A new partnership for Barna-Alper Productions could make the company not only the country’s biggest indigenous producer, but also a player in new areas including distribution and broadcast.

Toronto-based BAP has partnered up with Blue Ice Group Capital, headed by entrepreneur Neil Tabatznik and filmmaker Steven Silver, both hailing from South Africa, in a deal that bolsters BAP on both the financial and creative sides. BAP president, chair and CEO Laszlo Barna remains at the helm of the company, which Barna says could be renamed in the long term. He founded the prodco with his wife Laura Alper in 1980.

Tabatznik’s credentials include founding and chairing Arrow Pharmaceuticals (Canada), which reports annual domestic sales of nearly $100 million. He has never produced. While Barna will not divulge the amount of capital Tabatznik brings in the deal, he does say the businessman has made BAP ‘substantially stronger.’

Barna, on the phone from Halifax, where he is coproducing the CBC limited series October 1970, calls Tabatznik ‘somebody coming from another industry who’s incredibly successful, who’s very good at business, who has a profound love of cinema and television and who has good judgment.’

The deal makes sense from Blue Ice’s point of view as well.

‘It’s not just that [BAP] is healthy and robust, it’s also that under Laszlo’s leadership it makes very careful and deliberate decisions, especially around growth,’ Silver says.

Silver’s extensive credits include writing the International Emmy-winning 1997 documentary Gerrie & Louise and directing BAP’s Gemini Award-winning doc The Last Just Man and five other projects with BAP over the past 10 years. He is currently writing the screenplay for the Apartheid-themed feature The Bang Bang Club, which he also plans to direct for BAP. He will be the company’s exec VP and sit on the board of directors.

‘I really felt that it was important to bring along someone with creative [leadership] who is younger than myself, for looking down the road,’ Barna says.

In its strengthened position, BAP plans to expand its TV slate to include genres such as reality shows, and increase its involvement in feature films, which began last year with its theatrical doc copro The Take. BAP has already tapped into a well of South African coproduction – including the mini Whiskey Echo and an upcoming feature drama about retired Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire ­- and further projects along this line made the new partners, and their connections back home, especially attractive.

Barna’s projections for his company’s production output in the coming years – calling $90 million per year ‘a reasonable target’ – would today place his company second in Canada only to Alliance Atlantis Communications, which records almost all of its spending on the U.S.-produced CSI franchise. Even more intriguing are BAP’s plans to grow its fledgling distribution entity, Barna-Alper Releasing, and thoughts of entering the broadcast arena, although in what form remains to be decided.

Barna sees these developments as good news for Canadian production.

‘When Alliance Atlantis retreated out of production and then Fireworks Entertainment was closed, the thought was that production is not a good business,’ he notes. ‘Actually, what has happened is that because some of the larger companies have moved out of the way, it’s proven that not only is it a good business, it’s so good that it can attract real investors who have real expectations.’

To achieve its goals, BAP is looking to expand beyond Canadian borders, with plans to open an office in U.K., and in either New York or Los Angeles further down the line.

‘We are looking at diversifying, but still very much holding on to what we do well,’ Barna says. ‘We’re always going to be a creative boutique.’

Before BAP can take active steps towards expanding, it will be preoccupied with a busy production slate that includes a feature doc on singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, various TV doc projects, season two of series Da Vinci’s City Hall, and a biopic on singer Céline Dion, following its successful CBC MOW about country pop star Shania Twain.

www.barnaalper.com