After blowing up the world of teenagers with his 1999 feature debut Johnny, director Carl Bessai has turned his attention to the quieter anxiety of those in their mid-thirties. With his new film, Lola, the Vancouver director looks at a 35-year-old woman who takes on the identity of another. ‘She’s one of those people whose life has been in limbo for 10 years and she’s troubled,’ says Bessai.

Few films have their food catered by a monastery. Yet that is exactly what happened on the set of Solitude, which looks at the fleeting connections that arise between two women who are on a monastic retreat and one of the resident monks.

Vancouver: After years of asking the provincial government to restore or enhance its dwindling operating budget, British Columbia Film has finally been able to show what it can do with a few extra bucks.
A $5-million parting gift from the former provincial government this spring has sparked overall annual increases in homegrown production in 2001/02 of 71% and, more specifically, quadrupled the number of features the funding agency can assist.

At the heart of the new British Columbia feature comedy On the Nose is the story of a gambler who improves his odds for success with a little help from a foreigner.
Okay, it’s about an ancient aborigine head that can pick winning horses for his Dublin-based keeper Robbie Coltrane. But the plot could easily apply to the film’s producer – Scott Kennedy of Vancouver’s Highwire Entertainment – who improved the long odds on completing the $6.4-million On the Nose by doing it as an Irish treaty coproduction.

Vancouver: It’s said that if you ask any Los Angeles film executive in the know what’s going on in Vancouver, he or she will be able to tell you the names of U.S. productions underway at any studio here. It’s a party trick of growing difficulty, however, as the city’s soundstages proliferate to meet the continuing demand from the U.S. and abroad – producers who want to take advantage of shooting in Lotus Land.

Sullivan Entertainment’s Wind at My Back Christmas Movie is shooting this month in dynamic Scarborough, ON. The MOW spin-off of the TV series is not really a finale for the show, according to production manager Dan Matthews.
‘It ties up loose ends from where the characters left off at the end of the fifth season, and it’s packaged in a holiday movie,’ Matthews explains. However, ‘there are no immediate plans’ to do another season of the series at this point, he adds.

Halifax’s imX communications is forging ahead on its digital feature film series seats 3a & 3c, with principal photography now completed on Thom Fitzgerald’s The Wild Dogs, number two in the low-budget five-pack.
Wild Dogs follows Dragonwheel, written and directed by Tricia Fish, which wrapped earlier this year as the first installment in the seats series.
Coproduced with Axiom Films of the U.K., each film in the series is premised on the chance meeting of two people on an airplane and the profound impact it has on their lives.

Montreal: Filming began Aug. 28 and goes through to Nov. 9 on the Productions Videofilms dramatic miniseries Jean Duceppe: L’Homme de theatre. Duceppe is one of the giants of modern Quebec culture and a pioneer in theatre and television. The company he founded, Compagnie Jean Duceppe, continues to showcase its productions at Place des Arts.
The six-hour miniseries from director/producer Robert Menard (Le Polock, Cruising Bar) and producer Claude Bonin (Omerta III, Dr. Lucille), marks a welcome return to drama for broadcaster Tele-Quebec.

Toronto commercial production companies Generator Films and Angel Films have merged and will be operating under the Generator banner after the Labour Day weekend.
According to Generator cofounder and executive producer Michael Cooper, the merger gives his company a chance to better succeed in both its longer format initiatives as well as in its native commercial business with Angel owner Sarah Ker-Hornell as a new partner and executive producer.

The Players Film Company head Philip Mellows has joined forces with executive film producer Steve Hoban (Ginger Snaps, Cyberworld, Blood & Donuts) and Noah Segal, a veteran film distributor and former executive VP, worldwide marketing, Lions Gate Films, to create 49th Parallel, a new long-form production company.
Mellows stresses the new company is not just a marketing tool. ‘A lot of commercial production companies have put out a shingle and said ‘Now, we’re a film company.’ I don’t want to be perceived as a guy just trying to raise the profile of his commercial production company,’ Mellows says. The two high-profile film execs on board is further evidence of Mellows’ commitment to the new operation.

Toronto copywriter Janet Kestin and art director Nancy Vonk are so comfortable with each other’s habits, quirks and views on the industry that after a full decade together at Ogilvy & Mather, the three-year cocreative directors happily continue to collaborate on new ads and guide the teams working under them.

Vancouver: With an amendment to their current master collective agreement, ACTRA members can now continue performing in any production that is underway when the current actors’ IPA expires Jan. 16, 2002 or if the union goes on strike.
The change – which was approved by ACTRA’s board of directors, the CFTPA and the AMPTP in late August and does not need formal member ratification – comes on the heels of a controversy involving Daredevil, a $92-million 20th Century Fox/ New Regency feature originally scheduled for production in Montreal that moved to Vancouver (where ACTRA does not have direct jurisdiction) to avoid a potential work stoppage.