Montreal: In The Red Violin, a major motion picture from Toronto’s Rhombus Media and director Francois Girard, the soul of the wife of a brilliant late 17th century violin maker guides a sacred instrument on an epic journey across time and continents.

A human drama, the film traces the tragic origins of the violin and the people who possess it – and are possessed by it. The story is told over five acts, opening in Cremona, Italy, the birthplace of the golden age of the violin.

From its origins in 1681 the film moves 100 years forward in history to Vienna where we encounter a young orphan prodigy and an uncompromising master, then forward again to Oxford, Eng., and the story of a decadent Victorian virtuoso and a torrid love affair. In another century, in Shanghai, against the fury of the Cultural Revolution, the instrument takes refuge with a party official torn between her passion for western music and duty to The Great Helmsman.

Don McKellar and Girard (Le Dortoir) wrote the screenplay, the same team with producer Niv Fichman which won the best motion picture Genie Award for Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould.

Filming goes for 51 days in Cremona, Vienna (starting in mid-April in Europe) and Oxford, then on to Shanghai in late June following the 12-day opening leg in Montreal from Feb. 15 to March 3.

‘Violins always have supernatural stories attached to them, but the reason it’s The Red Violin is because Bussotti (the violin’s builder) creates his masterpiece for his younger pregnant wife whom he loves very much and for their child as the ultimate gift of love. She very tragically dies in childbirth and so does the child, and in his grief he takes her blood and puts it into the varnish of the violin,’ says Fichman.

In the fifth and final act, set in Montreal, Morritz, a world expert on violins played by the film’s lead Samuel Jackson, arrives to appraise the violin, becoming the only person to recognize the instrument and understand its secret legacy.

The Red Violin is a $13 million majority Canada/Italy coproduction with Mikado Films of Rome and Milan. Investors include Telefilm Canada, Canadian distributor Cineplex Odeon Films, Quebec distributor Film Tonic, Citytv, Bravo! and Channel 4 in the u.k. New Line International has foreign sales rights except for Canada, the u.k. and Italy. The u.s. rights have not been assigned.

Fichman says the film is a breakthrough for Rhombus and the Canadian industry and is the result of ‘a great script and a great team. I think Francois, Don and Rhombus is an unbeatable team,’ he says.

Montreal cast includes Jackson, Colm Feore as the auctioneer, Paula de Vasconcelos and Ireniusz Bogajewicz, with Monique Mercure, Remy Girard, McKellar and Dorothee Berryman also featured.

Alain Dostie is the shoot’s cinematographer. The production designer is Francois Seguin, Renee April is the costume designer, Barbara Shrier is the line producer and Gaetan Huot is editor. The film’s classical music score is by American composer John Corrigliano.

‘The budget is tight at that price considering we’re going to five countries and taking our team around everywhere,’ says the producer, who’s previously filmed renowned international artists like Yo Yo Ma, Kiri Te Kanawa and mso conductor and artistic director Charles Dutoit.

The Red Violin is slated for an early 1998 release.

-Sucre Amer

Cast and crew of Sucre Amer, a majority France/Canada feature film coproduction from producers Richard Sadler and Jacques Dorfmann, were in Montreal earlier this month for a whirlwind 11 days of filming.

Directed and written by Christian Lara, the film opens as a modern-day tribunal examines the events of the Guadeloupe Revolution in the late 18th century when slavery was abolished by the leaders of the French Revolution only to be subsequently reinstated by Napoleon. ‘At this point Guadeloupe revolted against Napoleon,’ says Sadler.

The film journeys into time and invokes witnesses from the past including one Ignace, a central character in the trial and one of the revolution’s leaders.

Of note, some 30 production trainees from Guadeloupe as well as journalists were on hand for the Montreal leg.

Sadler (Louis 19, le roi des ondes) says the Guadeloupe government provided timely support and made an investment in the production, apparently a first.

‘It is one of their most important cultural investments. We have historic sites where normally people aren’t allowed to film and they provided us with a military regiment.’

Leading players include Marie Verdi, Jean-Michel Martial, Robert Liensol, Anne-Marie Philip, Maka Kotta (Urgence), Gabriel Gascon and Pierre Chagnon (Le Sorcier).

Sadler’s company, Films Stock International, is now preparing to shoot Nowhere in Texas, a surreal $4 million to $5 million English-language feature about a Quebecer’s lost voyage to the deserts of the Lone Star State. The film is likely to be shot in Arizona and is based on the Francois Barcolo novel, adapted for the big screen by Michel Bouchard.

‘It starts as a road movie and then the whole thing drops dead somewhere and becomes a story of four or five characters literally in the middle of nowhere,’ says the producer.

Sadler and Dorfmann hope to preem Sucre Amer at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Film Tonic is the Canadian distributor.

-Schrader’s Affliction

Principal photography started earlier this month in and around Montreal and goes for 35 days through to March 21 on Paul Schrader’s Affliction, a contemporary story of small-town America and a sheriff’s last chance to take on his private demons.

Nick Nolte, James Coburn, Sissy Spacek and Willem Dafoe are the principal cast of Affliction, produced by longtime Schrader collaborator Linda Reisman (Light Sleeper, Mother Night). The seven-week, $5 million negative pickup deal is being financed by Largo Entertainment, a foreign sales subsidiary of JVC Entertainment, which has worldwide distribution rights.

Nolte, on his third or fourth film here since 1995, plays an over-the-edge sheriff who reaches a turning point in his misdirected, loner’s life when a mysterious ‘hunting accident’ becomes an obsessive murder investigation. Coburn plays the Nolte character’s alcoholic father, with Oscar-winner Spacek cast as the sheriff’s girlfriend. Dafoe rounds out the lead cast in the role of the brother who long ago escaped the snowbound rural village. New York stage performer Jim True and acclaimed stage veteran Marian Seldes, Mary Beth Hurt, as the embittered ex-wife, Holmes Osborne and Canadian actors Briget Tierney, Sean McCann and Wayne Robson are also featured.

Reisman says the smart ensemble cast was drawn by the strong script.

‘This is a film that Paul and I have been wanting to make for many, many years with Nick Nolte and Eric Berg my coproducer. Nick and Schrader and Russell Banks, the author of the book, and I have really been a team trying to put this together.’ Reisman says it was just a question of timing and schedules, adding, Largo has given the production ‘complete creative freedom.’

‘We weren’t originally planning to film Affliction in Montreal, but because I had such a great experience on Mother Night (shot here in ’95 and coproduced by Reisman), and because I loved the crews so much, I decided to bring the film here.

‘One of the values of the Montreal crews is that people are more interested in the movie itself than in just a job.’

Affliction was adapted by Schrader and is the second Banks novel to be adapted as a theatrical film this year following Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter.

Josette Perrotta is the line producer. Anne Pritchard is the film’s production designer, Francois Laplante is the costume designer, Paul Sarossy (Love and Human Remains) is the dop, and Jay Rabinowitz is the editor.

Schrader is one of America’s preeminent independent filmmakers with screenwriting credits on The Mosquito Coast, directed by Peter Weir, Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, which he cowrote, and The Last Temptation of Christ, directed by Martin Scorsese.

The director’s latest, Touch, based on the Elmore Leonard novel, was released by mgm Feb. 14. Affliction is crewed by the stcvq, Quebec’s freelance film technicians union.