– Sheila de La Varende has been appointed market development officer at Telefilm Canada’s European office in Paris. De La Varende takes up duties in Paris Nov. 6.

– The new president of AstralTech Americas, Astral Communications’ cd replication facility in Boca Raton, Fla., is Anthony Perez.

– Patrick Murphy has been appointed vp and gm of Tee-Comm Electronics, the company responsible for launching the dth satellite service ExpressVu in Canada.

– Telefilm Canada reports that Spain is taking a turn at revamping the 1989 ‘Television Without Borders’ directive which sets quotas for European broadcasters.

Spain has presidency of the European Commission until the end of the year (each member of the European Union rotates the presidency every six months), and by rewording a section dealing with quotas, Spain is giving eu countries carte blanche to interpret the quota regulations themselves. The text will be discussed by the ministers of culture of the 15 countries with adoption of the text by Nov. 20.

– Canada and the Russian Federation have formalized a new audiovisual coproduction agreement, replacing a 1989 agreement with the former u.s.s.r. The new agreement will enable Canadian producers to take advantage of opportunities in Russia’s emerging private film and tv production sector.

Presently Canada has more than 30 coproduction agreements with countries around the world and the resulting coproductions have generated an average of over $300 million annually during the past three years.

– Malofilm Communications announced on Oct. 18 that it had successfully completed the sale of 2.4 million class b subordinate voting shares at a price of $5 a share. The gross proceeds from the offering are $12 million

– Imax Corporation is building 10 new theaters in Germany as part of a deal with Bofiscope GmbH, a company the large-format corporation has a previous agreement with to construct Leipzig’s first imax 3D cinema. The new deal is part of a larger strategy Imax is developing to gain a stronger presence in Europe. Imax has recently signed agreements to build cinemas and related attractions in Spain and in Italy.

– Wilson Ruiz of Cadec Pictures is packing up the company’s Toronto office and moving back to Germany.

However, Cadec and its German partner, Art and Wiese, are looking for coproduction partners to supply programming to two networks in Germany they’re working with, which Ruiz describes as ‘desperate’ for shows. Ruiz says the newer channels delivered by satellite and cable, TM3 in Munich and fab in Berlin, want to build an image with a North American flavor.

Currently Cadec and its German partner are designing programs for the nets under various scenarios, including airtime in return for sharing ad revenue, or finding corporate sponsors to support production.

Drama or doc series to be produced in English that will sell internationally are desired, and one-third of the funding would need to come from Canada, with a third from Germany and a third from Japan, where the partners have a third agent, Canadian Tatiana Kober, doing the same thing in that market through connections with nhk.

Ruiz comments that with the new ec quota-bent agenda as various countries push to limit u.s. entree to their airwaves, ‘it’s going to make it difficult to sell North American programming (in Europe) without connections.’