Montreal: A major marketing and commemorative campaign is in the works for Dr. Lucille: The Story of Lucille Teasdale. The $4.6-million tv movie has been licensed by both ctv and Reseau tva in Canada and by RAI Uno in Italy. Marina Orsini plays the altruistic, pioneering Canadian doctor, Massimo Ghini is Dr. Piero Corti, her Italian husband and partner, and American Oscar-winning actor Lou Gossett Jr. plays David Mulera, a close friend.

A story of personal dedication and adventure among the sick and wounded in the heart of Africa, the movie is a coproduction between Motion International of Montreal and Ballistic Pictures of South Africa. It filmed on location in South Africa from mid-October to Nov. 21.

Speaking from South Africa as he wrapped shooting on Dr. Lucille, director George Mihalka explains the film reveals Teasdale’s and Corti’s great dignity and their incredibly modern vision, which he says largely predates the rise of liberation theology. But the good doctors were anything but self-glorifying theorists, says the director. Their life ambition was always the practice of medicine, specifically the struggle to build a genuine African teaching hospital.

The story chronicles Teasdale’s and Corti’s lives and love from 1957 to 1986 and is backdropped by the violent political and military climate in Uganda. Teasdale was diagnosed in 1986 with aids, contracted during an operation. She died in 1996.

The film features 70 speaking roles and thousands of extras. The screenwriter is the late and much-admired Rob Forsyth.

The scale of the promotional and commemorative campaign is especially impressive.

The Bronfman Foundation, under the direction of Patrick Watson, is producing a Dr. Lucille Heritage Minute. It’ll be broadcast across the country as well as distributed in theatres. Gossett (An Officer and a Gentleman) has agreed to promote the movie across the country. A Helen Klodowsky documentary on the subject will be broadcast by both networks, and Canada Post is issuing a Dr. Lucille commemorative stamp in January. Michel Arsenault’s biography of Dr. Lucille is being reissued in French, and translated into English.

Big-country story

‘South Africa is big country like Canada is big country, but foreign location shoots are never predictable,’ says Mihalka.

A case in point, the film crew installed a completely self-contained and self-reliant little village, opening the shoot on a non-electrified 40,000-acre farm about 45 minutes out of Johannesburg. ‘There was no water at all and there was wild game, zebras, giraffes, leopards. This is the site we’re using for the hospital when they (Dr. Lucille and Corti) first came to Africa in 1961,’ says Claude Bonin, the movie’s producer.

The balance of the shoot took place in a suburban setting near Pretoria, in a former leper compound, which stands in for the expanding Ugandan hospital.

Dr. Lucille’s dop is Michael Buckley, who spent several busy years shooting in Toronto. Francois Lamontagne is the production designer, Francois Gill is editing and Valerie Allard is the pm. The series is originated on 35mm Kodak film. Dr. Lucille’s exec producers are Francine Allaire, who nurtured the project for more than five years, and Andre Picard. Ballistic’s Kobus Botha is the coproducer. Stephane Reichel is the exec in charge of production.

‘They have great crews here and George was saying the other night we could take this crew anywhere in the world,’ says Bonin. ‘I just want to say we have great actors. Lou Gossett Jr. is very charming, Marina Orsini is fantastic.’

Mihalka says working with ctv execs Carol Hay and Bill Mustos was great. ‘I’ve never enjoyed creative story sessions as much,’ he says.

Funding for the 95-minute movie also comes from the Canadian Television Fund, Telefilm Canada, the Cogeco Program Development Fund, the Canadian International Development Agency and the CRB Foundation.

Dr. Lucille goes to air on ctv next spring and on tva next fall.