There’s a big year ahead for Quebec tv production, with five all-new drama series with cumulative budgets of $50 million either in front of the cameras or in prep.

Starts on the new film productions, all in the $10 million range, go from April to August. They are: Urgences (Productions Prisma), a medical drama; Jasmine (Bloom Films/Verseau International), featuring Montreal’s first black female cop; Omerta, la loi du silence (Productions sda), an underworld drama; Parents malgre tout (Communications Claude Heroux International), a family drama; and Catherine Volant (Cite-Amerique), an historical drama.

Other film production on tap this summer includes the police drama 10-07 (working title), a four-hour, $3.2 million miniseries from Telefiction, and Les Grands proces, a six-hour historical courtroom drama from Sovimage/ Sagittaire.

1994/95 highlights

According to Louis Laverdiere, Telefilm Canada’s Quebec operations director, selective highlights for Quebec tv in ’94/95 include Zap (Verseau), noteworthy for its overall quality, and La Petite Vie (Avanti Cine Video) for its record-setting, four million audience rating and remarkable per-episode budget of $105,000.

He also cites Scoop (sda), Le Sorcier (cchi), Chambres en ville (Cleo-Clip) and Les Grands proces (Sovimage/Sagittaire) for their high ratings and Million Dollar Babies (Cinar Films/Zukerman Productions) for its performance on cbc and cbs.

Overall, French-track production and development funding dropped to $38.5 million in 1994/95 from just under $40 million the preceding year.

By program category, Telefilm’s funding breakdown in 1994/95 was: children’s programs, 22%, an area in which the federal funding agency will be looking for more commercial projects; drama, 65%; documentaries, 11%, down from 17% in 1993/94 and a category where some increases are expected; and variety programs, 2%.

Cutbacks

Laverdiere says the new cutbacks announced in the February budget – in the order of 5% for 1995/96 – won’t be felt so much this year, but the impact could be more serious in 1996/97.

In general terms, he says, Telefilm’s share of production funding will be reduced this year inversely proportional to funding from new sources – the Cable Production Fund and the federal investment tax credit.

Television

Broadcast Fund investment totaled $22.5 million in 1994/95, with a reduction in the participation of French-language public broadcasters. Series which went to Radio-Canada and Radio-Quebec include Scoop IV (sda), Zap II (Verseau), La Petite Vie (Avanti Cine Video) and Rock et Belles Oreilles V (l’Equipe Spectra).

There was a marked increase in licences from private broadcasters, whose series include Le Sorcier (cchi), Chambres en ville (Cleo-Clip), Les Grands proces II (Sovimage/Sagittaire), Triplex (Sovimage), Misericorde (Neofilms) and Alice mon idole (Telefiction).

Noteworthy Special Fund investments in Montreal-based tv production during the period include Little Lulu (Cinar), Million Dollar Babies (Cinar/Zukerman), Mayday (cchi), Pacha et les chats IV (Prisma) and Anne la banane (Prisma).

Features

Telefilm invested $6.5 million in French-language feature films in 1994/95, transferring some of the funds to 1995/96.

Five films received between $642,000 and $1.4 million: Robert Lepage’s Le Confessionnal (Cinemaginaire), Charles Biname’s Eldorado (Cite-Amerique), Robert Menard’s L’Enfant d’eau (Videofilm), Louis Saia’s Le Sphinx de la banlieue (Tele-Action), and Pierre Plante’s Angelo, Fredo et Romeo (Productions du Regard).

On the English side, the agency made a $500,000 Special Fund investment in Robert Tinnell’s Kids of the Round Table (Melenny) and a $1.66 million investment in the Quebec/Nova Scotia/u.k. coproduction, Mort Ransen’s The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum (Tele-Action/Glace Bay).

Criteria for success

On the issue of audiences for theatrical films, Laverdiere says, ‘We have to get smarter in features,’ adding the criteria for success will be:

– A performance on par with quality foreign films other than major studio releases;

– An above-average ranking at the domestic box office, as with the recent release of Eldorado; and,

– A competitive performance in foreign markets, i