Sullivan on the road to a new

MOW: Betrayal of Innocence

Sullivan Entertainment has the next year pretty much booked up production-wise. Road To Avonlea season five has just wrapped, and while the cast will get a bit of a rest, producers Kevin Sullivan and Trudy Grant will plunge into production on their latest mow, Betrayal of Innocence, at the beginning of May.

The $3 million coproduction with the cbc is based on the book Butterbox Babies, written by Bette Cahill. It chronicles the story of William and Lila Young, whose desperation to keep their Depression-era home for unwed mothers open leads them to illegal adoptions and a lucrative baby-trafficking operation.

The script is being written by playwright Raymond Storey. Don McBrearty will direct.

Season six of Road to Avonlea goes into production in June, and to keep things rolling in the late fall, Sullivan has picked up the rights to Only the Angels Listened, the story of Barbara Wesler. Wesler fought the u.s. legal system after she was jailed for ‘kidnapping’ her children to prevent their abusive father from having access to them. The project, which is being written by Robbyn Burger, is in development with abc in the u.s.

Film Centre gets Rude

the Feature Film Project, an initiative of the Canadian Film Centre which finances and assists in the production of three low-budget dramatic features a year, has chosen its second production, Rude.

Written by former film center resident Clement Virgo (Save My Lost Nigga’ Soul), who will also direct, Rude is scheduled to begin shooting later this spring. Producers Karen King and Damon D’Oliveira are also alumni of the center’s labs. The film follows three stories linked together by Rude, a deejay whose illegal broadcasts elicit extreme responses.

The Feature Film Project’s first production, Blood ‘N’ Donuts, will wrap post-production in July.

Doing their homework

forget focus groups and studies. When ytv decided to design its annual Achievement Awards show around the target teen audience, it went right to the source: producer Morgan Earl hired writers Jamie Bulliard and Ryan Anderson to script the two-hour program. The two high school students – in grades 10 and 12 respectively – have quite an extensive background in theater and comedy. Working closely with Earl, they have been putting the program together on weekends and after school since January.

‘Morgan serves as a guide,’ says Bulliard. ‘We have the range and licence to do what we want. Morgan is really in tune.’

According to Earl, the addition of the rookie writers ‘keeps the show honest; they’re unafraid and unencumbered.’

The two teens seem relatively undaunted by the task, although they admit it is a bigger job than they first thought. They credit the folks at ytv with lots of support and are looking forward to the show, which will be broadcast on ytv from the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on April 16.

Hello, good-bye

the recent wrap of the Norstar feature Boulevard brought with it good-byes for its producer, Ray Sager. Sager, who has been with Norstar for the last nine years, is heading south to join the l.a. independent production scene (leaving his Norstar compatriots to joke that he should arrive just in time for the plagues and locusts).

The filming of Boulevard, executive produced by Peter Simpson, brought home director Penelope Buitenhuis, a native of Toronto. The Simon Fraser University grad has spent the last nine years in Berlin directing award-winning shorts and making her first feature, Trouble.

It was Trouble, a gritty ‘rock-n-rap’ story of post-wall Berlin, that caught the attention of Boulevard writer Rae Dawn Chong (who also stars in the film alongside Lou Diamond Phillips). Chong approached Buitenhuis about directing the project. Buitenhuis was immediately drawn to the script ‘because it’s about women, and a woman finding empowerment. And it’s about street life, not some fantasy of the world.’ Filming, she says, ‘went great.’

Driving Forces

toronto-based Forces Beyond Productions has begun shooting a 26-episode info/documentary series on the paranormal for WIC Western International Communications. Forces Beyond, hosted by Canadian actor Nick Mancuso, will shoot in Canada, the u.s. and overseas. Garry Blye and John Migicovsky will executive produce along with Drew Levin and Margaret Roberts. The series should go to air in September, with shooting continuing until the end of that month.

He’s cooking

martin Apelbaum of Toronto-based Apple Balm Films has had some recent successes with his creatively financed short film Expresso.

Presold to Superchannel, it garnered additional sales as a result of the Local Heroes International Film Festival in Alberta last month. Both cbc and Access Alberta have picked up the short, a story of a man so in love with kitchen appliances – but so poor – that he marries an Italian girl simply for the appliances the wedding will bring in.

Through a feat of imaginative marketing, companies like t-fal, Proctor-Silex, Nabob and Salton (to name but a few) agreed not only to donate appliances and products for use as props – and to help pay the crew! – but also to help finance the flick. Apelbaum is now developing a feature-length filmwhich includes more appliances.

TWIFT throws a bash

partygoers packed the Royal York Hotel on March 16 for Toronto Women in Film and Television’s seventh annual Outstanding Achievement Awards gala. It was also the 10th anniversary of the organization, which this year honored the late actress Kate Reid; Heather McGillivray, vice-president programming at Family Channel; journalist Ann Medina; filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin; Joan Hutton, president of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers; and Jay Switzer, vice-president programming at CHUM Group Television.

The awards presentation, hosted by comics Wendy Hopkins and Elvira Kurt, swung from the heart-tugging: Reid’s children Reid and Robin Willis accepting the award on their mother’s behalf and a touching tribute to Obomsawin, to the hilarious: a deadpan Medina claiming to have asked Alliance’s Robert Lantos for acceptance speech pointers and registering her surprise that a professional women’s organization would choose to honor someone obviously hired for her looks, and Switzer recounting that he told his wife, ‘I’m it! The guy! The friend of babes!’ on learning he had been named this year’s Friend of twift.

Two additional awards, the Joanna Caslon Award and the twift/cbc writers award were presented to Nardina Grande of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association and writer Lynn M. Turner respectively. After the awards presentation, there was a mad rush to the buffet followed by much chatting and dancing.