Montreal: Cine Qua Non Films has signed a coproduction agreement with Radio-Canada, Bravo! and Arts & Entertainment in the u.s. for the production and broadcast of Collection de Musique de Chambre/The Chamber Music Collection.

The seven one-hour performance series includes dance and music photography and dramatized recreations of works by Debussy, Vivaldi, Dvorak, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn.

Cine Qua Non president Michel Ouellette is producing the $3-million collection, with three episodes slated for completion in ’98, two in ’99, and two more in 2000.

Ouellete says Bravo! station manager Paul Gratton helped secure the deal with a&e.

Directors and performers signed for the first two episodes include Benoit Pilon (Reseaux) and Quatuor Alcan, Raymond Saint-Jean (The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft, Cabaret Neige Noir) and I Musici de Montreal choreographer Danielle Tardiff (Le Dortoir). Cine Qua Non’s Bernar Hebert, the series’ screenwriter, is directing the third episode.

Additional funding comes from Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Television Fund, sodec and both tax credits. Cine Qua Non’s distribution affiliate Antenna, headed by Danielle Belanger, has world rights. Antenna also sold the show to Japanese mini-cabler Theatre Television.

Cine Qua Non has two cultural docs in development for ’99, the Herbert-directed project Hiver (Winter) and Sydney, Ville Olympique.

*Cohen novels optioned

On the feature film front, Cine Qua Non, Cinemaginaire and l.a.-based Milk & Honey Pictures are developing properties based on two Leonard Cohen novels, The Favorite Game and Beautiful Losers.

Cine Qua Non’s Bernar Hebert (Le Petite Musee de Velasquez, La Nuit du Deluge) will direct a $3-million feature based on The Favorite Game. Focus Films of London, Eng. is the coproducer. French writer Armelle Brusq is the screenwriter and Motion International has Canadian and international rights.

‘It’s great literature that hasn’t aged,’ says producer Michel Ouellette. ‘It’s rare when cinema [borrows] from poetry, and we think with this book there’s an opening for a very large audience due to Cohen’s name, of course, but also because of its accessibility.’

The goal is to shoot late summer ’99.

As for Beautiful Losers, Milk & Honey has entered into an agreement with Montreal’s Cinemaginaire to develop a feature based on the ’60s cult story of teen turmoil and sexuality. Milk & Honey partner/director Greg Gold (who has worked here before as well as on several Shania Twain clips) optioned the film rights to the novel and is slated to produce on location in Quebec in association with Cinemaginaire president Denise Robert.

Screenwriters are Jacob Potashnik (15 Moments) and Tony Babinsky.

Milk & Honey is active in Prague and elsewhere around the globe and is busy shooting direct-to-video projects for Buena Vista Home Video (Disney) including Happy Haunting.

Cinemaginaire is prepping two feature films, Denys Arcand’s 15 Moments and Patrice Leconte’s Le Veuve de Saint-Pierre, a big-budget Canada/France coproduction starring Juliet Binoche.

*Wormser sells `the ring’

Director/writer Tamas Wormser (Faces of the Hand) is looking for distribution for his new 48-minute filmed drama the ring, an experimental ‘magic-surreal’ story based on a legend about Le Roi Charlemagne.

Born and raised in Budapest and a graduate of Concordia University, Wormser wrote, directed, edited and produced the medievalist-silent movie (with music and bilingual intertitles) for $220,000. More than half the cost has been deferred by cast, crew and friends, with sodec, the Canada Council, National Film Board, Mainfilm and Kodak Canada providing a little help.

Cast includes Gilles Pelletier as the king, Attila Bertalan, Melanie St-Onge and Don Reider as the jester.

The dop is Ivan Gekoff (Hathi), Pierre Lefebvre is the art director and Ganesh Anandan is the sound designer/composer.

Screenings for the ring are set for Dec. 9 at the Cinematheque quebecoise, Dec. 10-11 at Cinema onf/nfb, and Dec. 16 at Cinema Parallele.

Wormser’s company, Artesian Films, is developing two feature dramas, Feather and Wings and Through the Fog.

*Baylaucq’s projects

Director Philippe Baylaucq’s latest project is Bieler, a one-hour biographical documentary on Andre Bieler, a painter and Baylaucq’s grandfather. The film is a coproduction between Baylaucq’s company, Passerelle Production, and Nathalie Barton of InformAction, with funding from Radio-Canada.

Bieler’s artworks will be prominent, but Baylaucq says the project is also highly personal.

The director is also developing Hugo et le Dragon, a one-hour children’s fantasy for Radio-Canada. The $900,000 ‘experimental’ production from producer Rene Chenier of Arico Films mixes traditional puppets from Theatre de l’Oeil with new technologies in a story about a little boy and a rampaging, stellar dragon who eats up all the stars in the sky.

Jacqueline Barrette wrote the screenplay based on an original story by Louis Baillargeon. Music is by Libert Subirana and Elliot Manning. Preproduction is likely to be extensive and could start next summer, with the actual shoot slated for spring 2000.

Baylaucq is president of the 185-member l’Association des realisateurs et realisatrices du Quebec and is the winner of both the 1997 and ’98 Telefilm Canada prizes for best Canadian film at the International Festival of Films on Art, for Lodela and Mystere B, respectively.

*CNC funds for Gagnon

Producer/director Claude Gagnon, president of Aska Film, has received a development grant of about $25,000 from France’s cnc. The funds are being used for Gagnon’s next feature film, Ma Cabane au Canada, a comedy about two entirely mismatched tourist workers, a Frenchman and a Quebecois. Gagnon says shooting is slated for early in 2000.

Gagnon picked up the prize at the recent Cinema quebecois a Paris showcase where he screened Aska’s latest, Francois Bouvier’s nostalgic family drama Histoires d’Hiver. It’s slated for an early ’99 theatrical release by Behaviour Distribution.

*Bowie deal is close

U.S. trade reports, apparently sourced from the Internet, stating legendary rocker David Bowie has signed on as host of the late-night anthology series The Hunger ii are somewhat premature, says Anita Simand, head of creative affairs at Telescene Film Group. ‘However, we are very close to doing a deal with Mr. Bowie,’ she says

u.k. actor Terence Stamp hosted the show’s first season. Bowie (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, The Man Who Fell to Earth) starred in the 1983 Tony Scott-directed horror flick which inspired The Hunger’s reincarnation on tv.

At press time, Simand said Telescene was unable to confirm any additional information on The Hunger ii, including season two licence renewals by TMN-The Movie Network and Showtime in the u.s.

Talks with Bowie’s management cover both hosting and a potential starring role in one of the new episodes.

In an unrelated matter, Simand says Telescene ‘is secretly working on something that could be worldwide news.’