Radio-Canada named first Cdn.

winner of CanWest Global award

Montreal: Radio-Canada, a name synonymous with French-Canadian culture in this country, is being recognized for 50 years of leadership in the field of drama as the 1994 recipient of the prestigious CanWest Global Outstanding Achievement Award.

Stan Thomas, vice-president, programming at CanWest Broadcasting, will present the award to Radio-Canada’s director general, television, Michele Fortin, at a special ceremony June 8 at the 15th annual Banff Television Festival (June 5-11).

According to festival president and director Jerry Ezekiel, it’s the first time a Canadian broadcaster has won the high-profile prize since its inception in 1985. Based on a recommendation by the Banff Television Foundation’s board of international advisors, Radio-Canada was specifically cited for its contribution to the art of the teleroman as a form of popular storytelling, and for its ‘contribution to the preservation of a vibrant French-language popular culture in a predominantly English-speaking continent.’

In the beginning, teleromans, which Quebec tv historians insist are not soaps, were adapted from novels, and more often than not from radio plays, or ‘radioromans.’

The first teleroman, La famille Plouffe, went to air in 1953, chronicling the changing values and day-to-day life of an average Quebec City family in the post-1945 period. The series launched a genre which went on to dominate all dramatic television in Canada, and was actually broadcast in English on cbc.

Not all Quebec television drama series are teleromans.

Teleromans are episodic and normally air over 26 weeks. Compare a teleroman like Marilyn, produced in-house by Radio-Canada, with a dramatic series like Scoop. In three years, Lise Payette has penned more than 440 episodes of Marilyn, a half-hour story about a spirited, older cleaning lady who doesn’t do much cleaning; while writers Rejean Tremblay and Fabienne Larouche have had their hands full over the past four years writing 52 hours of the Productions sda newsroom drama Scoop.

Typically, teleromans are shot in-studio, have little or no exterior scenes (10% tops) and are recorded exclusively on videotape. And they cost only a fraction of the budgets of Scoop or Cite-Amerique’s Blanche, both of which originate on 16mm film.

In other words, there’s as much difference between Scoop and Marilyn as, say, between the American soap All My Children and the Alliance Communications drama North of 60.

Past CanWest Global Outstanding Achievement Award winners are: the Children’s Television Workshop, u.s. (1993); Dr. Reiner Moritz, president, RM Arts Fernseh Film GmbH and managing director RM Associates, Germany (1992); Ted Turner, Turner Broadcasting System, u.s. (1991); BBC Natural History Unit, u.k. (1990); Globo TV Network, Brazil (1989); NHK – Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Japan (1988); MTM Enterprises, u.s. (1987); WDR, Germany (1986); and Granada Television, u.k. (1985).

Working overtime

five film and television projects with total budgets of $56 million start principal photography this month, according to the stcvq, Quebec’s freelance film technicians’ union.

– Producers Robert Shapiro (Empire of the Sun) and Jerry Leider (The Jazz Singer) and director David Price are in town to shoot Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, a $10 million feature film for J&H Productions, executive producer Ray Stark and Savoy Pictures.

A contemporary black comedy with transforming human anatomies and loads of special effects, the film stars Sean Young, Tim Daly, Lysette Anthony, Jeremy Piven and Stephen Tobolowsky. Barbara Shrier is the pm. This shoot starts May 25 and lasts for eight weeks.

Director Price, 32, is the son of veteran Hollywood television and motion picture producer Frank Price. His directorial debut was the highly lucrative thriller Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992), shot for Miramax. He also coproduced the Trimark Pictures horror-fantasy Leprechaun (1993). Combined worldwide grosses for the films – Corn II was shot for peanuts, $1 million – is in the $55 million range.

– Productions sda producers Francine Forest and Francois Champagne and directors Pierre Houle and Alain Chartrand will shoot 13 hours for the fourth season of Scoop May 30 through to Aug. 23. The second leg goes from Sept. 19 to Dec. 12. Scoop’s budget is up to $9.1 million this year, a deserving $600,000 more than last year.

– Producer Robin Spry of Telescene begins production on the 22-hour, $25 million syndicated lady cop series Sirens May 22. The shoot goes through to early February. Meanwhile, all the sets and production offices have been built in a warehouse a couple blocks north of Telescene’s Ville Mont-Royal offices.

– Director Jean Beaudin (Filles de Caleb, Mario) and Neo Film producer Philippe Dussault will shoot the four-hour $4 million miniseries Misericorde from May 24 to July 9. This highly anticipated series, written by Scoop’s Fabienne Larouche and Rejean Tremblay and sold to Television Quatre Saisons, is set in the flower power period from 1966 to 1976 and follows the careers of two young nuns played by Marina Orsini and Nathalie Mallette. Caught up in the turmoil of the times, the idealistic women are challenged by the devoutly stern Sister Cecilia, played by Monique Miller. Christian Gagne is the pm, John Berrie is the dop, Michel Proulx is the art director (or is that production designer?) and John Hay is the costume designer.

Misericorde is good news for the Quebec production industry. It is tqs’ first filmed miniseries and a feather in the hats of producer Dussault et al.

– Principal photography starts today on the miniseries Million Dollar Babies, a four-hour, $8 million Quebec/Ontario coproduction about the Dionne quintuplets. Christian Duguay is the director, David Franco is the dop, Francois Seguin is the production designer, and Yves Langlois will edit. Lucie Robitaille is the casting director and Irene Litinsky is the pm. Bernard Zukerman is the producer, Suzette Couture wrote the script, and Micheline Charest and Ron Weinberg of Cinar Films are the executive producers. The program has been presold to cbc and cbs.

Upcoming stcvq action slated for June and July includes more of producer Justine Heroux and Cinevideo Plus’ $25 million Tales of the Wild tv movie series; Cinar Films’ Are You Afraid of the Dark? v; the second season of the Sovimage/Sagittaire courtroom series Les Grands proces; the Denise Robert/Cinemaginaire production of Robert Lepage’s feature film debut Le Confessional; and Alys, mon idole, mon amie, a four-hour miniseries from Telefiction and director Johanne Pregent about the life and times of much-loved 1940s cabaret and music hall performer Alys Robi.

A plum deal

one of our very best children’s program creators, Henri Desclez of HD-Desclez Productions, and 4D/Marina Productions of France have signed a long-term coproduction agreement to produce animation and puppet series for broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic.

Claude Berthier of 4D/Marina, a Paris-based toy and animation series producer, has taken a minority share in Desclez and Norma Denys’ Montreal operation.

Desclez says he’ll be traveling between Paris and Montreal on a regular basis, working as a creative consultant for Berthier and setting up a bonafide r&d office in Paris by year’s end.

The Belgian-born Desclez says the deal with Berthier, ‘an old friend and a remarkable businessman from the toy sector,’ represents a return to European roots.

Desclez and Berthier’s first coproduction is La Derniere Reserve (The Last Reserve), a 52 half-hour children’s adventure series about a noble tribe from the 12th century that’s magically transported to the present. The good folks from the dark past take up residence on the roof of a 120-story skyscraper where they get a good look at some of the stranger aspects of contemporary civilization.

4D/Marina’s most recent production, pitched at last month’s mip-tv, is Dog Tracer, coproduced by France’s TF1 and Germany’s UFA/Bertelsmann. It is being produced at Dessin Anime Francais, Berthier’s animation studio affiliate, and syndicated in the u.s. by Rysher. The company is also active in the acquisition of distribution rights for the European market and is particularly interested in game and toy applications based on new technologies, says Desclez.

HD-Desclez’s latest project is La Petite Etoile (Little Star), a kids’ science-fiction puppet series to be coproduced by Discovery Channel in the u.s. Recent credits for Desclez and partner Denys include Iris the Happy Professor and Cocotte Minute (Chicken Minute), two titles sold in scores of overseas markets by Montreal-based exporter Mediamax International.