With this issue, Playback introduces Direct This, a new feature focusing in on directors, established, up-and-coming and reinvented. Send suggestions to Pamela Swedko: fax (416) 408-0870; e-mail: pswedko@brunico.com.

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L.T.B. Productions’ Cosimo Zitani had his first big directing break on a Coca-Cola countdown intro for MuchMusic through McCann-Erickson just two years fresh from Ryerson film school, around 1990.

Soon after, while putting in his time as an agency art director, Zitani documented some murals being painted around the city for Toronto rock station Q107. Handy in the editing suite, the director cut the footage into four spots and his first commercials hit the air.

Some favorite jobs to date include a cinema spot for Silent Sam Vodka out of Communique and a recent 60-second direct-response job through Tommy Boy Records out of the u.s. for Hollywood guru Deepak Chopra’s cd set.

‘It was nice to do something of that nature,’ says Zitani. ‘My job was to capture love and intimacy in a spiritual way. It is almost the antithesis of commercial production to shoot something that had to with intimacy and love.’

Between commercial projects Zitani is finding his voice as a filmmaker, playing around with a short called Games, an expansion on his first five-minute film shot last year, Blind Man’s Bluff, a dark dance piece which recently screened at the Palm Springs Film Festival. The director is also developing a script for a 20-minute short comedy about the things we inherit from our parents, The Gene Pool.

While the strong graphic images and scarce dialogue of Blind Man’s Bluff are similar in style to his commercial work, The Gene Pool is full of strong characterization and narrative representing a 180-degree turn for the director who is frustrated about being pigeonholed in terms of what he can do.

‘This year I will be recreating myself,’ he says. ‘Reels are important and the whole industry is driven on what you’ve done. You show your reel and people either like it or they don’t. But on another level, a reel is just a reflection of the past and is not a show of what you’re capable of in the present or the future.’

After a year and a half with The Partners’ Film Company, Zitani made the switch to ltb. Ocean Park in Santa Monica, California reps him in the u.s. market, and with a newly acquired Italian passport, he is exploring the possibilities of shooting in Europe.