Montreal: Tele-Action and cbc completed filming Oct. 31 on an innovative short-form drama trilogy showcasing some of the country’s most compelling acting and directorial talents.

‘The Edge [working title] is drama of the interior,’ says producer Colin Neale. ‘It explores inner consciousness, a reckoning, if you will, in a way that is very simple.’

The half-hour dramas examine ‘the shifting edge between reality and non-reality’ and feature near solo acting performances based on classic short stories by Guy de Maupassant, Virginia Woolf and Issak Babel. The films in the trilogy are Sin of Jesus, directed by Micheline Lanctot (La Vie d’un heros), Mark on the Wall, directed by Johanne Pregent (Les Orphelins de Duplessis), and Lover’s Lament, directed by Cynthia Scott (Company of Strangers).

Brent Carver, Domini Blythe and Marie Chantal Perron are the leads, with Pascale Bussieres, Joel Miller and Gregory Hlady in supporting roles. The writer is Sharon Riis.

Cinematographer Georges Dufaux shot the dramas on Super 16mm film over a three-week period. Andre Chamberland was the shoot’s production designer and Claude Palardy is editing. Cinar Studios is handling post.

The Edge was commissioned by Susan Morgan, cbc’s creative head of dramatic series, and is budgeted at $1 million, with funding from cbc, Telefilm Canada, the Quebec tax credit and the ctcpf.

Tele-Action is one house that takes development to heart and has some 20 projects in various stages, among them Hotel Transit, a limited series proposal for cbc based on the short stories of Mavis Gallant in development with Calgary’s Voice Pictures and Millennium Productions; Big Bear, a four-hour (and legendary industry property) miniseries, also for cbc, coventured with Kanata Productions of Edmonton and director Gil Cardinal; the Micheline Lanctot historical feature The Devil’s Punchbowl; and the Seymour Blicker tv movie Facing the Consequences, coproduced with Montreal’s Cinepix.

French-track projects include the Pregent teen drama feature film Fougue and Rosemonde, a historical drama series from director/writer Phil Comeau and writer Jean Barbeau.

1997 shoots include the Nicolas Kendall family adventure feature Kayla, prelicensed by WIC Television and distributed theatrically by Pierre Latour of Film Tonic, and 26 new half-hours (78 in all) of the Canal Famille high school sitcom Radio-Enfer.

*Mihalka directs Omerta III

George Mihalka has signed to direct the third season of Omerta, la loi du silence, the top-rated SDA Productions crime series.

The popular director started prepping for the 13-hour series Oct. 20 and begins the marathon 108-day shoot Jan. 18, 1998 through to spring.

A major change is planned for Omerta’s third season when the storyline shifts in time and focus to chronicle life inside the mob, an entirely new take from the first two seasons when the story was told from the perspective of the police and the characters played by leads Michel Cote and Luc Picard.

Scripted by talented screenwriter/novelist Luc Dionne, the new Omerta will be ‘a lot less cops and robbers and a lot more about the crime family itself,’ says Mihalka.

Omerta and the Avanti Cine Video sitcom La Petite Vie are the top-rated programs on Quebec tv this fall, both averaging in the 1.7 million range on Radio-Canada.

Mihalka’s tv credits include the first 19 hours of the sda drama Scoop and the four-hour Telescene Film Group miniseries Thunderpoint/Windsor Protocol, coproduced with the u.k. and commissioned by Showtime in the u.s. In features, he directed La Florida (1992) and l’Homme Ideal (1995), both of which surpassed the rarefied $1-million mark at the Canadian box office.

*Living in the city

Vivre en ville/Living in the City is a six-part, one-hour international doc series from Macumba International chronicling life in nine of the fastest-growing cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The two-year-old Montreal production house was founded by former members of Radio-Quebec’s award-winning Nord-Sud reporting team, director Robert Cornellier, journalist Raymonde Provencher, director Patricio Henriquez and production coordinator Jacqueline Ascah.

The Macumba documentary team has traveled, or will travel in the months ahead, to Port au Prince, Lima, Johannesburg, Sao Paulo, Beirut, Bombay (Mumbai), Bangkok and Istanbul, each time looking at life through the eyes of the people who live there.

In the collapsed city of Port au Prince, the crew follows Chrysler Dautruche, a man who owns a small truck and delivers water to places where no water is available. In Johannesburg, the focus is on black families who have purchased new homes in once restricted areas, while the Bombay episode enters a world of pride and hope, fermenting shantytowns and numbing poverty.

Two episodes are complete, with Sao Paulo, Beirut and Bombay up next.

The $1.3-million series has been licensed by Tele-Quebec and new programming director Mario Clement, with funding from Telefilm Canada, the ctcpf and the tax credits. Exporter Multimedia Group of Canada reports post-mipcom interest from France, Scandinavia and Western Canada.

*Latest Lepage feature

Internationally acclaimed legit and feature film director Robert Lepage is shooting his third feature, No, the story of an emotionally explosive journey set against the backdrop of 1970 Japan and the Osaka Universal Exposition.

No is an Alliance Pictures presentation produced by Bruno Jobin of Montreal’s InExtremis Images and shoots in Quebec City and Montreal through to the second week of November.

Lead Anne-Marie Cadieux (Le Polygraphe) plays a young Canadian actress performing in Osaka who is suddenly confronted with life-altering decisions. Richard Frechette (L’Age de braise, Joyeux Calvaire), Alexis Martin (Le Siege de l’ame, Cosmos), Normand Bissonette, Marie Gignac and Eric Bernier also star.

Lepage and Andre Morency are the screenwriters.

Pierre Mignot (Alegria, Pret a Porter) is the shoot’s cinematographer, Monique Dion is the art director, Michel F. Cote is the film’s composer and Aube Foglia is editing.

No is financed by Alliance Communications, Telefilm and sodec.

Lepage’s 1994 feature Le Confessionnal opened the Directors’ Fortnight at the ’95 Cannes Film Festival, and won best director, best motion picture and the Claude Jutra Award for best first feature film at the ’95 Genies. His second feature was the evocative mystery Le Polygraphe.

Patrice Theroux, executive vp, motion picture distribution for Alliance, says the Toronto-based company has worldwide rights. Vivafilm will distribute in Quebec.

*Lelouch wraps Apres tout

French filmmaker Claude Lelouch met with local press Oct. 23, the final day of principal photography on his 36th feature film, Apres tout: hasards et coincidences.

Budgeted at S17 million, the France/Canada coproduction was a marathon of exhausting dimensions for Lelouch, who also scripted and coproduced, with filming taking place in France, Italy, Turkey, New York, Mexico, Venice, and finally Montreal.

Quebec talent on the shoot including Patrick Labbe, Veronique Moreau, France Castel, Roger Leger, David LaHaye, Gaston Lepage and Johanne-Marie Tremblay had genuinely high praise for the director, his love of the art and manner with actors.

Pierre-William Glenn was the dop and Marc Ricard was the shoot’s art director.

Apres tout is a story of love and misunderstanding and stars the director’s wife Alessandra Martines as a 33-year-old woman who embarks on a world voyage during a time of personal crisis.

The director lauds ‘the excellence of the technicians and actors here’ and says ‘it’s likely I’ll come back!’

Andre Picard produced for SDA Productions. Lelouch produced for Films 13, Paris.

Motion International is the Canadian distributor.

*Comeau directs on Lassie

Traveling between Halifax and Montreal is routine business for director/writer Phil Comeau, recently signed to direct an episode of Emily of New Moon and two episodes of Lassie ii.

Lassie is being filmed on location through to Dec. 12 in the Montreal region by Cinar Films and is distributed internationally by PolyGram. Thirteen one-hour episodes of Emily, coproduced by Cinar and Salter Street Films of Halifax in association with Westcom Entertainment, are slated to air in 1998. Lassie (26 episodes) is broadcast on Discovery’s Animal Planet in the u.s. and as of this fall on ytv in Canada.

Comeau is also doing a docudrama with Halifax producer Peter D’Entremont and the National Film Board on Maude Lewis, a ‘naive’ Nova Scotian painter and the subject of a recent National Arts Centre exhibition.

‘After Christmas I’m going back into preproduction on Rosemonde, a tv series I cowrote with Jean Barbeau [cowriter with Comeau on award-winning film Jerome’s Secret],’ says Comeau. The story of the Acadian deportation (1755-59), Rosemonde is being prepped by Tele-Action and producer Claudio Luca and is slated for the TVA Network next year.

Comeau, 41, has been in the business for more than 20 years and has an international track record in documentaries, having worked with Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel in the u.s. on some dozen productions related to archaeology, anthropology and forensic science. Most of the docs were produced by Quai 32 USA and the company’s Montreal operation headed by producer Nicolas Valcour.

*Stellar cast in Dotans’ Hyper-Allergenic

A stellar ensemble cast featuring Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn, Genevieve Bujold, Mary McDonnell, Amanda Plummer, Ted Levine, Mark Blum, Genevieve Brouillette, Roc Lafortune, Dorothee Berryman, Macha Grenon and Jacon Tierney top-line director Shimon Dotan’s comedic morality tale Hyper-Allergenic, filming here Oct. 14 to Nov. 8.

In the film’s opening sequence, Burstyn’s character waits in her husband’s hospital room for news of his delicate surgery. Joined by her adult children and their spouses following appointments with their psychiatrists, the members of the extended Jewish family confront their private and shared neuroses with entirely hilarious results.

Dotan and his partner in Cinequest Films, Netaya Anbar, are the film’s producers and Martin Dufour is the pm. The screenplay is from Montreal playwright Oren Safdie.

Dotan’s filmography includes Coyote Run, Warriors and an earlier movie, The Smile of the Lamb, a Silver Bear winner at the Berlin Film Festival.

Equinox Entertainment is Hyper-Allergenic’s Canadian distributor. Danehip is handling world sales.