Australian director Simon Wincer is scheduled to start shooting the epic love triangle The Loneliness Of Always from September 13 in Moscow.

His own Billabong Productions is the producing entity and he will also take a producer credit alongside Robert Katz. The "highly complicated co-production" involves partners in Germany, Britain, Russia, France and Italy.

The Loneliness Of Always explores the relationship between Boris Pasternak, who wrote Doctor Zhivago, and Olga Ivinskaya, the woman with whom he had a 14-year affair while still married to his second wife Zinaida.

Wincer is also working towards issuing a prospectus aimed at finding investors for the A$30m Australian picture Clancy Of The Overflow.

This has been made possible now that he and producer Mark Pennell have secured a positive product ruling from the Australian Tax Office (ATO), which guarantees investors that they will get their tax deductions.

Wincer is unimpressed by the ATO's resistance to the film industry using Australia's tax laws to raise production finance: it has been 14 months since their first meeting and the process will have cost nearly A$500,000 by the time they reach the marketplace. Australia's money-raising season, which lasts until the financial year ends on June 30, is about to start.

The development of both films has been financed by entertainment entrepreneur, Michael Edgley, who shared the executive producer credit with Wincer on the 1982 hit film The Man From Snowy River.

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