Montreal: Filming begins July 15 through to late August on Hemoglobin, a gothic suspense thriller from Kingsborough Greenlight Pictures (Bloodline Films) and producers Pieter Kroonenburg and Julie Allan.

Peter Svatek is directing from a screenplay by legendary Hollywood sci-fi and horror writers Dan O’Bannon and Ron Shusett, writers on Alien and Total Recall.

Hemoglobin stars Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) and Roy Dupuis (J’en suis, Screamers) and is being shot on Grand Manan Island off the rough New Brunswick/ Maine coast. A female lead had not been cast at press time.

As this story opens, an aristocratic 17th century Dutch family is forced to leave their homeland. Four hundred years later, an ancestor (Dupuis), a young man with a ‘strange blood illness,’ seeks his origins on the strange and isolated coastal island.

Craft credits go to production designer Michel Proulx (Jackals), dop Barry Gravelle, line producer Helene Boulay and special f/x ace Adrian Morot, ‘the creatures’ creator. John Buchanan is the film’s executive producer.

Everest Releasing has Canadian rights. France Films will distribute in the French-track market and Fries Schultz is the foreign sales agent.

Kroonenburg says he’s negotiating with three u.s. distributors on Hemoglobin and hopes to have a deal in hand by mid-shoot.

Chamberlan’s dream

Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinema doubled its box office this year and is confirming a 10-day 1997 edition as well as an expanded five-day second edition for its New York festival.

But the best ticket in director Claude Chamberlan’s pocket is a trip this month to Juan-les-Pins on the Cote d’Azur. Chamberlan will formalize an agreement for a five-day film festival late next June.

‘In Juan-les-Pins there will be screenings in the theaters, but also special screenings on the Mediterranean,’ he says. ‘Contrary to New York and Montreal, they (the Juan-les-Pins tourist authority) are giving me us$1 million to operate. It’s time for me to get out of the gutter. It’s the first time in my life I have something.’

Chamberlan says Juan-les-Pins has a long-running jazz festival and the city, a 15-minute drive from Cannes, had been looking to pair it with a film event.

‘They studied 400 world festivals and chose us,’ he says. ‘They said it corresponds to the new kind of festival with all those crazy things (a reference to the Nouveau fest’s hang-loose program of outdoor and roof-top screenings and ‘dive-ins’). I met them in Cannes. It’s like a dream. We’re planning a floating cinema. This is going to be fun.’ Right.

New Line adapts play

Shooting in the Beauharnois region near Montreal goes through to late July on Love! Valour! Compassion!, a New Line Cinema feature film adaptation of the hit Broadway play.

Billed as a ‘gay Big Chill,’ the film features much of the original all-male legit cast as well as actors Jason Alexander and John Glover.

New Line returns to Montreal in early August for Lord Richard Attenborough’s In Love and War, a feature dramatization of Ernest Hemingway’s pre-Farewell to Arms period.

l.a.-based Doug Chapin is producing Love! Valour! Compassion!. Joe Mantello, who directed the stage play, is directing. Craft credits go to line producer Diane Conn, dop Alik Sakharov, art director Francois Seguin and costume designer Jess Goldstein.

The shoot wraps July 27.

Une histoire a voir: le Quebec

Imavision 21 and director Gilles Carle are shooting Une Histoire a voir: Le Quebec, a 13-hour documentary history of Quebec.

Carle and historian Jacques Lacoursiere are writing the series in two main parts – the history of New France, and Quebec since Confederation.

Radio-Quebec has first window on the $3.5 million mainly archival production and will showcase it this fall along with two pbs series, Ken Burns’ excellent Civil War saga and Kevin Costner’s 500 Nations.

Imavision 21 principals Gabor Kertesz and Pierre Paquet are the producers along with Chantal Bujold.

The company was established last year to produce and distribute and will largely focus on documentaries, says Kertesz, a 15-year veteran of the distribution scene. Imavision has export rights.

Cinar live!

Upcoming live-action production from Cinar Films includes Peter Rowe’s Rinko, a family feature film coproduced with wqed, the pbs affiliate in Pittsburgh, and Japan’s nhk, and Space Cases, a 13 half-hour second season installment for u.s. cablecaster Nickelodeon.

In Rinko, a 12-year-old Japanese-American girl comes to terms with her cultural identity. Director Rowe’s credits include My Life as a Dog and The Edison Twins.

Production starts in August and September include the new Lassie tv series coproduced with Broadway Video and Emily, a 13-hour series partnered with Halifax’s Salter Street Films.

Irene Litinsky is producing on Rinko, Spaces Cases and Emily.

Coming soon

Prepping is underway on a slew of feature films and mows slated for August startups, including Richard Friedberg’s The Education of Little Tree, a feature from famed film financier/producer Jake Eberts and Louise Gendron of Montreal’s Productions du Cerf.

According to the stcvq, Quebec’s freelance film technicians union, upcoming action also includes a feature called The Jackal from prominent director Michael Caton-Jones and executive producer Terry Clegg; Andre Melancon’s Olivier, an Avanti Cine Video feature film debut from producers Luc Wiseman, Richard Martin and Robert Menard; and Kit Hood’s Dancing on the Moon, a feature from producer Rock Demers and Productions La Fete.