Toronto producers Elliott Halpern and Jack Rabinovitch have parted ways with Associated Producers and opened a new production company, Ace Pictures. Under their new banner, Halpern, a two-time Emmy and five-time Gemini winner, and partner Rabinovitch will be exploring long-form fiction in addition to a full slate of documentaries. During their tenure with Associated the pair was known largely for their documentary efforts like The Plague Monkeys (which Halpern produced, wrote and directed).

Ottawa’s Twist Pictures and Montreal-based Seville Pictures have completed principal photography on Posers, a new feature film from writer/director Katie Tallo (Juiced). The film shot Nov. 14 to Dec. 4 in Ottawa.
According to Twist producer Chantal Ling, who worked with Tallo on the series The Last Band on the Planet, the director brought her the script in its first draft and after a bit of development the pair presented it to Seville. It is the first coproduction between the two companies.
Posers is about a group of wild, club-hopping party girls who beat another girl to death in a washroom. The girls get involved in a mystery when one of them is murdered following the crime.

Halifax’s imX communications is heading into the holiday season with a full plate.
The first new project to speak of is Julie Walking Home, a feature film coproduction between imX, Toronto’s The Film Works, Germany’s ART OKO Film and Poland’s Studio Filmowe TOR.
The $8-million film, which wrapped shooting Dec. 10 in Halifax, is about a woman who watches her young son succumb to cancer while her marriage falls apart. She travels to Poland to find a cure for the boy, but comes away with much more.

Calgary-based Fresh Cut Entertainment is currently in production on Little Italys, a six-episode, half-hour travel and lifestyle series for Corus Entertainment-owned Telelatino Network. Hosted by Peter Ciuffa, Little Italys offers a look at Italian life in cities not associated with having large Italian populations.
Produced by Fresh Cut partners Jeff Hohn and Doug Hodgson, the series introduces viewers to the Italian communities in Calgary, Boston, Montreal, Seattle and Kelowna. The first set of episodes wraps with the yet-to-be-shot program on the Italians of Honolulu, Hawaii.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…

Commercial directors spill on their careers, accomplishments and the ideas that propel them to new advertising heights. This month we check in with…

The Players Film Company is launching a high-end commercial production satellite called Pure Film, headed up by Players’ Phil Mellows and partner/executive producer Brian Atkinson, that will bid against and compete with Players in the Canadian market.
Players will vacate its funky Mowat Avenue home in Toronto after five years to make way for its fledgling satellite, which takes over the space in mid-December when Players moves into new digs on nearby Pardee Street.

For the 14th year, ad industry good-timers came together this month in support of the Bereaved Families of Ontario and its Big Night Out. This year more than 800 people ate, drank and were merry at the Capitol Event Theatre in Toronto, and helped to raise more than $80,000 for the not-for-profit charity, designed to help the bereaved cope with their losses.

The big story in the commercial production industry in 2001 was ‘diversification.’ It is a word that by now should be as familiar to our readers as the varnish on the bar at their favorite pub.

Toronto’s Chesler/Perlmutter Productions is in production in Toronto on three animal-themed theatrical features. Coproduced with Germany’s Apollo Media and the U.K.’s Grosvenor Park under the banner Animal Tales Productions, the films – Touching Wild Horses, Time of the Wolf and Cybermutt – are budgeted between $4.5 million and $5 million each. As their titles suggest, all three tales involve animals, which the producers feel gives them universal appeal.

The newest feature film offering from writer/director Deepa Mehta (Earth) is currently in production in Toronto. Bollywood/Hollywood sees Mehta at the helm of what producer David Hamilton calls the director’s take on a romantic comedy. It is about an NRI (non-resident Indian) family living in Toronto and the influences Bollywood films continue to have on their lives in Canada.
‘Bollywood is a huge industry and people that are from India follow it,’ says Hamilton. ‘A lot of what happens in Bollywood films influences how people live their lives here.’
Hamilton is producing with Bob Wertheimer under the banner Bollywood/Hollywood Productions. Mehernaz Lentin is line producer on the six-week shoot that wraps Nov. 12.

NABET 700’s business manager Ross Leslie says the biggest issue currently facing the union’s approximately 1,250 film technicians is the general slowdown in the production industry.