Paperny gets kinky again

Montreal’s sexual adventurers make up the third season of Showcase series Kink, produced by Vancouver’s Paperny Films. The new season of 13 half-hours debuts March 26. The first season was set in Vancouver’s kink community and last year the show moved to Toronto. A fourth season of Kink is in the works.

Meanwhile, Paperny’s new travel/garden series Spring debuts on HGTV Canada, suitably in April. Garden guru David Tarrant chases the season of rebirth around the globe in the 13 half-hours that go to Holland, Japan, Chile and parts of Canada.

Current production at Paperny includes The Last Days of WWII, a two-part retrospective for History Television. Call Me Average is a CBC documentary about Vancouver artist Joe Average. Paperny’s first reality television pilot, When’s Mum Coming Home?, is set to air on Mother’s Day on Life Network.

And preproduction has begun on the fourth season of 13 half-hours of New Classics with Chef Rob Feenie for Food Network.

Paperny Films was founded by David Paperny and Audrey Mehler in 1994.

A soldier’s story

West Coast filmmaker Jack Silberman, no stranger to covering conflict issues, will wrap three weeks of shooting in Israel March 16 for the documentary Refuseniks, produced for the National Film Board’s Pacific Centre. It’s the second of three planned shoots in Israel.

The title refers to Israeli soldiers who refuse to fight in the Occupied Territories, and at the center of the production is a Canadian-born Israeli combat veteran whose son is deciding whether to serve as a soldier, or go to prison.

‘Although it’s a story that is specific to the situation in Israel, it deals with universal issues and questions – questions about individual moral responsibility and, in the broader context, a citizen’s obligation to the state,’ says Silberman. ‘Israel is a country in chaos, so it’s been difficult to plan ahead. You have to be able to respond to the situation and be flexible to get the footage that you need.’

Refuseniks is written and directed by Silberman and produced by the NFB’s Tracey Friesen. Director of photography is Rudi Kovanic, with assistance in Israel by Rona Even.

Previously, Silberman directed, wrote and produced Bombies, the story of the U.S. secret war in Laos and its deadly legacy of unexploded cluster bombs.

,b>Ground zero

Vancouver’s Velcrow Ripper is in Afganistan and Israel shooting the feature-length documentary ScaredSacred, highlighting stories of creative survival in the Ground Zeros of the world. Shot on digital video, the plan is to blow up the footage to 35mm and upconverting to HD. Other locations in the film include Wounded Knee, Cambodia, Hiroshima and New York City

ScaredSacred originated as Ripper’s award-winning interactive art website www.scaredsacred.org and will be released theatrically in the fall. Producers are Cari Green and Harry Sutherland (Producers On Davie) and Tracey Friesen at the National Film Board. It is produced in association with VisionTV and with the participation of B.C. Film.

The big time

Following a successful turn at Toronto’s Paramount Theatre, filmmaker Mark Bethune is taking his 70mm short Stage Fright to next month’s conference of the Large Format Cinema Association in Universal City, CA, looking for sales to the world’s tiny clique of IMAX theaters. The 24-year-old Ryerson grad has recently made some noise with his big-screen project, having secured favors, credit and equipment loaners to make a two-minute movie – with 65 cast and 50 crew – worth roughly $300,000.

The POV pic winds a la Robert Altman through a crowd of jugglers, dancers and clowns backstage at a theater.

Bethune got his picture under the wing of IMAX president David Keighley, a fellow Ry alum, back in 2002 and wrangled some discounted 70mm stock from Kodak. Large-format film is ‘atrociously expensive,’ he says, about $1,500 for three minutes worth, or triple the cost of decent 35mm stock.

For his next trick, Bethune will try to make enough sales to cover the printing costs, but he admits it won’t be easy. He needs about 30 sales and there are less than 300 IMAX theaters in existence. It’s a small world after all, he says with a laugh.