About this time last year, director Avi Lewis and crew were en route to Argentina to shoot a doc about poverty issues, and stumbled upon the perfect story when unemployed factory workers took over and reopened their old mill, running it as a co-op. The democratic, take-back-the-economy movement became their centerpiece and the project known as Fire the Experts – now in post for the Ontario arm of the National Film Board and Barna-Alper Productions – became The Take.

Lewis cowrote the picture with his wife, political firebrand Naomi Klein, and is putting in for this spring’s Hot Docs fest. The NFB’s Silva Basmajian produces with Klein and Laszlo Barna.

Speaking of the working class, the board’s Peter Starr is attached to produce The Commies, a new film from Don Shebib. The director of Goin’ Down the Road – who more recently has helmed eps of The Zack Files and Dead Man’s Gun – is on the trail of Canada’s few remaining Reds for a feature doc about what’s left (‘about 100 members,’ says the publicist) of the bygone political movement. Filming is underway in Toronto and Ottawa.

Completing the poverty-and-struggle hat trick is This Beggar’s Description, director Pierre Tetrault’s portrait of his brother, a penniless poet from Montreal, now shooting there and in Toronto for NFB producer Gerry Flahive. Flahive has also picked up the Ian McLeod doc House Calls and, as reported here last issue, the political picture Campaign, now posting for CBC Newsworld.

The NFB is also wrapping its annual Momentum project, and has sent four shorts into post, following February shoots around the province. Momentum is meant to give emerging filmmakers a chance to turn out a social issues doc and, earlier this year, 120 hopefuls lined up in Ottawa and Toronto to put in their proposals. Winners for this, the second annual Momentum, are Cavan Young, Peter James, Kyle Stone and Ngardy Conteh. A fifth, French-language winner has not yet been named.

State of the unions

Media Headquarters is partway through shooting six half-hours of its Modern Marriages and will spend the spring and summer shooting twosomes (and threesomes, and so on) in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal for W Network. The doc series takes a look at unusual marriage arrangements – including ‘apartners’ who live on opposite ends of the earth, reunited divorcees and the polyamorous – and how marriage is being redefined for this century.

The series was inspired by producer Shari Cohen’s long-distance marriage, says producer and fellow MHQ principal Robin Neinstein. Set to direct are Jari Osbourne (Unwanted Soldiers), Robin Bicknell (Drag Kings) and Yvette Lang. Robert Cohen also produces.

The project will try to stand out from the dating/mating/marriage show crowd by sticking to a more pure, documentary style, says Neinstein. No host, little narration, lots of story and research. ‘We’ve tried to imagine each episode as a 23-minute Sundance doc,’ he says.

No word on the budget, except that it’s ‘pretty good for cable.’ Modern Marriages got money from the CTF LFP and Rogers Cable Network Fund, plus the licence fee. It will air in the ’04/05 season.

MHQ was set to shoot Comedy Road Trip – an 8 x 30 doc about stand-up comics traveling the country – for CBC last summer, but funding shortages have shelved the show for now, says Neinstein. It’s being redeveloped, likely as a smaller project. Meanwhile, The Summit, a John Krizanc-penned retelling of the G8 meeting and protests in Kananaskis, AB, also for the Ceeb, is now looking to shoot next summer, pushed back from 2004.

MHQ’s hit film Le Mozart Noir is up for a best classical Juno Award next month, and continues to play well internationally, airing on several PBS stations, including Washington, DC and New York City, for Black History Month. A DVD release is due from CBC Records later this year.

Bible thumper

GFT Entertainment has wrapped another action-thriller in Hamilton, ON and sent The Good Shepherd into post last month with editor Nick Rotundo. It is the latest of several films – The Limit, Direct Action, Detention – shot by the Toronto prodco in Steeltown, and has Christian Slater as a priest investigating murder and scandal in the church. Molly Parker (Marion Bridge, Men with Brooms) costars with Stephen Rea (The Life Before This) and Gordon Pinsent (Nothing, The Shipping News). All the usual GFTers worked on this one: director Lewin Webb (The Limit), DOP Curtis Petersen (Detention) and producer Gary Howsam (Direct Action).

Disney times three

Vin Diesel (Chronicles of Riddick, XXX) is again coming north of the border, this time to Toronto for Disney’s kid-centric comedy The Pacifier. Diesel stars – a la Schwarzenegger in Kindergarden Cop – as a bodyguard caring for the troublesome children of a top scientist. Adam Shankman (Bringing Down the House) directs for Disney and Spyglass Entertainment at Cinespace Film Studios.

Disney is sending two other projects to Toronto for spring, and will lens the MOW Rules of Engagement at StudioWorks in early March and its Ice Princess feature, again at Cinespace, through April and May.