Vancouver: After a banner year in 2003, generating about $24 million in film and television production budgets, the Victoria Film Commission finds itself again in a mortal struggle with funding.

According to film commissioner Russ Cowan, Victoria’s film office has six to 24 months of life left, unless new funding is secured to support the $228,000 budget. Cowan works half-time, and employment grants for two staffers responsible for script breakdowns and other services will run out at the end of June, severely curtailing the commission’s ability to service the 20% increase in location requests since last year.

Up to 65% of the Victoria commission’s budget comes from private sponsors, such as local CHUM outlet The New VI, and the balance comes from municipalities and regional grants from the province, says Cowan. However, initial Human Resources Development Canada start-up grants that helped fund the launch of the commission in 1997 are no more, municipal payments are in decline and the provincial grant has also been cut.

All the organizational drama is playing out behind a new crop of production.

Lifetime MOW The Perfect Romance (aka The Perfect Match), with star Kathleen Quinlan (Family Law), is in production in Victoria until April 9. Ian Cusick (The Gospel of John), Lori Heuring (Mulholland Drive), Michael Trucco (Pensacola: Wings of Gold) and JR Borne (Ginger Snaps Back) costar in the romantic comedy about a mom who poses as her daughter for online dating.

According to Cowan, the production wanted to shoot in Canada because of price, but needed a summer look. The only place in Canada that could play summer in early spring is Victoria, and Lifetime had a good experience with last year’s MOW A Date with Darkness: The Trial and Capture of Andrew Luster. ‘We’re getting on the radar of some of these cable companies,’ he says.

Feature film Fierce People, starring Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland, was also in danger of moving out of B.C. when the producers needed a Hamptons-style look, he adds. Production instead will move from Vancouver to the Victoria area to wrap at Royal Rhodes College and the suburb of Oak Bay. Shooting wraps May 14.

And Lies Like Truth – the first in the six-pic partnership between The New VI and executive producer Brightlight Pictures – wrapped three weeks of production April 8, with the thriller Cable Beach next up. Lies Like Truth, produced by Peter Campbell and Gumboot Productions, is a psychological suspense movie in which Victoria plays itself. Joseph Kell (Rush of Fear) stars as the lead who faces the murder of his wife. Claudette Mink (Paycheck), Tom Scholte (Last Wedding) and Nathalie Breuer (Le Ciel sur la tete) costar. Michael Bateman directs the Brian Paisley script that won a CHUM competition.

Brightlight will also executive produce Pink Ludoos, by Vancouver writer Belle Mott, another winner of a Citytv (CHUM) competition. Production on the third of six MOWs in the Brightlight-New VI deal will begin in May and June on Vancouver Island. Gaurav Seth (A Passage to Ottawa) is directing the romantic comedy about a disenchanted Indo-Canadian girl who defies tradition when she refuses an arranged marriage. Cast was not announced at press time.