Vancouver: Omni Film Productions in Vancouver has put out the welcome mat for emerging writers and directors with the new CTV series Robson Arms (formerly Keys Cut Here).

The drama/comedy series – which is a B.C./Nova Scotia coproduction with Creative Atlantic Communications (Janice Evans and Greg Jones) in Halifax – tells the stories of the residents of Robson Arms, an apartment building in Vancouver’s urban West End neighborhood. The characters include a building manager with a penchant for using tenants’ apartments for entertaining prostitutes, a sixtysomething kleptomaniac with a dog named Lulu, and a cross-dressing teenage karaoke singer.

In the pilot, an unsavory remark uttered by the building manager sends a 10-year-old boy on a quest to find a lover for his mom. In another episode, pink underwear left in the common laundry room sparks the unraveling of a young couple’s marriage. Each week, the series ‘peeks’ behind another door in the apartment complex – making the series an anthology hybrid with some continuing characters and story arcs.

Budgeted at $400,000-plus per half-hour, production on 13 eps goes March 1 for 11 weeks.

Created by Susin Nielsen, produced by Brian Hamilton and executive

produced by Gary Harvey and Michael Chechik, the series concept has been popular from the start with CTV’s western independent production executive Louise Clark and cash-strapped funding agency British Columbia Film for its focus on new talent.

Emerging B.C. directors assigned to the show include Dwayne Beaver, Luke Carroll, Gordon Carson, James Dunnison, Jason Furukawa, James Genn, Asghar Massombagi, Monika Mitchell and Ben Ratner.

Nova Scotia directors on board include Michael Amo, Michael Melski and Mary Lewis.

Emerging writers signed on to the series include Jesse McKeown, Warren Jefferies, Andrew Bush, Sioux Browning, David Moses, Tony Sekulich, Deb Peraya and Karen Tulchinsky.

Many of the writers and directors didn’t yet have agents when they were brought on.

‘I can’t believe some of the talent we found,’ says Nielsen. ‘There are some real gems who will go on to make a mark in this industry.’

No cast had been signed at press time, but there was good buzz among the acting community about the quality of the writing, says Nielsen, and offers to bigger-named Canadian guest-star talent were being positively entertained.

As part of the production, a training DVD is in the works to show the evolution of a script from page to screen.

Vision quest

North Vancouver’s Avrio Filmworks will wrap two-and-a-half weeks of production in Vancouver Feb. 18 on the straight-to-video production of Premonition, the latest in the company’s genre features. Real-life husband and wife Casper Van Dien and Catherine Oxenberg star in the story of a detective who survives a violent car wreck, only to be left with terrifying premonition of horrible disasters.

Avrio’s killer-twister MOW Devil Winds ran on PAX TV in November. Gargoyles, a horror about fire-spitting monsters, is in post, with delivery this month. Meanwhile, Avrio plans another feature in the spring called Sub Zero.

A model company

Vancouver-made documentary The Corporation by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott has been enjoying sold-out shows in its hometown and buzz at the recent Sundance Festival (winning the Documentary Audience Award for World Cinema). Now it has signed a U.S. distribution deal with Zeitgeist Films of New York.

Achbar, who had Sundance festival-goers squirming in their seats during his pointed acceptance speech, says Zeitgeist is ‘smart, honest and highly focused’ – and dare we add, the right kind of corporation?

Zeitgeist has been distributing Achbar and Peter Wintonick’s earlier doc Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media in the U.S. for the past 11 years.

Victoria’s secret

West Coast filmmakers Trent Carlson and Ann Marie Fleming walked away with awards at the 2004 Victoria Independent Film & Video Festival that ran Jan. 30 to Feb. 8.

Carlson won the CHUM Television Award for best Canadian first feature for his comedy The Delicate Art of Parking. Fleming won the CBC Newsworld Award for best documentary for The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam, a story about her great-grandfather.

Gail Noonan, a West Coast filmmaker from Mayne Island, won the Government of Canada Award for best short animation for More Sensitive. Meanwhile, Jamie Travis received the $500 INVision Student Award for his film Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner.

Bittersweet comedy Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself from Danish director Lone Scherfig won the Star!TV Award for best feature film. Love, Sex and Eating the Bones by Toronto director Sudz Sutherland won the Famous Players Award for best Canadian feature.