Fundy Communications and the Canada Independent Film & Video Fund have announced the first five recipients of awards from the new Fundy Communications Production Fund.

Halifax producer Lesley Ann Patten of Victory Motion Pictures received $20,000 for her one-hour doc Loyalties, the story of two Nova Scotia women – one white, one black – who discover they are connected through an ancestral lineage of slaveholder and slave.

Producer Mathew Welsh of Halifax’s Alchemy Notion Pictures got the nod for Breakaway, a documentary about a brain-injury survivor helping others.

Edmundston, n.b.-based producers Bernard and Francine LeBel of Video Klips have received support for Les emotions ivres, a first-hand look at alcoholism.

Producer Peter D’Entremont of Triad Films in Dartmouth, n.s. was awarded for The Spark and the Keeper of the Flame, a documentary about filmmaker John Houston’s return to Cape Dorset after his mother’s death.

And Halifax producers Niall Burnett and Richard Zurawski have received funding for AfterMath Interactive, a cd/Web learning tool on math for grades 4 to 6 based on a tv series of the same name.

Launched in May, the fund assists producers from the Atlantic provinces with the production of educational/informational broadcast and new media projects.

Deadline for the next round of submissions is Nov. 18. For more info visit the cifvf Website at www.cifvf.ca.

*Emily gets local support

Season three of Cinar Films/Salter Street Films’ series Emily of New Moon is halfway through its July-to-November, $13-million shoot in Prince Edward Island, and this time around they’re getting some help from the provincial government in the form of a $500,000 equity investment.

The Canada/PEI Labour Market Development Agreement has contributed $100,000 to give 10 local residents the opportunity to work on set as part of the crew in an effort to develop a pool of locally trained individuals.

Directors on the 13 new episodes, which will air in 1999, include Michael Kennedy, Jimmy Kaufman, Bruce McDonald, Matt Nodella, Lorette Leblanc, Gordon Langevin and Steve Danyluk.

Making guest appearances this year will be CBC Radio host Michael Enright and Eliza McDonald Butler, the great granddaughter of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the novels on which the series is based.

*$alter talks $ense

Halifax’s Salter Street Films in association with CBC Newsworld is attempting to take some guesswork out of investing in the stock market with its new business series, The Canadian Investor.

The weekly program, which launched Friday, Sept. 11 at 6:30 p.m. (six repeats on weekends), features a three-person panel of Bay Street financial managers and guests from the senior ranks of corporate Canada who discuss stock market highlights of the week.

Hosting is Toronto financial advisor and former business journalist Pat Blandford.

*Shotworx launches in Moncton

New on the New Brunswick scene is Shotworx Videography, a Moncton-based broadcast-quality taping facility providing television and corporate producers with Maritime-produced video footage.

Company president, videographer Ralph Levin, says with the New Brunswick industry growing in ‘leaps and bounds,’ the timing was perfect to set up the company, which he claims is the only service of its kind in the province.

Since opening his doors at the beginning of September, Levin has picked up work from local production companies, including Connections Productions’ Turning Point series, and was on assignment in Nova Scotia for Zurich’s Tele Zueri to cover the Swissair Flight 111 disaster.