Winnipeg’s Buffalo Gal Pictures took home a Rockie Award in the history and biography category last year for the doc Gabrielle Roy, a coproduction with Montreal’s Productions de l’Impatiente. The film also picked up the $20,000 Telefilm Canada Prize for best Canadian independent French-language production in competition.

Buffalo Gal returns to Banff this year with a nomination for Guitar Visionary: The Lenny Breau Story, this time a coventure with Toronto’s Sleeping Giant Productions

Both projects are feature-length documentaries with budgets of over $500,000 each, a luxury afforded to few documentaries these days, says Buffalo Gal principal Phyllis Laing. One-hour tv docs in the $200,000 range are far easier to finance and to persuade broadcasters to air.

‘The Rockie nominations for these two projects give a legitimacy to the feature-length documentary,’ says Laing.

The biography of musician Lenny Breau was spearheaded by his daughter Emily Hughes, who embarked on the preliminary research with money from the National Film Board and brought the project to Bravo!

Bravo! put her in touch with Sleeping Giant’s Jim Hanley, who had seen Breau perform in Winnipeg in 1965. Since Breau is from Winnipeg and highly regarded in Manitoba’s arts community, Hanley turned to Buffalo Gal to coproduce. In fact, Buffalo Gal had previously been developing its own documentary on Breau, but abandoned the project when they learned of Hughes’ project.

Director John Martin, John Sobol and Emily Hughes collaborated on the script and financing came by way of Bravo!, Vision tv, mtn, Telefilm Canada, Manitoba Film and Sound, and provincial and federal tax credits. ChumCity International is the distributor.

‘It would have been very easy to do an expose film – the tormented artist not finding happiness – but we didn’t want that,’ explains Laing. ‘We wanted to show Breau’s life as reflected through the music. There are 52 songs in the documentary, that’s its strength.’

Laing describes Buffalo Gal as a creatively directed company which intends to stay small and concentrate on three to four projects per year.

‘Our mandate is to get involved with writer- or director-driven projects,’ says Laing. The company enters into coproductions which are natural fits with the creative and not for financial reasons, she says. ‘We value our partners as creative collaborators, not because they can bring a fund to the table.’

Buffalo Gal and Sleeping Giant are currently teaming up on Trouble In Mind, a 13-part, half-hour series for wtn, Vision and mtn.

The company is also working with John Greyson and Damon D’Oliveira on Law of Inclosures, adapted from the book by Dayle Peck, who is cowriting with Greyson (who will also direct). The film begins with a young couple at the beginning of their lives and re-examines their relationship 40 years later.

A tv movie is in the works with Tapestry Films of Toronto. Children of My Heart is based on a Gabrielle Roy novel about a teacher’s experiences in a small Prairie town. The project is slated for principal photography this fall, with Keith Leckie directing. The A-Channel Drama Fund has committed a licence to the $4-million project.

Other Buffalo Gal projects include Desire, a feature written and directed by Colleen Murphy, which focuses on varying aspects of love, and Seventh Sister, the story of internationally renowned Winnipeg artist Wanda Koop, licensed to Vision, Bravo! and CBC Manitoba.

Sleeping Giant has 86 hours of new programming on its 1999/2000 slate. The company’s specific brand is educational programming – tv that matters.

Forthcoming projects include Spiritual Literacy, 26 half-hours for Vision on reading the sacred into everyday life, based on Frederick and Mary-Ann Brussat’s best-selling book of the same name; Judaism: Quest for Meaning, licensed to Vision and tvo; and The Believers, four one-hour biographies on spiritual masters coproduced with u.s. broadcaster Odyssey (recently acquired by Hallmark and Jim Henson’s company).

Horsetails, stories of people and horses, is in its second season with Transatlantic Films of the u.k., Life Channel in Canada and Animal Planet.

Sleeping Giant’s first docudrama, Lives Interrupted, also licensed to Vision, is a 13-part, half-hour series which looks at stories of people who have met unforeseen crises in their lives. Dan Robinson is directing the program, which combines true stories with reenactments and expert commentary.

Company president Jim Hanley says he is interested in moving further into drama, particularly projects which involve moral dilemmas and real-life choices.

Cheryl Binning