Everything’s Falling into place

on latest Patricia Rozema effort

aside from a complete lack of co-operation on the part of the weather, director Patricia Rozema’s latest feature, When Night is Falling, is going well. On this particular day, the scene at hand has members of a surrealist circus (including one on stilts) celebrating and dancing around two colorfully painted circus buses. Between takes, the cast and crew huddle around heaters in the gargantuan Liberty St. Studios and the tiny forms of leads Pascale Bussieres (Blanche, La Vie Fantome) and Rachael Crawford peek out of enormous parkas.

When Night is Falling, Rozema’s third feature, is a love story. Camille (Bussieres), an about-to-be-engaged Christian academic, has her ordered life thrown for a loop with the arrival of the alluring Petra (Crawford), a ‘performance magician’ in the circus.

Rozema, whose first feature was the award-winning I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, has wanted to tell this story for a long time, but thought she should wait until she was ‘a really accomplished director.’ She decided, however, that she had to ‘make every film as if it were (her) last,’ and after intense work on the script, the project has come together.

On this film, Rozema has joined up with producer Barbara Tranter to form Crucial Pictures. The two worked together before: Tranter art directed Passion, one of Rozema’s first dramatic projects, and associate produced White Room.

Casting began last summer and continued into the fall when Rozema found her Camille and Petra in Bussieres and Crawford. The film marks popular Quebec actor Bussieres’ first English-language feature and the feature film debut of Crawford, a native of Toronto with a television background. Henry Czerny, Gemini Award-winning star of the miniseries The Boys of St. Vincent, is cast as Camille’s charismatic, theology-student boyfriend. Highway 61 writer and star Don McKellar (who also acted as a story consultant) and Tracy Wright (Highway 61) play the owners of the circus.

The approximately $2 million film was financed with agency money, private investment, and Alliance Communications as worldwide distributor.

Now the project is in full swing and Rozema is enjoying production. Writing the script ‘was a difficult process,’ she says, ‘directing is the easy part.’

On the drawing boards

nelvana’s preliminary prospectus, filed March 18 with the Ontario Securities Commission as notice that the Toronto-based company plans to go public, includes a slew of interesting projects in development. Among them: an animated series drawn from Image Comic Books’ Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen; Ranger Rick, based on the National Wildlife Federation magazine; Dragon Tales, created by Monty Python’s Terry Jones; Fantomas, based on novels first published by Pierre Souvertes and Marcel Alain in 1911; and Barbarella, based on Jean-Claude Forest’s 1960s comic books.

Two live-action television series are being developed: Weldon Pond, written by Victor Fresco (producer of Evening Shade and principal writer of Alf), is being developed for cbs primetime, and Mystery Man is being developed with Michael Sloane (executive producer of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues) for the Arts & Entertainment Network.

Coproductions in development include two animated series – one on the history of the Olympic Games with French producer/distributor Gaumont Television (subject to approval by the International Olympic Committee), and Tabaluga, based on the rock opera by Peter Maffay, which will be coproduced with German broadcaster zdf and Tabaluga GmbH.

As well, Nelvana is developing three animated movies: The Sign of the Seahorse (based on the children’s book by Graeme Base), Mask Vision and The Trumpet of the Swan (based on the children’s book by E.B. White) with Kennedy-Marshall Productions. Nelvana worked with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (who produced, among other projects, e.t., Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Jurassic Park) on the series Family Dog and Fievel’s American Tails through Amblin Entertainment. When the two went out on their own, Nelvana was one of the first companies to work with them. The projects with Kennedy-Marshall will be financed entirely by Paramount Pictures.

Carleton series planned

ottawa’s Carleton Productions is completing research and development on Under One Sky, a 13-part television documentary series. It will be hosted by The Nature of Things host David Suzuki’s teen daughter Severn Cullis-Suzuki, who is fast following in her famous father’s footsteps. Cullis-Suzuki first came to world attention with a speech she delivered at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

The series, which explores sustainable development and biodiversity, has received r&d funding from cida’s coproduction program. Field reporters, young people from Central America and Canada, will focus on why diversity is relevant to young people’s lives and tell stories from their areas. The series will be produced in English and French by Michael Laewen, with Bob Callaghan directing.

Carleton, producer of the documentaries The Quiet Kingdom of Lesotho, Seeds of Change and Rangers of the North, makes its films available to broadcasters free of charge. According to producer Randi Hansen, the projects are funded through a mix of corporate and government money and the costs are kept low by using the facilities of sister company cjoh-tv Ottawa. Carleton projects deal with subjects the company feels are important to get out into the community, says Hansen. ‘We feel that as long as we cover the cost of production, we’re happy.’

Opening night

denys Arcand’s English-language feature debut, Love and Human Remains, had its Toronto premiere on March 28, a presentation of the Canadian Film Centre’s Reel Club. Wayne Clarkson, executive director of the center, was on hand to introduce director Arcand, producer Roger Frappier of Max Films and screenwriter Brad Fraser (who wrote the play on which the film is based, Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love). Also present were stars Thomas Gibson, Ruth Marshall, Mia Kirshner, Joanne Vannicola and Rick Roberts.

At the opening, Arcand announced that Fraser, who had a blind script deal with Disney, has been given the go-ahead for a script based on Beauty, the novel by Brian D’Amato. In Fraser’s words, it’s ‘about an artist who is able to transform the faces of women… what beauty means in our culture and to what lengths we will go to achieve it.’

After the Love screening, cast and crew, guests from the Ontario Film Development Corporation, Telefilm Canada, Atlantis Communications, (Atlantis Films’ Peter Sussman co-produced the feature) and members of the Reel Club celebrated at the Daily Planet restaurant.

The Reel Club raises revenues for the Canadian Fim Centre’s residence program for short dramatic films. Members receive invitations to 10 premier screenings a year, the ultimate pass book (52 movies a year), invitations to the Toronto International Film Festival barbecue and a tax receipt for supporting the center.