Vancouver: Vancouver native Alex Vendler, cinematographer for the British documentary Kurt and Courtney, returns home for The Delicate Art of Parking, a drama/mockumentary by Anagram Pictures, makers of Mile Zero.

As the feature debut for director Trent Carlson (who directed the 1997 short film Groomed), The Delicate Art of Parking is about an idealistic parking enforcement officer whose devotion to his job is challenged by a motor vehicle accident that leaves his mentor in a coma.

At press time, only actor Dov Tiefenbach (Between Strangers, Flower and Garnet), who plays a documentary filmmaker trailing the hero, was signed on.

The $1.3-million budget – through Telefilm Canada, British Columbia Film, Movie Central and The Movie Network – allows for 20 days of production beginning Oct. 28.

Blake Corbet and Andrew Currie are the producers and Kevin Eastwood is associate producer. Cinema Libre is the distributor.

Family affair

On the Corner is a feature by writer/director Nathaniel Geary, inspired by his gritty short Keys to Kingdoms. The National Screen Institute-Canada’s Features First project, funded through Telefilm and B.C. Film’s low-budget feature programs, along with Movie Central, The Movie Network, Showcase, the Independent Film Channel, the Canada Council and CanWest’s producers fund, revisits the harsh realities of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside neighborhood and features some of the same characters as the short.

In On the Corner, Alex Rice (The Sopranos) plays a drug-addicted hooker who has to face her fate when her younger brother (played by Simon Baker of North of 60) comes to live with her on the streets. She realizes, for the sake of her family, that she has to get off the streets, but can’t do it before he is drawn into the drug scene.

Produced by Mark Stephenson (Heater) and Wendy Hyman, the feature goes into digital production Oct. 16 for 18 days and will be blown up to 35mm. Recent complaints about how the film industry disrupts the lives of Downtown Eastside residents, including drug users and sex-trade workers, will not be a factor, says Stephenson.

‘This is a show about the people of the area, for the people of the area,’ he explains. ‘To the best of our ability, we will be low impact.’

New VI gets Alienated

At press time, casting was underway for the low-budget, 22-part, half-hour series Alienated, called a cross between The X-Files and The Osbournes, set for production this winter in Victoria. Produced by Vancouver-based Brightlight Pictures with a Vancouver Island crew and funded in part by The New VI and CHUM Television, Alienated is about a dysfunctional family that is abducted by ill-behaved aliens.

Alienated, says The New VI, is part of the station’s $12-million, seven-year commitment to the Island’s independent film community.

In other West Coast CHUM news, Citytv Vancouver launched two new series on Oct. 6.

Hosted by Monika Deol, Iconoclast is a monthly series about stars and artists who challenge contemporary culture. Upcoming guests include veteran Bollywood star Hema Malini, Salman Rushdie, sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar and author/professor Xue Xinran.

The weekly series DiverseCITY, hosted by Prem Gill, is a current affairs and pop culture show with a multicultural perspective.

PAX facts

Smoke jumpers and killer bees make up the two-in-a-row PAX TV MOWs produced by Vancouver’s Shavick Entertainment. In Wild Fire 7, Tracy Gold (Growing Pains) and Joanna Cassidy (Buffalo Bill) star in a story of a female ex-con, struggling to regain custody of her daughter, who leads a group of parachuting firefighters into a fire. Killer Bees, about a hero who overcomes his phobias to save a sleepy Washington State town from the deadly bugs, went into production Oct. 9 for 15 days. At press time, no cast was set.

Glitzy Lizzie

After three years as a successful television series on the Disney Channel comes the Disney feature called The Lizzie Maguire Movie, starring Hilary Duff. In the big-screen version, Lizzie goes to Rome and runs into a caddish Italian rock star (played by Canadian Yani Gellman), who tries passing her off as his estranged singing partner. Half the shoot is in Rome, while the balance of the production is at Lions Gate Studios. Other stars returning from the series are Ashlie Brillault, Adam Lamberg, Clayton Snyder and Robert Carradine.

Worlds collide

Distribution is the bane of existence for most filmmakers. So what happens when the filmmaker is a distributor?

Tim Brown, VP distribution for Keystone Releasing Canada in Vancouver, is the writer, producer and director of 30 Minutes or Free, a 22-minute film about a man who ties his wife and her lover to a bomb rigged to the doorbell, awaiting the buzz of the pizza deliveryman.

Six days of production in Coquitlam and Vancouver wrapped Sept. 29, and Brown will oversee the distribution, though outside of Keystone.

Self-financed for $25,000, 30 Minutes stars David Bloom (The Chris Isaak Show), Ingrid Tesch (Suspicious River), Zach Lundrie and Deni Ilicic.

The 35mm suspense drama is plot- and entertainment-driven, says Brown, whose pre-distribution background includes corporate video production and acting.

And as a distributor, he asks producers for whom they are making their films. In his case, males aged 18 to 32.

Local politics

In other short film news, The Great Upstanding Member has local 24-year-old producer Adrian Salpeter in prep with writer/director Lenny Epstein, who is based in Ontario.

As one of the six projects to win $25,000 in support from the Young Filmmaker’s Initiative created by CFTPA and Corus Entertainment, Member is about a couple of high school students who produce a video documenting a political scrap in their small Canadian town.

Salpeter has cut his teeth as an intern for Raymond Massey and worked on productions such as Lynne Stopkewich’s Suspicious River and Mina Shum’s Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity. Massey is executive producer for the short.

Another Vancouver YFI winner, Randall Okita, will produce an experimental film about violence.

Animated story

Vancouver-based Mercury Filmworks is doing digital paint and compositing on Nelvana’s third, 13-ep season of Rescue Heroes, which is about an elite team of rescue personnel and airs on Teletoon in Canada and Kids WB in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Mercury recently delivered work on the third season of Maggie and the Ferocious Beast for Nelvana, a second season of Studio B’s D’Myna Leagues (for CTV and YTV) and a third season of What About Mimi? (for Teletoon and France 3), and a third season of The New Woody Woodpecker (for Universal Cartoon Studios).