The CTF and Telefilm’s Equity Investment Program are on board.

GAPC has wrapped on Growing Up Canadian, a copro with Ottawa’s Telewerx Productions consisting of six one-hours for History Television and Vision TV. Each ep in turn will address the topics of family, school, work, play, health and media as they have impacted children throughout Canadian history. Telewerx’s Sheila Petzold directs with Susan Terril and exec produces with Stewart. Elatawi produces. GAPC is focusing on summer delivery for the $1-million-plus series, which was funded through the federal Millennium Partnership program, CTF and Telefilm.

Production has begun on The Secret Lives of Butterflies, a one-hour nature copro with Ottawa’s Kublacom Pictures for Discovery Channel Canada. Bob Callaghan (Rangers of the North) will direct the video doc portion, and David McCallum will shoot the film-based nature photography. Stewart is co-exec producer with Kublacom’s Ed Kucerak. France’s TV5 has a subsequent broadcast window on the $200,000 project. The CTF is also on board.

Secret Secretaries, GAPC’s doc about Canadian secretaries who did double duty as spies during World War 2, recently aired on W Network and has subsequent windows on SCN, Access Alberta and Knowledge Network.

GAPC is in development on Maria Pellegrini – Canada’s Butterfly, a one-hour doc about the renowned opera diva, and Gotta Go!, a half-hour international kids’ travel series. Stewart says GAPC generated interest at Banff2002 for Back in the Saddle, a series about people who overcome hardship to get their lives back on track.

Apartment Story’s one-man crew

Hungry young filmmakers can sift through miles of red tape to try to tap public funding agencies, or they can languish in Hollywood development hell. But if they don’t want to go grey before actually turning on a camera, they can do it themselves on the cheap, which is exactly the strategy employed by Kent Tessman of Toronto’s General Coffee Company Film Productions on his debut feature Apartment Story.

Shot entirely in Tessman’s own home, mostly on weekends, the comedy-drama tells the tale of Guy (David Bajurny), a young man who wakes one morning to find himself unable to leave his apartment and go to work. This seeming inertia stretches on, despite the efforts of Guy’s friends. Word about Guy’s cocooning gets out, and he becomes an alternately lauded and loathed figure during this period of self-discovery.

Tessman was a virtual one-man creator and crew on Apartment Story, functioning as writer, director, producer, cinematographer, set dresser, sound recordist, editor, F/X designer and composer. (Press notes indicate that 2,400 people filled these roles on The Lord of the Rings.) Shot on mini DV on $2,000 cash and edited on Tessman’s laptop, the film has been picked up by Bravo! and will air in July.

Tessman says he hopes the project will allow him to make bigger-budget fare, and is developing a thriller, an ensemble piece and a Casablanca-ish drama.