Montreal: The programming directors at Radio-Canada must really like their new half-hour dramedy La Vie la vie, an ensemble series featuring a group of thirtysomething friends in Montreal’s Plateau Mont-Royal district. The show has scored an enviable 39-episode order from src, entirely financed, without a single episode having yet gone to air.

The series is from producers Nicole Robert of Lux Films and Jacques Blain of Cirrus Communications.

Robert (Requiem pour un beau sans coeur, Karmina) says series writer Stephane Bourguignon (L’Avaleur de sable, Le principe de geyser) is known for his bright and biting wit. ‘He’s got a way of talking about life with a capital ‘l’ – through simple, everyday events,’ she says.

The series goes to air on src (as the Thursday night replacement for Un Gars une Fille) in January 2001 and stars Patrick Labbe in the role of a wired multimedia type. Julie McClemens plays Marie, his wife and a professional crisis mediator. Normand Daneau is an aspiring screenwriter who can’t keep a girlfriend, while Macha Limonchik dreams of a career in journalism and a boyfriend who’ll hang around for more than a night. Vincent Graton is Marie’s older brother, a bar owner on the prowl after six solitary months.

Association des professionnels de la video du Quebec craft credits go to dop Jean-Pierre St-Louis, art director Jean Babin, editor Michel Grou and music composer Luc Sicard.

La Vie la vie has a short-film look on a limited $170,000 half-hour budget, but is shot entirely on location in the Plateau district.

The first 13 episodes of La Vie la vie were shot last fall. Thirteen new ones are in production over 45 days through to mid-August, and the final 13 will go next winter.

Robert is in the process in folding Lux, ex of the Behaviour Communications fold, into recently launched Go Films. Go is in development or financing on two feature films: Quebec-Montreal, a hybrid road movie where all the backseat chatter is of youthful love, from writers Patrice Robitaille and Jean-Phillipe Pearson and first-time director Ricardo Trogi; and Karmina 2, the vampire comedy sequel from writer Yves Pelletier and director Gabriel Pelletier (La Vie Apres l’Amour).

Karmina was a cult hit in the video rental market. The sequel is budgeted at $3.8 million, with Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm distributing.

Robert says the Canadian Television Fund turned down the project ‘because they didn’t want to accept that the vampires are Canadian.’ She met recently with Telefilm Canada and hopes to shoot both Quebec-Montreal and Karmina 2 later this year.

In ’99, Robert and Sandra Cunningham of Toronto’s East Side Film Company shot the John L’Ecuyer feature Saint Jude. Robert’s partners in Go are Jacques Langlois, Richard Speer of commercial house Jet Films and director Pelletier.

*Locomotion wraps Dead of Night

Locomotion Films has completed principal photography on Dead of Night, its second feature production this year. The film is a thriller with a dark twist of comedy and stars Stephen Baldwin and Macha Grenon (Mon meilleur ennemi).

Marc S. Grenier and Joanne Forgues produced the $4.2-million Canadian film, which wrapped 20 days of shooting on July 6. Grenier directed.

This spring, Grenier produced the Allan Moyle thriller Xchange, a $6.5-million coproduction with Jean Desormeaux of Toronto’s Coolbrook Media for hbo and Trimark Pictures.

In Dead of Night, Baldwin (The Flintstones: Viva Rock Vegas, The Usual Suspects) plays an insomniac who turns day into night and illusion into reality as a witness to what appears to be murder. Michael Ironside, Maxim Roy (Les Boys), Janet Kidder (Bride of Chucky) and Edward Yankie also star.

Grenier says Dead of Night cinematographer David Franco is using a lot of interesting wide-angle shots. ‘It gives the film an unusual and edgy look. The whole movie is like a maze. You know there’s an exit but it seems unreachable and everything just keeps getting weirder and weirder.’

Yvann Thibaudeau is the picture editor and Patrice Vermette is designer. The screenplay is from Chicago-based Terry Abrahamson.

Grenier directed the ’99 Cinequest Films entry Cause of Death, and the ’98 Motion International tv movie Fatal Affair.

Dead of Night will be distributed by Lions Gate Films in Canada, by Millennium Pictures in the u.s. and by Martien Holding internationally.

Locomotion is developing English- and French-track feature films and a tv series. Projects include Wedlock, a Canada/France feature from writers John L. Lyons and Forgues slated to shoot this year; Resurrection, a feature film and original story from directors Jacques Fournier and Jean-Michel Ravon and writer Bernard Tolianker, a coproduction with Films Vision 4; and Le Boucher, a tv series proposal from director Jean-Francois Pouliot and writer Yves Couture. The latter is a coproduction with Telefiction.

The house is also active in dramatic shorts, producing Jean-Francois Asselin’s La Petite Histoire d’un homme sans histoire and Jean-Francois Rivard’s Kuproquo.

Denis Martel is president/exec producer of Locomotion. Producers include Grenier, Forgues and Christiane Hamelin.

Launched in ’99, Locomotion projects close to $20 million in English-language production and coproductions this year. The house is part of the Montreal Exponent Group, comprised of commercial houses La Fabrique d’Images and S.W.A.T Films, and post and digital visual fx house Buzz Image Group.

‘After all these years in commercials, we’re moving into fiction to do something entirely serious,’ says Grenier.

*Another big season for Cirrus

Cirrus Communications and producer Jacques Blain keep building their share of Quebec tv’s coveted primetime drama time allotment.

This year, Blain and Productions Jocelyn Deschenes are producing 16 new hours of the hit Reseau tva series 2 Freres. The 104-day, digital-video shoot started four weeks ago, with a wrap skedded for just before Christmas. Louis Choquette is directing 12 episodes and Eric Tessier is directing four. The budget is $7.8 million.

Principal photography on the six-hour Radio-Canada miniseries Asbestos is slated to start next winter. It’s a love story backdropped by the epoch-making miners strike of 1948.

Andre Melancon (Cher Olivier) will direct the Genevieve Lefebvre screenplay.

Asbestos is one of a nearly extinct breed of ‘fiction lourde’ (historically shot on film for $1 million per hour) projects, with a budget of $850,000 an hour. Funding sources include Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Television Fund, the Independent Production Fund and the Quebec and federal tax credit programs.

‘It’s a little bit unusual because normally for this kind of historical series we’d have something closer to $1 million. So that’s another big challenge,’ says Blain, the tv representative on the apftq’s board of directors. Budgets keep slipping, says Blain, because drama commissioned directly for the tight-wound home tv market almost never benefits from presales or secondary markets.

Another Cirrus series, Onde de Choc, dramatizes fact-based cases of psychological violence in families. Tele-Quebec has ordered 13 half-hours, but Blain says the financing is not complete yet. ‘Normally we were supposed to shoot next winter except that Telefilm has turned the project down. We’re looking for funding to replace the Telefilm money and discussing it with Tele-Quebec.’

Blain and Lux Films are coproducing 13 half-hours of the src series La Vie la vie, with 13 additional episodes slated to shoot in early 2001 (see above).

In ’99, Cirrus coproduced two primetime drama series, the first 13 episodes of La Vie la vie and eight one-hours of 2 Freres, produced with Deschenes for tva. The house also produced the fourth season of the Canal Famille series Generation w and the entrepreneur mag Fais-en ton affaire, also for tva. Blain says Cirrus’ share of the action was $5 million.

Cirrus is also developing an English-language tv slate. Suzanne Henaut is working on various projects, filling in for development director Robin Altman, who is on maternity leave.

*STCVQ action

New Quebec film action includes the A-List Productions tv movie Dorian from producers Luciano Lisi (Island of the Dead) and Christine Kavanagh and director Allan Goldstein. It shoots from July 24 to Aug. 23.

TVA International’s next project is the tv movie Stiletto Dance. Mario Azzopardi is directing, Bob Wertheimer is producing and Kathy Wolf is the pm.

Cinemaginaire is prepping on Emile Goudreault’s first feature film, Nuit de Noces. It’s budgeted at $2.8 million and shoots from Aug. 14 to Sept. 22. Denise Robert and Daniel Louis are the producers. Daniel Jobin is the dop and the distrib is Films Seville.