Not even six months in and it’s already been a year of extreme ups and downs for Halifax production mainstay Salter Street Films and Michael Donovan, its chairman and CEO.

On the upside: an Academy Award for best feature-length documentary for the Salter-produced Bowling for Columbine, directed by Michael Moore. On the downside: no LFP or CTF funding for flagship series This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and Donovan remains unsure of the program’s fate.

‘We did not get the LFP and we didn’t apply for the EIP because long-running series usually don’t get it,’ Donovan says. ‘We’ve always been in the LFP on the theory that it’s automatic and not subjective, so no one could cancel it because of some change of rules. Finally the change of rules happened and we got caught, so now we have no LFP and the show is in jeopardy.’

In jeopardy, yes, but not a lost cause.

‘I’m hoping we’ll get money somehow,’ he says. ‘We wouldn’t start [production on a new season] until Aug. 15 at the earliest. We have definitely taken an optimistic attitude, but I am personally suffering major anxiety over it.’

Meanwhile, the production house has been busy in development and production on new projects, headlined by Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion, the two-part $10-million miniseries about the 1917 disaster, produced with Toronto’s Tapestry Pictures. Principal photography wrapped in mid-May.

In light of the uncertainty surrounding 22 Minutes and the final bow of comedy series Made in Canada, it might seem that this sort of ‘event TV’ would be a growing part of Salter’s long-term plan, but Donovan isn’t so sure.

”Long-term plan’ is a phrase never heard here and never used,’ he says. ‘I offer as ‘exhibit A’ this catastrophe [stemming from] the latest budget. How can you have a long-term plan? If something comes along that is worth doing and can be done, maybe we’ll make an effort to do it and hopefully succeed. I’d love the luxury of a 10-day plan, let alone a long-term plan.’

Salter is currently working on a new stop-motion animated children’s series called Poko and is in development on a project about Canadian Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, who, as former head of the UN Peacekeeping Force, witnessed the 1994 Rwandan genocide firsthand. The drama, a copro with Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions, will likely be packaged as a mini. Both it and Poko are for CBC.

But Salter will likely best remember 2003 as the year that Donovan and Moore brought home an Oscar, stirring the pot in the process. Moore’s acceptance speech on Oscar night, on behalf of himself, Donovan and their fellow nominees sharing the stage, openly criticized the Bush administration for its war on Iraq and even questioned the legitimacy of the presidency. And he was booed by as many as those who cheered.

‘It was a very happy moment,’ says Donovan. ‘Being jeered by that crowd was a good thing. They were feeling strongly and the applause was not polite. It was either enthusiastically for or loudly against. It was very satisfying.’

Donovan says Moore gave a similar speech the night before to a standing ovation at the Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, although Donovan was not quite sure what to expect if Columbine won the Oscar.

‘There were only 45 seconds and we had decided that it was critical to focus on the war,’ says Donovan. ‘In other words, the niceties of anything else were not possible. We knew he’d probably say something about the war, but it would depend on the mood of the room, his own personal mood and the situation.’

Salter is not on board Moore’s next doc, Fahrenheit 9/11, the majority producer on which is reportedly Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions. This doesn’t mean, however, that the relationship between Salter and Moore is over, says Donovan.

‘I am confident and I hope that in the next two, three or four years a moment will come where we will come to a meeting of the minds,’ he says.

-www.salter.com