Montreal: New feature film action slated to start preproduction this month as reported by the stcvq includes Jean-Sebastien Lord’s Le Petit Ciel from Aska Film producers Claude Gagnon, Yuri Yoshimura and Martine Beauchemin, and the Ghislaine Cote feature Pin Pon en Camping from Films Vision 4 producers Jacques Bonin, Claude Veillet, Carmen Bourassa and Sylvie Roy.

Pin Pon is in prep mode for a June 7 to July 5 shoot and is a big-screen adaptation of the top-rated Canal Famille preschool series of the same name. The film is Cote’s feature debut. Paul Thinel wrote the screenplay.

Le Petit Ciel is Lord’s feature debut, too. Crew includes dop Bernard Fougeres and art director Patrice Vermette, with principal photography set to go May 3 to June 1.

Galafilm producer Arnie Gelbart and Ian Whitehead are headed for a May startup on Arto Paramagian’s ambitious new feature Two Thousand and None, a Canada/u.k. coproduction with dop Norayr Kasper and production designer Anne Pritchard on board.

Another shoot prepping for a spring start is Albertine en Cinq Temps, a tv movie adaptation of the Michel Tremblay stage play from director Andre Melancon and Productions Sogestalt producer Pierre Beaudry.

Fred et Tom, a feature from France’s Rendez-Vous Productions, with a little help from Montreal’s Telefiction, is scheduled to shoot May 18 to mid-July, while the Robert Tinnell feature Believe from Melenny Productions’ Richard Goudreau (Les Boys I & II) continues to edge towards its startup date, probably in May.

John L’Ecuyer’s feature meditation on lost causes, Saint Jude, from Lux Film producer Nicole Robert and Sandra Cunningham of Toronto’s East Side Film Company, is primed to shoot here April 26 to May 14. Sylvie De Grandpre is pm, Stephen Reizes is the dop and Pierre V. Allard is art director. The shoot represents a return to old haunts for L’Ecuyer (Curtis’ Charm), now one of the country’s top dramatic directors.

Working out of Toronto, L’Ecuyer’s Confessions of a Rabid Dog took best social doc honors at last year’s Hot Docs!, and recent primetime drama credits seem to suggest somebody out there thinks it was all worthwhile. They include Cold Squad, DaVinci’s Inquest, The City and Daring & Grace.

Speculation swirls around many other projects seeking public funding, including the sequel to the box office hit C’t’a ton tour, Laura Cadieux ii; a new Charles Biname project from Cite-Amerique; a Robert Favreau feature from Verseau International; and a feature from Max Films called La Vie apres L’Amour.

Also seeking funding are a Bernar Hebert feature adaptation of the Leonard Cohen novel The Favorite Game, in the form of a Canada/u.k. coproduction from Cine Qua Non; a new movie from Stock International’s Richard Sadler, producer of Louis 19, le roi des ondes; a feature proposal from director Pierre Falardeau (Miracle a Memphis); a Films Cinepix coproduction called Hit Parade; a feature called La Petite Fete from Films Vision 4; a u.k./Canada coproduction called The Furnace from director Renny Bartlett and Amerique Film; and Claire’s Hat, a new Don McKellar (The Last Night, The Red Violin) movie, presumably a Quebec/ Ontario coproduction.

More information on upcoming Quebec feature shoots, in French and English, should be available soon.

sodec has more money for long-form and is in the process of notifying applicants, and Telefilm Canada faxed conditional ‘offer’ and ‘refusal’ letters to an estimated two dozen French-language feature film producers on Friday, March 26 and Monday, March 29.

*New Coscient drama

Filming goes from March 30 to April 24 on the tv movie The Unconcerned, a $5-million Quebec/Ontario coproduction from Coscient’s international drama unit and Coolbrook Media.

The film has been presold to hbo and stars Dean Cain (Lois & Clark, The New Adventures of Superman) as an ambitious businessman wrongly accused of stealing someone else’s drug money. Bruce Pittman (The Secret Path, Locked in Silence, Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron, The City) is directing. Michael Storey is dop and John Meighen is production designer.

Jacques Methe, Gordon Haynes and Roni Weisberg are exec producers. Stephane Reichel and Jean Desormeaux are producing. Motion International has Canadian and world rights.

*More Fox fare from TVA

Francois St-Laurent, TVA International’s vp production and development, was in town recently to let us know development is underway on nine new dramas slated to shoot in the next 15 months.

The lineup includes five additional tv movies for Fox Family Channel and four international coproductions with u.k. and German partners. Recently installed in Marina Del Rey, California, literally next door to the new DreamWorks studio, St-Laurent says the slate includes a tripartite coproduction with the u.k. and South Africa slated to be filmed this summer in South Africa, and another coproduction which will be shot in Spain in September.

Last month, Andre Provencher was named president of TVA International. Provencher, who relinquishes his duties as senior vp network, and gm Nancy Wells have confirmed their presence at mip-tv, April 12-17.

Three Fox Family films have been delivered to date: Perfect Little Angels, Two of Hearts and The Darklings.

Perfect Little Angels stars Cheryl Ladd, Jody Thompson and Michael York in a story about a little u.s. town which is just ‘too perfect.’

Two of Hearts, a romantic tale of two divorcees who meet at a wedding, stars Corbin Berson, Gail O’Grady, Marla Maples, Rob Stewart and Alan Thicke.

The latest installment, The Darklings, is exactly that, darker than the family film norm. It’s about altogether decent suburban teens who flush out a murderous, evil-twin neighbor. Timothy Busfield plays a washed-up, demented baseball pitcher who looks a lot like St. Louis slugger Mark McGuire, with the ubiquitous Martin Sheen, Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Somers as self-same ‘totally weird’ next-door neighbor also in starring roles.

The Darklings was produced by St-Laurent, Vancouver-based James Shavick and Shawn Williams based on a screenplay from Brendan Hood and Sean Hood. Philip Linzey is the dop and Jeffrey Reiner directed. All three films were shot in b.c. with both federal and B.C. Film services tax credits. IFM Film Associates of l.a. has selected foreign rights.

*First Cirque movie

Alliance Vivafilm is bringing the spellbinding world of Le Cirque du Soleil to the big screen April 30 with a 30-print release of the Franco Dragone feature Alegria. The Quebec-only launch for the $10-million Canada/France/Holland coproduction coincides with the opening of Dralion, the latest Cirque extravaganza, says Jean Stinziani, Vivafilm’s theatrical director.

A love story between a street mime and an incandescent singer, Alegria was partly filmed under The Big Top in Berlin and on location in Amsterdam. Leads include Rene Bazinet (Saltimbanco), Frank Langella (Lolita, Eddie and the Cruisers), Julie Cox (Franz Kafka’s What a Wonderful World), Heathcote Williams and Clipper Miano. Pierre Mignot (Pret a Porter) is the film’s cinematographer.

Alegria, scripted by Rudy Barichello and Dragone, had its North American premiere at the recent Palm Springs Film Festival and was the closing night film at this month’s Santa Barbara Film Festival. A movie sound track is currently in release.

Barichello, Stephane Reichel, Alexandre Heylen and Hans de Weers produced. Helene Dufresne of Cirque du Soleil Images is exec producer. Guy Laliberte is the founder/president of Cirque du Soleil.

Alliance Atlantis Releasing is distributing in Canada. Overseas Film Group has international.

*Excision doc

Filmmaker Erica Pomerance is scouting out Canadian and European broadcast presales to complete shooting on the one-hour documentary Against Excision/ Eradiquer l’Excision, a chronicle of the growing African and United Nations-funded movement to end female sexual mutilation.

A $300,000 coproduction between Sud Cap producer Zara Yacoub of Chad and Tanya Tree of Montreal’s Pax Productions, Pomerance used development money from Vues d’Afrique and sodec to assemble 15 hours of footage in three West African countries. Now she needs more for segments in Ethiopia, Egypt and Central Africa.

The documentary charts what the director calls ‘a conflict within a culture,’ the brutally violent and manipulative practice of infibulation and the clitoral removal.

The new angle here, Pomerance says, is the ’empowerment of millions of African women, from universities to the village level.’ The director says the movement has the strategic support of the World Bank, which has finally started to twist governmental arms, and various ngos including the Canadian International Development Agency and the World Health Organization. Universite de Montreal sociologist Aoua Ly is the doc’s primary researcher and on-camera journalist.

*Eisenstein exhibition opens Ex-Centris

Terra Incognito’s sparkling new Ex-Centris complex on boul. St-Laurent opens its doors April 10 with the North American premiere of The Body of the Line: Eisenstein’s Drawings. The exhibition of over 100 largely unknown drawings by Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) has been prepared by Jean Gagnon, curator and program director of The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology. The show wraps May 16.

Later in May, Ex-Centris becomes the new home of landmark indie film theater Cinema Parallele. The venue, which included Cafe Melies, has had a remarkable 32-year history and closed its doors with a weekend marathon film screening March 27-28.

While it may be out, it’s certainly not over for Cinema Parallele topper Claude Chamberland, who does double-duty as vp and director of the International Festival of New Cinema and New Media.

The new Ex-Centris center will house three state-of-the-art screening facilities for new media, video and film.