Montreal: Productions sda and famed French filmmaker Claude Lelouch have signed a coproduction agreement to shoot the director’s next film, Apres toutet meme plus.

Lelouch has some 30 or so films to his credit since the early 1960s, including Un homme et une femme (1966) and Les uns et les autres (1982), which had a year-long theatrical run here.

‘The project is sda’s first feature coproduction. We’re really excited about it and to be able to involve actors and technicians from Quebec in the film,’ says sda president Andre Picard.

The $17 million minority Canadian film is being coproduced with France’s Films 13, and will shoot on location for 30 days this fall in Churchill Falls, Man., Montreal, New York and Acapulco. The European leg of this ‘international love story’ includes locations in France and Italy.

Lelouch and wife Alessandra Martines, the film’s lead, were in Montreal last week for casting and location scouting as well as meetings with Picard and Stephen Greenberg, president of Coscient Astral Distribution, which is distributing in Canada, the u.k., New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.

‘The connection (or the deal) is from Denis Heroux who worked with Lelouch on A nous deux (1979), an earlier coproduction with France,’ says Picard.

sda expects to reciprocate with its own majority feature film project in the near future, he adds.

-Tierney, Roberts star in Adam and Smoke

Filming starts March 29 for 22 days on Doug Jackson’s Adam and Smoke, a police drama/mystery from Allegro Films producers Elisabeth Gimber and Tom Berry.

In this story, scripted by Karl Schiffman, Smoke is a cop played by Eric Roberts (In Cold Blood, It’s My Party) who is reunited with his son when the 16-year-old shows up at the door unannounced following the death of his mother. If things weren’t bad enough, the kid becomes a prime suspect when the death is revealed to be murder.

Montreal actor Jacob Tierney plays Adam, the teenage son. Tierney starred in the Castle Rock feature Josh and s.a.m. Eliza Roberts rounds out the principal cast.

Georges Archambault is the dop on this 35mm shoot. Csaba Kertesz is the production designer. Suzanne Fischer is the costume designer and Renauld Mathieu is the pm.

Gimber’s Filmo Bandito recently produced the Rodney Gibbons thriller Stranger in the House. It has been sold to Live Entertainment for u.s. pay and video distribution. Image Organization, a Malofilm Communications subsidiary, has foreign rights.

Adam and Smoke is budgeted at $2.6 million and wraps at the end of April. Coscient Astral Distribution has Canadian rights, Saban International has foreign. u.s. rights were unassigned at press time.

-La Fete and Great North prep Irish series

Producers Kevin Tierney of Montreal’s Productions La Fete and Andy Thomson and Patricia Philips of Edmonton’s Great North Productions are assembling the final pieces of a four-hour Canada/Ireland miniseries called The Voyage of the Naparima.

Jean Beaudin (Ces Enfants d’ailleurs, Shehaweh) has been contracted to direct this story of the great mid-19th century Irish famine and emigration.

Tierney says the story and impact on Canadian history has yet to be told in full dramatic form. ‘Everyone wants this to get done, including Sheila Copps, I think,’ he says.

La Fete has emerged from an important restructuring.

It acquired exporter Mediamax International then sold its 17% share in Showcase Television to Alliance Communications. In the same deal, Alliance took a 20% interest in La Fete. What it all means is that topper Rock Demers and Tierney will be able to concentrate on production.

As for distribution, and a potential role for Alliance Releasing in recent La Fete product – Kit Hood’s Dancing on the Moon, in animation post by Bratoslav Pojar of the Czech Republic, and Jimmy Kaufman’s Whiskers – that remains up in the air.

Voyage is slated to shoot this summer and fall in both Quebec and Ireland, with the Irish Film Board, CanWest Global and Radio-Canada onside. Voyage’s Irish producers are Arthur Lappin (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father) and David Collins.

In other La Fete news, producer Suzanne Girard (Productions Bleu Blanc Rouge), a line producer on Whiskers, has joined the company as a producer.

A family film shot by La Fete last summer, Whiskers took home a Silver Medal at the Cairo International Film Festival in early March and has been invited to compete at the upcoming 15th International Festival of Films for Children in Poland.

-Apponi to Microsoft

Gino Apponi, executive producer with cbc’s Newswatch, cbmt-tv’s early evening newscast, is leaving the station to take on the job of editor of Microsoft’s English Montreal Web site.

Apponi is moving over to 3D framer Softimage, Microsoft’s anchor chez nous, where he’ll develop the audio and video arts and entertainment content for the computer giant’s local Internet service site. The multi-locale Microsoft network is slated to launch in Seattle next month; locally in the fall.

Apponi’s departure, after some 15 years with Mother Corp, coincides with deep slashes to cbmt’s budget and the cancellation of its two highly commended in-house magazine productions, Citybeat and Busy Bodies.

Tony Ross has been named Newswatch’s executive producer. Shelagh Kinch is senior producer. Nicole Belanger is cbc regional director of English services – Quebec.