Nazis, the all-purpose villains of moviedom, will be in Paris again this spring when Norman Jewison rolls cameras on The Statement for producer Robert Lantos and Serendipity Point Films.

The $27-million project – backed by Serendipty’s performance envelope from Telefilm Canada, private investment and ‘significant’ funds from Astral Media and Corus Entertaiment – has Michael Caine as a former Nazi collaborator ducking an investigation into his past. Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Northam also star. Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) adapted the novel by Brian Moore.

The Statement is a three-way coproduction between Company Pictures in the U.K., Odessa Films in France and Toronto-based Serendipity. Jewison has tapped his son, Kevin Jewison, as DOP and the pair will shoot through February and March in Paris before relocating to the south of France for a final two weeks. Sony Pictures Classics will have the film in theatres by Christmas worldwide.

Lantos is also producing David Cronenberg’s Painkillers and Istvan Szabo’s latest, Being Julia, now prepping for a June shoot in London. Annette Benning stars in the story of an aging stage diva in love with a young American cad. The $23-million feature will be coproduced with as-yet unnamed U.K. and Hungary partners, and is again bankrolled by Serendipity’s performance funds. Ronald Harwood also penned this one, working with the novel Theatre by Somerset Maugham.

Triple Ex

Broken homes, it seems, are good business at PTV Productions, which has three TV docs in the works about failed love and child custody.

Raising Cassidy, now in post for Life Network, follows a former druggie’s struggle to regain custody of her daughter and was recently picked up for second broadcast by Discovery Health Canada. Director Nadine Pequeneza and DOP Peter Walker shot the one-hour on a $200,000 budget, with a little ‘child support’ from the LFP and Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund.

Meanwhile, directors Karen MacKenna and Stefan Randstrom are posting Wednesday Nights – a look at the difficulties of joint custody agreements – for CBC Newsworld and will deliver before March. The $200,000 one-hour is expected to air in the fall, followed by second runs on the Documentary Channel and W Network.

PTV is also partway through shooting season one of The Ex Files, the $1.4-million Canadianized version of the popular British series about reunited former flames. The 13 half-hours shoot until June with director Cornelia Principe and are due at W and Discovery Health in the U.S. by June.

Producer and PTV president Andrea Nemtin says three other projects are in the works for 2003. Notman’s Camera is an hour of 19th century history and photography for TVOntario due to shoot in February and March with director Murray Battle (The Next Big Thing) and a $400,000 budget. Director and writer Andrew Johnstone will then recount – with a mix of live action and Flash animation – his struggle to pen a children’s detective book in Shut Up and Write Me. Production is slated for spring, again on $200,000 from the Canadian Television Fund, LFP and the Documentary Channel.

PTV is also developing 13 half-hours of a preschool animated series called Grandpa’s Garden for TVO. Creator and animator Ian Dunbar will apply to Telefilm Canada in March.

Get a Bar Life

Two of the six nightspots -Toronto’s beloved Bamboo and The Coloured Stone – seen on season one of Bar Life have since gone out of business. So it is probably better for all concerned that the subjects of director Keith Holding’s next project are already dead.

The Early Canadian Jazz Scene is a one-hour high-def doc about the shared history of American and Canuck musical greats like Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Guy Lombardo.

‘I’m trying to recreate the passion of the era and the music,’ says Holding, ‘that’s where Jeff Healy comes in.’ Holding has recruited the Toronto guitar legend and jazzologist to narrate and host the doc, which will also feature musical scholars Jack Litchfield, Gene Miller and Colin Bray. Holding will direct and is shopping the idea to broadcasters.

The odd couple

Director Karen O’Donnell gets up-close and personal with Attention Deficit Disorder this month, when her one-hour doc Odd Kid Out airs on TVOntario. And there’s more on the way. Because she and DOP Mike Grippo shot over 100 hours for her $250,000 debut, O’Donnell plans to turn out a second, companion piece about this puzzling disorder.

‘There’s a great need for individuals to educate themselves,’ says O’Donnell, whose son, Kail, is the subject of Odd Kid Out. TVO and Discovery can expect pitches for the unnamed follow-up before spring, and O’Donnell plans to again hire editors David Battistella and Kevin Rollins.

O’Donnell will also brave Chinese bureaucrats and the Himalayan Mountains to direct and produce Guardian Angel, a feature doc about street kids under the care of a kind-hearted Tibetan school. She plans to raise $250,000 through presales and private investors and – don’t laugh – if Beijing approves, the project will shoot this fall.