Montreal: Canada has signed a film and television coproduction treaty with Chile, bringing our international total to 29.

‘The industry in Chile is restructuring and the new treaty with Canada is part of that process,’ says Henry Welsh, a Montreal-based agent for Cine-Chile, a commercial organization representing Chilean film and tv producers and directors.

Welsh says while Chile lacks a developed production and post-production infrastructure, it offers low-cost labor, a wealth of richly varied locations and a fast-growth commercial environment that should be attractive to Canadian and other foreign investors.

Deborah Drisdell, manager, coproduction at Telefilm Canada, says Canada had hoped to sign a wide-ranging multilateral agreement for all of Latin and South America, but when ‘that process became too cumbersome,’ it was decided to proceed with individual binational treaties.

A coproduction treaty was signed with Argentina in 1988 and with Mexico in ’91.

Canadian coproductions with Argentina include Fierro, coproduced by Productions La Fete of Montreal in 1988; The Dark Side of the Heart, coproduced in 1991 by Max Films of Montreal; and Foreign Affairs, a tv series coproduced with the Netherlands and Toronto’s Catalyst Entertainment in 1991.

Mexican coproductions include Toronto-based Accent Entertainment’s Sweating Bullets (1990 and 1991), Tarzan, coproduced by Toronto’s Wm. F. Cooke (1991 and 1993), and Garden of Eden, coproduced by Montreal’s Verseau International in 1994.

Last year, Chilean director Miguel Littin’s political odyssey, Les Naufrages, was coproduced under a tripartite agreement with France by Montreal producer Yvon Provost, president of Productions Amerique Francaise.

Welsh, who is handling a number of Chilean properties with coproduction potential, says he and Provost and two or three other Montreal producers plan to travel to the Vina del Mar film festival in Chile next month as participants in a coproduction workshop. LRB