Vancouver: Mort Ransen, director of the widely acclaimed Margaret’s Museum, captured the mood and fear of more than just filmmakers after winning the Federal Express Award For Most Popular Canadian Film at last month’s Vancouver International Film Festival.

In a prepared statement following the awards, the b.c.-based director said: ‘Here I am a Quebecois filmmaker transplanted to the coast of British Columbia, where I now live and work; and I just made a film in Nova Scotia. How fortunate we filmmakers are to have all of Canada in which to find our stories. I hope it stays that way.’ By the time this column appears in print, we’ll all know whether it will or won’t.

Malofilm is now getting ready to release the film theatrically in Canada early in the new year, while u.s. distributors have started putting in their bids.

Meanwhile, Ransen is relaxing at home on Saltspring Island after the festival hubbub and trying to put together his next film, Shegalla Summer, in time to shoot next summer.

Written by first-time screenwriter Joan Hopper, the film tells the tale of a young man who runs away from a mental institution, loses his pills, falls in love with two very different women, and becomes progressively insane.

Ransen, who is acting as story editor, is producing. He may also direct.

In other festival news, viff Canadian Images programmer Alison Vermee has resigned to return to her native London, Eng. Vermee will be replaced by John Dipong, founder of the Moving Pictures Film Festival.

Francophone feature first?

Despite the outcome re Canada’s two raging solitudes, local producer Robert Morais of Le Chene et le Saule Film Productions is busy finalizing the financing on his next project, Aequilibrium, which promises to be the first French-language theatrical feature ever to be shot in Vancouver.

The suspense/love story about a film actor and a painter, written and directed by Michel Juliani, a former sound editor, is slated to begin filming next spring.

C’est magnifique

The largest contingent ever of b.c. producers attended last month’s mipcom market in France. This was the first year West Coast producers had the benefit of their own booth for marketing and screening activities, put together by event co-ordinator Tracey Huston, who also scored them a great location on the upper level near the delegates lounge. Producers report it made a dramatic difference.

Among those who made the trek with great success was producer Gordon Stanfield of Gordon Stanfield Animation. He closed a substantial presale at mipcom which will now allow his animated kids series, Kleo The Misfit Unicorn, to head into production.

Word has it Vancouver-based Movie Vista Productions found itself ‘financially challenged’ in Cannes when it received word the Cable Production Fund would not be kicking in any cash for Reckoning, a Canada/France treaty coproduction from mvp, USA Network and France’s Ellipse Programme.

The film was scheduled to head into principal photography in the south of France shortly after the market wrapped. It took a lot of late-night financial restructuring meetings, but executive producers Bob Frederick, Robert Rae and Simon Hart were able to resolve the shortfall and begin shooting on time.

Directed by l.a.-based Canadian Fred Gerber, the family action/adventure feature budgeted in the $4 million range stars Lorraine Bracco, Jean-Marc Barr, Lisa Jakub and Victor Lannoux in the story of a young girl attending boarding school in Switzerland who is kidnapped while on a weekend visit to France and her mother’s desperate attempts to find her and get her back.

Just in time

Vancouver producer Christine Haebler and Brian Dennis of Toronto also closed financing at the 11th hour in order to begin shooting Bruce McDonald’s latest low-budget feature, Hard Core Logo, about a punk rock band that reunites for one last road show fling. The film was under the gun to begin production in order to catch a major punk rock revival concert at the Commodore in Vancouver late last month.

Action at Cannell

Cannell Production Services, now owned by New World Communications of l.a., begins production this month on another new pilot for the FOX Network entitled Generation X.

Based on the Marvel comic of the same name, the live-action, action/adventure stars Matt Frewer of Max Headroom fame and Finola Hughes (Staying Alive) in a futuristic story about a young couple who found a school to bring together kids with extraordinary powers to help save the world.

A cast of ‘regulars’ with a bizarre array of abilities – a boy who breathes fireworks, a girl who can turn herself into solid matter – should keep special effects wizards at Vancouver’s Northwest Imaging & FX and Paller Special Effects occupied for the next few months.

David Rossel will produce, with Jack Sholder, who was last up here to do the tv movie Omen iv, directing.

Meanwhile, cast and crew alike have been raving about the scripts for Profit, a new tv series produced by John Moranville for Cannell, which heads into production this month. It’s based on an unusual premise for television – everyone is bad, I mean really bad.

Says casting director Lindsay Walker: ‘I couldn’t put the script down, and that’s pretty unusual. It’s really different, intelligent material, even though the lead character (Jim Profit played by Adrian Pasdar) is positively psychopathic.’

Profit was picked up as a new replacement series for fox. As soon as fox has its first hour-long fatality, we’ll have a good idea what it’s replacing.

On the watch

Producers be forewarned. British Columbia Film is gearing up for even greater budget cutbacks than previously anticipated. Whether or not this will impact on the delivery of current funding programs ‘remains to be seen,’ says president and ceo Wayne Sterloff.

The scouting front remains relatively quiet, according to the B.C. Film Commission, pending the outcome of B.C. Labor Relations Board hearings on film industry unions.

l.a. studios appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach, or, as one location consultant says: ‘The scenery and weather hasn’t changed, and certainly our dollar isn’t going up, so what do you think is happening?’