New York-based producers chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, the husband-and-wife team who went behind the scenes of Clinton’s victorious 1996 presidential campaign in Academy Award-nominated The War Room, are at the festival with Moon Over Broadway, a documentary about the trials and tribulations of a Broadway stage production, starring Carol Burnett.

Currently concentrating on Moon, the duo’s next project, Searching For Jimi Hendrix, is set for delivery by the end of this year once final editing is finished. The project, according to Hegedus, whose filmography includes several concert films and other musically related projects in partnership with Pennebaker, consists of ’12 different musicians influenced by Jimi Hendrix doing a song.’

With the participation of musicians from a variety of musical genres – Laurie Anderson, Roseanne Cash, Chuck D. of Public Enemy and Los Lobos among others – Searching For Jimi Hendrix is slated for a home video and television release, pending broadcast and distribution agreements.

*TIFF is the Rightime

From the ‘One to Watch’ file is Mike Kronish and his two-year-old Montreal-based production company Rightime, which also includes cofounder and business-wise Robert Gervais. Kronish is at tiff seeking broadcasters for his just-completed one-hour doc about color barrier-breaking baseball player Jackie Robinson’s year in Montreal before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Kronish says Jackie Robinson in Montreal: The Challenge, which is available in French and English versions and was broadcast on presold Montreal station Television Quatre Saisons last week, questions whether the experiment of playing the first black major league ballplayer would have been successful if it had occurred in a different North American city.

‘It’s more of a sociopolitical documentary than a sports film,’ says Kronish, who plans to submit Jackie Robinson to festivals like next year’s Hot Docs! in Toronto. ‘We started off with the fact that this was the 50th anniversary of Jackie breaking the color barrier. We also wanted to make something that was viable and sellable.’

Kronish has been talking to a large contingent of Canadian and foreign broadcasters at tiff (including Canal+) and has been fielding offers. ‘We’re looking for the best first-window English rights Canadian contract,’ says Kronish, who was seen talking to reps from Vision tv, ctv, and tfo yesterday.

But nobody comes to the Toronto festival without another project to pitch, and sure enough Kronish has a couple of stories that he’s been floating while here.

Rightime is pitching a documentary on Montreal squeegee kids to some of the broadcasters he’s talking to with the Jackie Robinson film, and not to worry, he has a feature script he’s pitching for the film types.

Kronish has also been talking to u.s. distributors, looking for presales for The Weeping Fruit, a love story set in the Gaspe region of Quebec. ‘I don’t think we would go ahead with anything anymore without presale money,’ he says.

*Shopping For Fangs and development $s

UCLA film student and former Montreal resident Quentin Lee, who has his film Shopping For Fangs in the Perspective Canada series, has been busy looking for distribution for his feature film debut, codirected by classmate Justin Lin. The North American rights to the Canada Council-assisted film are being repped by u.s. producers rep team Rose Kuo and Melanie Backer.

Lee has also been pitching his next project, The Secret Diary of Boys. Set in Vancouver, Lee says the script is a Clueless type of film with a broad appeal that chronicles the last year of high school for two Asian-Canadian boys, one of whom is homosexual.

Lee has been talking to Bill House from Telefilm Canada, Charlotte Mickie from Alliance and a representative from Troika Films.

Meanwhile, Lin is pitching his next script, Socio Familia, a black comedy thriller dealing with a dysfunctional family.