To gauge the level of film and television activity coming down the line in Quebec, Playback approached a cross-section of producers to find out what types of projects are currently in development. To give the survey a focus, producers were asked to choose projects they believe to be suitable for Canadian and/or international coproduction. A fair percentage of those contacted said they intended to shoot at least some of their productions outside Quebec. Most of the projects mentioned have received development funding, either from Telefilm Canada and/or sogic, the Quebec cultural funding and certification agency, or from other sources.

On the following pages, 37 up-and-coming Quebec film and tv projects are profiled. They are listed by production company and grouped by format – feature film, tv movie, tv series or miniseries, documentary, and children’s tv.

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Amerique Film

– Le Siege de l’ame is a feature film project from writer/director Olivier Asselin and producer Martin Paul-Hus. A turn-of-the-century period piece, this screwball comedy/mystery involves eminent museum personalities and the search for a lost Egyptian mummy. The film is budgeted at $1.75 million and, according to Paul-Hus, has attracted distributor interest.

(Asselin pulled off the coup of the year in 1991 when his no-budget film, La liberte d’une statue, was named best Quebec feature film of the year. This dark tale of war’s destruction was also cited by the jury at the 1990 Montreal World Film Festival.)

– Also in the works is Les Siamoises, a French-language feature film proposal from writer/director Isabelle Hayeur, whose credits include the short film Le bete de foire.

Budgeted at $600,000, with development funds from sogic and the National Film Board, Les Siamoises tells a fantastic story of impossible love, the undoing of two teenage prostitutes, one a female hemophiliac, the other a male vampire. They confront an evil psychiatrist as they struggle to understand life and love. Producer Paul-Hus is aiming for a fall shoot.

Cinegraphe

-The Penguin Man, a feature film comedy in development at Cinegraphe, tells the story of a young female biologist who returns from an Antarctic expedition with a young man she has mistaken for a penguin. Written by Nicholas Kinsey and Jacques Hardy, the film will be produced and directed by Kinsey on a projected budget of $2.5 million. Quebec City-based Kinsey is actively seeking a coproducer for this project.

– Stowaway is an $1.8 million feature film scripted by Kinsey and Alix Renaud. Kinsey is producing and directing the drama about two black stowaways – a bushman and a white-collar worker – and a sadistic captain en route from Africa to Miami. The film is partially completed – 50 minutes in the can – with a cast that includes Kevin Jackson (Hero), u.k. actor Oke Wambu and Montrealer Aidan Devine. Additional shooting in Africa is planned.

Cinemaginaire

– Producer Denise Robert takes an international view of feature filmmaking and is an active promoter of greater co-operation among Canadians on interprovincial projects. She coproduced Montreal vu par, the first official Quebec/Ontario coproduction, and Lea Pool’s Mouvements du desir, a soon-to-be-released feature film shot in a train traveling across Canada. Robert will also coproduce Denys Arcand’s next English-track feature in association with Toronto-based Alliance Communications.

Currently she is coproducing talented stage director Robert Lepage’s first feature film, Le Confessionnal. Set on Lepage’s home turf, Quebec City, the story opens with a family funeral before one of the bereaved sons sets out on a disturbing search for an absent brother. The search leads to an encounter with an old ex-Catholic priest, who subsequently reveals a dark family secret.

Lepage alludes to yet another terrible family secret, this time from the Alfred Hitchcock film I Confess, the controversial movie shot in Quebec City in the fall of 1952.

Le Confessionnal is budgeted at $3 million.

Robert meets regularly with partners in Europe and has plans to produce a feature film with Poland.

Cinevideo Plus

– Psychopaths go to Plattsburg is a feature film comedy from veteran producer Justine Heroux, who intends to coproduce the project with u.k. partners. Based on a Paul Morris screenplay, with George Mihalka (La Florida, The Child, Scoop) slated to direct, the film tells the story of a 24-year-old orphan who embarks on an extraordinary adventure in search of his past.

Filmline International

– Naomi (The Naomi Bronstein Story) is an English-language feature with a projected budget of $5 million that’s being developed in association with Astral Entertainment Group. Based on the remarkable story of the founder of the international Heal the Children organization, Naomi is being produced by Nicolas Clermont and Alan Handel (Behind the Smile, Tappori and A Passage From Burnt Islands. Arlene Sarner (Peggy Sue Got Married) is writing the script.

The film is tentatively set to shoot this fall in Montreal, Mexico and the Philippines.

– Also in development is Life and Death (Le Viager), an English-language feature based on an original idea by Clermont and Roger Donaldson, who will also direct. Guy Andrews is the writer. Donaldson has worked with many of Hollywood’s biggest stars. His credits include The Bounty, No Way Out, Cocktail, Cadillac Man and White Sands.

Billed as a romantic comedy, ‘a sort of Green Card in reverse,’ Life and Death is the story of a young divorcee, Anita, who takes off for Paris with a generous alimony settlement. There she meets Bruno, to whom she confides her dream of owning a small hotel in an idyllic French village. No problem, says Bruno, and so Anita’s continental adventure begins.

Clermont intends to finance the film, budgeted at $10 million-$12 million, as a Canada/France coproduction.

Optima Productions

-Suspicious Minds is a 35mm feature film project with a budget of $3.6 million. It tells the story of a private investigator who gets in over his head when he falls in love with a client’s wife. Producer Jean Zaloum (Canvas, Thank You Satan, La Guepe) is the local distributor who brought Claude Berri’s immensely popular Jean de Florette and Manon des sources to Quebec.

The script for Suspicious Minds is by Brenda Newman and Alain Zaloum, cowriters of the 1991 feature Canvas, which starred Gary Busey and John Rhys-Davies. Alain Zaloum (Sins of Seduction) is slated to direct.

Productions Grand Nord Quebec

– Betsy Bell and Mary Gray, a feature film proposal for international distribution, is being coproduced by Productions Grand Nord Quebec with Armac Films of Glasgow, Kickfilm & Fernsehproduktions gmbh, Munich and Artcam International, Paris.

Tentatively set to shoot in June/July for delivery in 1995, the film is budgeted at $6 million. Chris Butterfield is the executive producer, producers are Alex McCall, Ian McLaren, Jorg Bundschuh and Joel Farge. The script, written by Maria MacDonell, is inspired by a popular Scottish ballad.

At the heart of the story are two young women and their intrepid attempts to escape the plague of 1645. Slated to appear in the film are Mary Stuart Masterson, Tom Conti, David McCallum, and Hannah Gordon.

Grand Nord’s most recent production was The Making of a Dancer/Le Jeune Homme et la danse, telecast on cbc’s Adrienne Clarkson Presents in November 1993 and slated soon to air in French on Radio-Canada’s Les Beaux dimanches.

Productions de l’Impatiente

– Les fous de la terre is a $2.8 million feature film in development that will be shot in Canada and Europe. It is being produced by Ian Boyd and written by Jean Pierre Gariepy (Sous les draps, les etoiles, Le violon d’Arthur and Si belles), who will also direct.

In this story, a master artist is commissioned to paint a mammoth fresco on the theme of Mother Earth and sends his rebellious young apprentice off in search of inspiration. The apprentice returns to find his master has died and is faced with the daunting task of completing the fresco himself.

Previous producer credits for Boyd include the French-language telefilm Un leger vertige, directed and written by Diane Poitras, and Simon les nuages, a Roger Cantin children’s film coproduced by Claude Bonin of Films Vision 4. Boyd has coproduced two films in the Maritimes in the past two years.

Productions

Tele-Action

– New from Productions Tele-Action producer Claudio Luca (The Boys of St. Vincent, Une histoire inventee) is a project called Voyage par la lune, a feature film to be shot in English on a budget of approximately $4 million.

Coscripted by Louis Saia and Giles Walker (90 Days, Princes in Exile), who will also direct, this dramatic tale takes place in the tumultuous aftermath of Hurricane Gloria, when 800 Hydro Quebec linemen went to the rescue of desperate Connecticut and Rhode Island residents, who were impressed both with the Quebecois crew’s courage and their appetite for Budweiser, food and women. Filming will take place in New England and Quebec.

Verseau International

– Tu-Tucson or Bust, a feature-length English-language road movie budgeted at $2.2 million, is planned as a cross-Canada shoot.

Produced by Aimee Danis and written and directed by Jacqueline Levitin, Tucson or Bust tells the timely story of Dora, Masha and Krisha, three elderly Polish ladies who set off by Greyhound bus to Tucson, Ariz., where they have won a condominium – or so they think. When they discover that the odds against winning the condo are higher than they thought, their decades-old friendship threatens to run aground.

– The Human Kingdom is a feature film comedy to be shot in English for audiences aged seven to 77. Produced by Lyse Lafontaine and written and directed by Paul Verdy, the $2 million project is a send-up of the eternal animal kingdom documentary. The story takes us to sunny Florida where three dog explorers in full safari regalia set off with cameras into deepest suburbia to film the weird and wonderful ways of the human species.

Cinevideo Plus

– Tales of the Wild (Aventures du Grand Nord) is a series of six 90-minute tv movies being produced by Cinevideo Plus in association with France’s Gaumont Television and Ellipse Programme. Included in the series is Esperanza, adapted by Robert Geoffrion from a Jack London novel with Rene Manzor directing, and Wolves and Gold Hunters, adapted from the stories of James Oliver Curwood. Both films are slated to shoot in Canada.

Two other films in the series are also based on Curwood stories, L’honneur des Grandes Neiges (Blood of the Hunter) and De l’autre cote de la loi (A Gentleman of Courage). They will be adapted and directed by Gilles Carles and shot in France. The total budget for the six telefilms is $12 million.

– The Gang is a series of six 90-minute telefilms slated to be coproduced with Germany’s NDR International and Studio Hamburg. Each film tells a unique story of the fight against organized crime in major international seaports. Producer Heroux, who has solid contacts with broadcasters in Europe, France in particular, hopes to shoot in both Canada and Germany. The projected budget is $2.4 million per movie.

Bernd Schwamm is the German screenwriter. A Canadian screenwriter is yet to be named.

Filmline International

– From one of Quebec’s leading international coproducers, Nicolas Clermont, comes a project entitled A Young Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, one of six two-hour tv movies in The Young Classics Collection, an official Canada/England/France coproduction package. Budgeted at $2.8 million to $3.5 million, this family entertainment film recounts the exploits of heroes from classical literature and is slated to be shot this spring in the spectacular castles of Prague. Frank Encaracao is writing the script.

Clermont’s credits include The Breakthrough, Vendetta II, Armen & Bullik and Bethune: The Making of a Hero.

Telescene

– Timelock is a tv mow proposal based on an Arthur Hailey story. The property is being developed by producers Robin Spry and Jaime Brown, who runs Telescene’s London, Eng. office, with Trisquare Film Productions in the u.k. The story involves a boy and his puppy trapped in a sealed bank vault on Christmas Eve. His estranged parents and townsfolk frantically pull together to save the trapped duo. Ian Sutherland wrote the screenplay adaptation.

Verseau International

– Marina T, a tv movie ‘docudrama’ with a projected budget of $700,000, will be produced by Aimee Danis and directed by Lea Pool (La Femme de l’hotel). The script is being adapted for the small screen by Michele Magny from her stageplay Marina, le dernier rose aux joues.

Set in Paris in 1939, the film tells, in flashback, the story of well-loved Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva: her struggles during the October Revolution and against the Communist regime, her exile, her work, her loves and friendships.

Danis has extensive coproduction experience in Europe – in features, tv series and telefilms – and is currently working with Toronto-based Atlantis Films on a screen adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s best-selling novel Cat’s Eye.

Cineflix

– Panorama, a series of 12 one-hours, is described as a family television anthology which presents well-known Canadian and international shows. It will be shot in various countries on a budget of $150,000 per hour. Previous credits from Cineflix producer Glen Salzman include the one-hour documentary A Brush With Life, the Canadian feature film Milk and Honey, and Great Whale, a major feature-length documentary still in production.

Salzman and Trevor Rhone shared the 1989 Genie for best original screenplay for Milk and Honey.

Modus TV

– Ces Enfants d’Ailleurs, a series proposal for 13 one-hours, is based on the novel of the same name by prolific writer Arlette Cousture (Les filles de Caleb, Blanche). It’s the story of a Polish family ravaged by war and the subsequent journey of the orphaned children, first to Manitoba and finally to Montreal. Based on a script by Jacques Savoie (Bombardier, the miniseries), it will be produced by Anne-Marie Hetu and Jacques Blain, the former Productions sda producer who worked on Scoop and guided the development phase of the Productions du Cerf miniseries Shehaweh.

Blain, who is seeking a coproducer, says broadcast interest includes Tele-Metropole in Quebec and the France 3 network. Filming is slated for 1995 in Eastern Europe, Western Canada and Quebec. The projected budget is $900,000 per hour.

– Direct au coeur (Straight to the Heart) from the talented Lance et compte and Scoop writing team of Rejean Tremblay and Fabienne Larouche, is a tv series proposal (4 x 120 minutes) about a young boxer from a tough east end Montreal district and his companion, an up-and-coming female rock singer, as they struggle to make it to the top. Blain says he is open to producing in both French and/or English. The projected budget is $800,000 per hour.

Production

Tele-Action

– Undercover is a 13-hour tv series proposal to be shot in English on a budget of $10 million. The series will be executive produced by Colin Neale (The Boys of St. Vincent, Company of Strangers) and scripted by Gerry Wexler based on the book of the same name by Robin Rowland and James Dubro.

To be shot across Canada and in the U.S., Undercover tells the story of Frank Zaneth, the rcmp’s first undercover officer (1910-50). Apparently Zaneth, a short Italian immigrant, was hired precisely because he did not resemble the prototypical British Mountie.

– Neale is also executive producing Eliza M., a four-hour miniseries (2 x 2 hours) based on D.K. Akenson’s award-winning book At Face Value. Budgeted at $4.5 million, the story is set in the mid-1800s and tells of the extraordinary life of Irish immigrant John (Eliza) White. An Ontario/Quebec shoot is planned. Producer Claudio Luca plans an Ontario/ Quebec shoot. The writer and director are yet to be announced.

Telefiction

– Combien de fois faut-il mourir d’amour? (How many times do you have to die of love?) is not a coproduction project proposal, rather it’s a tv series headed for principal photography sometime this month. However, it does merit inclusion in this survey, if for no other reason than that it is an amazing exercise in super-complex, multiparty consultation.

The series, produced by Claude Veillet and Jacques Bonin, is about two lovers who refuse to be separated after death. They meet over 10 one-hour episodes, each time in a different century and under different circumstances.

This publicly-funded project (Telefilm Canada, sogic, Radio-Quebec and tvontario’s La Chaine francaise) was initially launched as a competition, open to Quebec producers and French-language writers under the age of 35. The program is aimed at encouraging Canada/France, French-track tv drama and young writers.

Combien de fois is based on an original idea and series bible by screenwriter Fernand Dansereau (Les Filles de Caleb, Le Parc des Braves). The budget is $8 million. Richard Ciupka (Coyote) is directing the 10 scripts by writers from Quebec, Ontario and France.

Hamster is the intrepid French coproducer.

Telefiction’s previous credits include Bombardier, the miniseries and Super sans plomb, a Radio-Canada sitcom shot on 16mm film.

Telescene

– Telescene, France’s Films du Triangle and Germany’s Gerd Hecker are the producers behind an international science-fiction/ action tv series called Radium City. Penned by writer Owen Coughlanet, the series is set in a lawless, futuristic hellhole run on black-market technology and follows the adventures of a private investigator who faces desperate circumstances as he tries to prove himself innocent of murder.

Telescene’s credits include four Mary Higgins Clark tv mystery movies, coproduced with Germany, the u.k. and France; 15 hours of the newsroom drama Urban Angel, broadcast on cbc and cbs; and John Hamilton’s Generation x drama, The Myth of the Male Orgasm, a feature film slated for release in Canada by C/FP Distribution.

– Deadly Secret is a Canada/u.k. tv series penned by Paul Abbott. In the opening episode, set in England, a precocious 13-year-old boy and his free-thinking seven-year-old sister are sent to live with an aunt in Canada. Resourceful and brave, the kids set out on new-world adventures as they attempt to prove their widowed dad’s innocence when he is wrongly accused of a terrible crime.

Telescene operates offices in London, Eng. and Los Angeles and has been actively pursuing long-term projects with major players in the U.S. market.

Trinome Inter

– Pilote de brousse (Bush Pilot) is a family tv series proposal from Trinome Inter, a dynamic Montreal-based producer specializing in a wide variety of children’s programs. The company is now looking to expand its coproduction activity, with the accent on Canada/France projects.

Set in Abitibi-Temiscamingue and France, Bush Pilot matches a Quebec seaplane pilot and his gutsy France-raised daughter against the injustices and harsh climes of Northern Quebec. Trinome’s Pierre Blais is the project’s executive producer. Screenwriters include Bernard Montas and Dominique Drouin.

Cinegraphe

– Quebec City-based producer Nicholas Kinsey is developing Gold Diggers, a series of four one-hour documentaries (to be shot on 16mm) on precious metals and gems. Budgeted at $1.8 million and slated for international distribution, the film is being cowritten by Kinsey and Michel Pouliot (Louis XIX). It will be directed and produced by Kinsey and distributed by The Multimedia Group of Canada.

– The Julian Sale Story is a 60-minute documentary about a Canadian war hero that’s slated to shoot in Ontario, the Arctic and France. The $400,0000 project is being written Mark Cardwell and will be produced and directed by Kinsey.

Green Lion Films International

– The City Below the Hill: Then and Now is a feature-length documentary project written by David Fennario and produced by Catherine Mullins. It focuses on the Montreal community of Pointe Saint Charles, celebrated in Fennario’s other works such as the award-winning stageplay Balconville.

This production asks the question: is there a way out of poverty for Pointe Saint Charles after 180 years? Mullins latest production is the four-hour international documentary series The Human Race, written and directed by popular political and war historian Gwynne Dyer.

Imageries

– Imageries, established by English- and French-speaking Montrealers who began their film careers working mainly in French, is in development on its first international documentary coproduction, Le Filet Vide, being coproduced with Paris-based Documents Cinematographiques Jean Painleve. The film offers a timely examination of the causes and consequences, on both sides of the Atlantic, of the loss of the cod fishery.

Louise Abbott and Jerome Colin are writing the script, Richard Elson and Brigitte Berg are producing and Alain Belhumeur will direct. Telefilm Canada has provided development funding and the film is slated to air on Radio-Quebec and tvontario’s La Chaine francaise in Canada and on France 3 in France.

Elson’s most recent production, Aller Retour, directed by Garry Beitel (The Colours of My Father, Bonjour! Shalom!), will be showcased in the publicly-funded, competitive Documentaire en Vue tv series. The documentary about Mexican farmworkers was shot last summer and fall in Mexico and in the Chateauguay Valley in Quebec.

Necessary Illusions

– For Necessary Illusions, life after Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and the Media includes four projects, beginning with Beyond Words, a videofilm production about the art and process of storytelling. Filming is scheduled to take place in Japan, India, Ireland and North America. Producer is Peter Wintonick, who will codirect with Whitehorse-based Chris Clarke. The National Film Board’s Adam Symansky is the associate producer.

The producers are hoping the film, budgeted at $255,500, will become a coproduction, with additional investment from agencies in Canada and Quebec and support from Canadian, Scandinavian and British tv.

– Next Year in Berlin is a documentary (to be shot on 16mm) about the rebuilding of Jewish culture in Berlin. The focus is on four representative individuals who tell a story full of hope. The 55-minute film will be shot in German, English and Yiddish for the international television market, with Caroline Goldie (Berlin) directing and Wintonick producing. Funding is being negotiated, with ‘every coproduction possibility’ being sought. Jan Rofekamp of Films Transit International is the project’s exporter.

– Using archival film footage and still photographs, as well as original live-action super 16 footage, magicinema (release title, Houdini’s Children: The Art of Magic in Media), is a one-hour documentary project destined for television. A coproduction with the National Film Board, the film is budgeted at $439,426, with much of the financing already in place, according to the producers.

Its thesis is that the art of magic inspired the art of cinema, by which it was eventually subsumed. To be directed by Robin Bain and produced by Wintonick and David Werrall of the nfb, the film is based on The Magician and the Cinema, a book written by film historian Erik Barnouw, who is the project’s primary consultant. The producers report a tentative presale to a major U.S. network.

Productions Grand Nord-Quebec,

Productions Quai 32

– Choco: The Challenge of Managing a Last Frontier is a one-hour television documentary for Canadian and international distribution to be coproduced by Productions Grand-Nord and Montreal’s versatile Productions Quai 32. The film is slated to be shot in March 1994 for an August 1994 delivery. It is being produced and directed by industry veteran Ian McLaren, executive produced by Nicolas Valcour, and written and researched by Holly Dressel. The budget is $450,000.

A ‘voyage of discovery and adventure,’ Choco takes us on board an old coastal steamer and along the tropical Pacific coast of Columbia, one of the least-known unspoiled natural rainforests left on the planet.

Quai 32 is in production on a 13 half-hour series entitled Archaeology II for The Learning Channel in the U.S.

Desclez Productions

– From producers Henri Desclez and Norma Denys, three television series for children: The Mics, Turtle Island and Little Star.

The Mics is an animated series proposal of 26 half-hours, to be produced in French and English, aimed at children two to eight years. This project is based on the adventures of the Mics – Comic, Rhythmic, Dynamic and Grandpa Mic – gentle, fun-loving creatures with a touch of extraterrestrial panache. The budget and production period are still to be determined.

Turtle Island, an extended half-hour tv series for six- to 12-year-olds, will also be coproduced in English and French. The projected budget is $3.5 million. This series features a ‘cast’ of unusual puppets that includes a turtle king and an octopus beauty in a series of adventures and misadventures with surprise guests like bumbling pirates and beached castaways.

Desclez also plans to coproduce 156 13-minute episodes of Little Star, a ‘ground-breaking’ science-fiction series for French- and English-speaking preschoolers. This series also features puppets, characters like Lili, Bibo, Ben, Cro, Diva and the captain, Pop, all ‘happy campers’ on space station Mimosa. The entire crew is watched over by a lovely fairy called Little Star, who helps get things right when the good guys are plagued by the pathetic attempts of adversaries like Melo and Lou, two types determined to take over the universe.

A prolific children’s writer originally from Europe, Desclez’ past credits include the zany, musically-brilliant Cajun puppet series Chicken Minute, distributed worldwide, and Iris the Happy Professor, which, we are told, is currently the highest-rated children’s show on The Learning Channel in the U.S.

Trinome Inter

– Gabi is a short-form tv series project featuring a world-travelling but bumbling guardian teen angel determined to help out humankind.

Trinome producer Pierre Blais plans to shoot 53 two-minute episodes in Canada and southern France. Talent associated with the project includes screenwriter Jocelyn Branchaud and director Jean Lacombe. The proposed budget is $750,000. Trinome is an emerging leader in Quebec r&d children’s tv programming and publishes a monthly newsletter under the direction of Jean Tourangeau.

Prepared by A.L. Strayer, a Montreal-based writer and translator, and Leo Rice-Barker.