Pitch is tracking new projects for various directing, producing and acting talent attending this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Toronto filmmaker Valerie Buhagiar went to all the usual suspects when raising funds for her film L’Amour L’Amour Shut the Door Por Favor. In the end she got $2,500 from the National Film Board for her 12-minute project, which was screened at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, leaving her a whisper shy of her $3,000 budget.

The remaining $500 came from an unusual source – selling credits at $25 a pop to people in the theater community, restaurants, and the like. ‘There must have been two minutes of credits,’ laughs Buhagiar, ‘but it worked. I mean, what’s $25? You’ve got that in your pocket.’

The black-and-white film, shot in 16mm, is a sequence of love vignettes set in an alleyway over one day. It includes the prerequisite lovers, a ‘grape-squishing lady’ (she’s making wine), and a man paddling a canoe while his companion plays a violin.

Buhagiar, who wrote and produced The Passion of Rita Camilleri that aired on Global last year, is taking L’Amour to the festivals in Sudbury and Vancouver. She says all television rights are available for her film.

Her next project, a feature titled The Town of Wishful Tinkers, is well underway, with a first draft completed by David Hall.

Buhagiar, who intends to direct, is shopping around for a producer. She describes the film as a modern-day fairytale with a baker who gets in touch with his dark side. ‘It’s a film about enlightenment,’ she says cryptically.

*Nawaz plunges into new feature comedy

Zarqa Nawaz is a Perspective Canada writer/producer/director looking to negotiate a u.k. distribution deal for her second ‘in-your-face’ short comedy about Muslim Canadians. Nawaz thinks her 20-minute film Death Threat would find a comfortable home on the u.k.’s Channel 4 or BBC 2. With the burgeoning population of South Asians in London, Bradford, and Manchester, in particular, Britons are sure to eat up the humor, she reckons.

Nawaz signed a prelicensing agreement for $8,000 with the cbc based on the script, which gives them exclusive broadcast rights for one year.

Death Threat is the story of a young Muslim woman who has written an appallingly bad Harlequin-type novel and is struggling to find a publisher. Depressed, frustrated and irritated after receiving her 59th rejection, she decides that controversy is the only way to catch a publisher’s eye and resolves to get a fatwa (a la Salman Rushdie) imposed on herself. ‘I want to freak out a fundamentalist in the Muslim communityÉ’

The cheeky film was shot over two weekends in September ’97 at a cost of $27,000. The Canada Council kicked in $15,000 and Nawaz secured $4,500 from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Nawaz and her Calgary-based company fundamentalist films debuted at tiff in 1996 with BBQ Muslims.

Next on her hit list is a feature-length comedy about a desperate Muslim actor who frequently snags gigs that require him to play a terrorist. Eventually he starts to have ethical qualms about perpetuating the stereotype of Muslims as psychos.

Nawaz is writing the script and has in her hand a Canada Council grant for $15,000. She is seeking development and financial backing to the tune of $1 million.