Canamedia - Development Catalogue - Single Documentaries


	NOT OF THIS EARTH (1 x 60’ HD TV) Documentary / UFO / Science Canamedia Film Productions Inc. & Texada Films Humanity has held a long fascination with Outer Space… but why? Is it our wish to reconnect with our Creators, in essence God? What drives us to explore the depths of the cosmos? This documentary proposes we are in search of the Origin of Ourselves, looking for physical evidence of who we are and what we are, chasing a distant memory located in our genetics perhaps thousands of years old. For these answers however, we do not have to go far. Within the oral traditions of indigenous peoples, lay the answers to many unanswered questions. Oral tradition has been widely ignored by the scientific community, categorizing their fantastic stories as legends or myth. Not of This Earth will listen to the respected native leaders and elders from approximately eight different communities as they relay their oral traditions, exposing who these aliens are and why they continue to visit Earth. Based on the information, this HDTV film will extrapolate their intentions for earth and its inhabitants. Not of This Earth adds a new complexity and depth to our knowledge of the Alien phenomenon not yet seen in any recorded UFO production. DEVDASIS: SACRED INDIAN PROSTITUTES (1x60’) Anthropological Documentary Icon Media and Canamedia Film Productions Inc. The Devadasis is now a dead cult. Dev(god)-Dasis(slave), a once a powerful group known as the sacred prostitutes, have fallen out of historical importance, with only a few old women left to reminisce that age. The divine aim of these holy women is the goal of this investigation. In this documentary, we trace the meaning of the phenomenon in the cultural history of south India up to 1947 where it was considered an honourable occupation. However, its modern day essence suggests morally void street prostitutes, which begs the question, how, or why have these once sacred deities fallen from grace? ALIENS AMONG US (1x60’) Documentary / UFO / Science Canamedia Film Productions Inc. & Texada Films “Aliens Among Us” will be a brand new kind of program. Utilizing C.G.I images based on actual sightings it tackles the latest questions facing the UFO phenomenon today. It does not deal with typical UFO fare found in similar documentaries like crop circles, UFO sightings, or Area 51. Instead, the intent of “Aliens Among Us” is to explain the various species of aliens that claim to have been sited on Earth. The program will consist of three parts and will focus the investigation on five types of alien races. It will reveal what the aliens look like, where they come from, and why they are here. Guest eyewitnesses will recount their experiences through five intriguing stories about aliens from distant worlds while guest experts from various scientific and social disciplines comment. It will be produced by the same team who made A&E’s Alien Obsession. QUEST FOR THE CAUSE (1x60) Documentary / Science / Medical Canamedia Film Productions Inc. & Northern Quest Quest For The Cause is the personal story of an ordinary 52 year old woman; a Canadian immigrant from middle class America . Her journey through life included becoming a doctor, and then her existence was transformed by some extraordinary experiences that changed her life forever...and could change the lives of thousands of women worldwide, if her quest succeeds. In the heart of the Canadian prairies, Dr. Carol Haines, an experienced cancer researcher and epidemiologist, pushed back conventional horizons to launch a long term in-depth survey of women’s everyday lives. It looks at everything from the cleaning products they use at home, to the underarm deodorant they use, to the food they eat. Her purpose? To find the cause of breast cancer. Coral Champions (1x60’) Documentary / Enviornmental Canamedia Film Productions Inc & David Lees Recently, more than 1,000 of the world’s top marine scientists called for a moratorium on bottom trawling, an industrial fishing technique in which steel plates and nets are dragged across the ocean bottom, destroying the coral that grows there. The scientists issued a statement at the end of a U.N. conference on biological diversity, in February, 2004, noting that until recently, few people – even marine scientists – knew that coral grows, and thrives, in cold northern waters. But the destruction of deep-sea coral is now implicated in the collapse of fishery stocks in the North Atlantic . This is a story not only about an endangered natural species but about a way of life that has been all but destroyed by industrial fishing practices. DEW LINE (1x60’) Documentary/History Canamedia Film Productions Inc. On February 24, 1954, Dwight Eisenhower signed an executive order authorizing the construction of a radar line across the Canadian north to guard against Russian bombers. This was the DEW LINE. This documentary will evaluate the line from two perspectives; it’s effectiveness in staving off world war three, and it’s impact, socially and economically on the Canadian North. We’ll explore what it was like to work up there, and talk to an operator who sat out the Cuban missile crisis hunched over the radar screen on Baffin Island. And what was to become of this multi billion dollar venture when the cold war ended? Who’s responsible for dismantling the stations that litter the arctic north? Are Canadians stuck with the bill? CHILD BRIDES (1x60’) Social documentary) Canamedia Film Productions Inc., TVNF, India Set in India, Child Brides will show the entire child marriage process from beginning to end. It will explain the social psychology of this tradition by uncovering the historical, religious, and economic reasons behind it. It will explore why India’s child marriages are so entrenched in Indian culture and will ask the question: how justified are its defenders in believing that child marriages are a sacred tradition? *Child Brides* will be a very personalized documentary. We will follow the children through their wedding ceremony. Then we will follow an adolescent couple from their muklava ceremony to the groom’s home, where married life begins. We will witness the problems of childbearing on girls who are too young and the complications that often lead to the frail mother’s death during delivery. We will meet a number of women who were child brides, some of whom are now living in North America. They will tell their stories that go beyond the physical pain wreaked upon their young bodies, as they share their feelings about being forced into the matrimonial game before they were women. HOT ROCKS (1x60’) Anthropological/Crime Canamedia Film Productions Inc. and Leslie Anthony Exotic locations; organized crime; briefcases full of cash; armed thugs; International smuggling; security guards; vandalism; and a host of passionate, dedicated personalities involved in one of the world’s blossoming black-market industries…fossils. Fossils are one of the hottest and most controversial commodities of the new millennium. Whether it’s because they represent former life and therefore touchstones to an unfathomable past, or because of their high profile in pop culture, fossils have captured the human heart and mind in a profound way. NO MOE BLUES (1x60’) Biography/Music Jyro Productions and Canamedia Film Productions Inc. “No Moe Blues” profiles the life and times of legendary Canadian Jazz artist Moe Kauffman, and four other prominent musicians that worked closely with him. The documentary will centre on a Tribute to Moe Kauffman concert that will be shown together with archive footage and taped interviews. A final homage to one of the greatest musical presence to grace the Canadian musical landscape. SWAMP DOCTOR (1x60’) Science and Biotechnology Canamedia Film Productions Inc. There are almost 600,000 abandoned mines in Canada and the United States, and more than 70 billion tons of tailings and waste rock which are a continuing source of toxic run-off. Privately, the corporate directors of mining companies believe that AMD cannot be corrected or prevented. So they have tackled the problem halfheartedly at best, with traditional tools - chemicals, dynamite and earthmovers. Inevitably they have failed. Recently a Canadian biologist has found that the run-off can be treated in natural wetlands, where plants, algae and microbes balance the pH of the water, causing the metals in it to settle out. Gradually, buried in the oxygen-deprived sediment at the bottom of the pond the metals are re-mineralized by bacteria. In other words, they are bound up again into stable, insoluble molecules. THE PERFECT HOME (3x 60’) Docu series Seneca Productions UK ; presold to Channel 4 UK Hosted by best selling author Alain de Botton. this series is a guide to the central principles of architecture, connecting the seemingly small dilemmas we all face about how to decorate and design our houses to the big philosophical questions such as “What is beauty”; “How do buildings speak to us and shape us”; and above all: “How do we want to live”? Taking a deliberately multicultural approach, including discussions of Islamic and Zen Buddhist aesthetics, we aim to draw up some generalisations which can inform all of our decisions both about our own homes and the built environment generally. Ep. 1 explores the ways in which buildings communicate with us and the different visions of life they have embodied in different cultures and different periods of history, culminating in a discussion of what modern buildings around us are saying to us and whether this is what we really want them to say. Ep 2 offers a guide to resolving arguments about taste, extrapolating from the disagreements we all have in IKEA to the debates which have divided architects for the past 200 years about beauty, form and function. It challenges the pious modern notion which no one really believes – that everyone’s taste is equally good, seeking instead to establish the principles around which we might all unite. Ep 3 looks at some of the most beautiful houses in the world, extrapolating from them five universal Laws for the Construction of Beautiful Buildings. Taken together, the series is a road map for buildings that will make us happy. HISTORY LAID BARE (8 x60’) Historical/Sociological Canamedia and Figments Of Imagination Productions It’s time to strip some famous people and peep into the bedrooms, Roman baths and boudoirs of the past. This HD series, hosted by a personality like Kim Catrall and using the very latest CGI techniques aims to put back SEX into our knowledge of history. The sheer creativity and diversity when it comes to horizontal (and not so horizontal) amusements is astounding. Many people now seem to have the impression that Madonna invented sex. In his seminal book History Laid Bare, Richard Zacks unearthed scores of previously undiscovered gems. This series will spill the beans on all the stories that your history teacher never did, including: -Napoleon’s wedding night: in bed with Josephine…and her dog -Horny wives endangering the Norman Conquest -Pope Alexander VI’s Orgy at the Vatican -An American Civil War Prostitute’s Diary There’s more than two thousand years of history and writing about sex that we can delve into, a rich tapestry of stories and events, from the surprising to the shocking. The approach of this series would be to have our present day host lead us into the time period (using CGI and scene settings from movies) to set the stage for each of our scenes, giving us the background, the story behind the story, the context – before we (tastefully) jump under the covers. The settings are lush, shot in a graceful and tasteful manner. We will then enact these scenes in period costume, or at least partially in costume. The writings we have are very often in the first person, so we will have the main character also take the role of narrator as the scene plays out, telling us in the first person what is happening, what they are thinking and what they are feeling. We will see the scene tastefully brought to its climax before we pull out to our “voyeur host and with her move through time and space on to the next passionate encounter. The easiest way to structure this eight part series is chronologically: Ancient Ages, Classical Times, The Middle Ages, The Renaissance, The Seventeenth Century, The Eighteenth Century, The Nineteenth Century and Modern Times. This is not all about scandalous affairs and latent homosexuality, though of course they both figure prominently. There are also some bizarre characters, like a medieval German priest named Burchard of Worms. In 1018 A.D. he catalogued more than 150different sexual sins and their punishments, including the penance required when a woman smears herself with honey, rolls in flour and bakes a loaf of aphrodisiacal bread. There is the confession of Scottish witch Isabel Gowdie, who in 1668 A.D. gave a detailed description of sex with the devil, right down to his ice water sperm. 200 years later in America , there’s the long-overlooked diary of a civil war prostitute. “The praying general was brought in today by Preacher H. He is rough and brutal. After I serviced him, he dropped to his knees and asked God to forgive me for my sins!” This is not fiction; this is contemporary reporting, very often from eyewitnesses. Flaubert filled his travel notebooks with tales of belly dancers. Mark Twain delivered a speech on masturbation. Joan of Arc’s trial records in Latin testify that during her trial for witchcraft, she was physically tested for virginity twice. Her enemy, the Duke of Bedford watched through a peephole both times. In short, this series aims to amuse, enlighten and to fill a gap left to us by the Puritanical deletions in our history texts since Victorian times and exposes us for whom we really are: creatures of comfort, desire, longing and imagination. RETURN TO THE MOON (1x60’) Documentary / Science / Space Foolish Earthlings Productions The moment an entire generation of scientists, visionaries and enthusiasts waited decades for has finally arrived. Human beings are blazing new trails to the moon - and this time we intend to homestead. Astronauts who weren’t yet born when Eagle landed at the monn’s Sea of Tranquility are readying themselves for another giant leap. They’ll take with them technology that wasn’t even on the drawin