Cannes, France: The meetings agenda for most Canadian producers and exporters at this year’s mipcom was literally non-stop, running to appointments from early morning to mid-evening. Even that pace seemed surpassed by Montreal producer Paul Cadieux, who has been making the trek to the Cote d’Azur for the past 14 years, doing double-duty in both the documentary and children’s program coproduction sectors.

In the children’s category, Cadieux’s Megafun Productions has seven new or extended and/or in-delivery series on the go, including 65 five-minute episodes of T’Choupi for tfo (tvontario’s French-language network), Treehouse and Fox Family; Charlie and Mimmo, a preschool series starring five-year-old Mimmo and his teddy bear; and A Child’s Dream, 13 three-minute animation episodes for the preschool set (ages four to eight) based on actual dreams of children.

Current production includes 26 half-hours of the animation series Belphagor, coproduced with France’s Les Armateurs, which premiers on Canal Famille in Canada in January 2000; season two of Oggy and the Cockroaches, coproduced with Gaumont; and the just-wrapped 13 six-minute series SnailOlympics, a plasticine animation coproduced with Spain.

Megafun is also producing episodes 53 to 65 of the tfo series Papi Bonheur, a puppet series about a little boy, his sheep dog Gamin and their special relationship with grandfather. Papi Bonheur is especially important to the producer, who says there’s a lack of meaningful stories about relationships between the young and old.

Cadieux set up Tooncan to coproduce 26 half-hours of the hit stop-motion puppet series Rotten Ralph (produced at Cosgrove Hall). It’s a coprod with the u.k.’s Italtoons and is about a troublesome little red cat who receives an endless supply of unconditional love. The show debuted three weeks ago on bbc to a major audience share and premiers here on Radio-Canada next fall. RTV Family Entertainment and Fox Family have also picked up Rotten Ralph.

Megafun trademark series include Wacky World of Webster and Whim and Bibi et Genevieve (650 15-minutes episodes), the latter sold to 75 countries and has been on air in French-Canada for the past 15 years.

In the nature and wildlife categories, Cadieux’s documentary company Greenspace Productions has reformatted the 13-hour series Wildlife to half-hours for Life Network, with new sales to tfo, Tele-Quebec and NatGeo in Europe.

Two years in the making, director Harold Arsenault’s The Pelagic Zone has been picked up by Tele-Quebec, TV5 and Tele-Images Nature, France. Arsenault also directed the new one-hour Diggs Island nature investigation, Seabirds’ Citadels.

Another new series presold to tfo is Animal Intruders, 12 half-hours examining the havoc resulting from man’s relocation of wildlife species. Greenspace in association with Tele-Images is now developing White Frontiers, a profile of animal life during the Arctic summer.

Filmoption International is the exporter.

If the trek to mipcom can leave one breathless, Cadieux says years of experience has made for easier and more efficient ties with international partners.

*Gelbart scouts out Europe

Galafilm producer Arnie Gelbart says the European market for docs is ‘closing in on itself,’ and French broadcasters, in particular, are sitting on a lot of inventory and not ordering. ‘There are fewer documentaries and more sports on tv in Europe,’ he says. ‘It’s a bad patch right now.’

New doc program deliveries from Galafilm include Josh Freed’s Polar Safari, a look at one of the darker aspects of life in the High North, sold to cbc and Channel 4 and expected to be ready for mip-tv, April 10-14; and Niagara, a $1.2-million, six half-hour docusoap sold to cbc and hbo. Shot on digital wide screen over four months and being edited by Susan Shanks and Teri Nash, Niagara follows six characters (including a mom who runs a marriage chapel, a blackjack dealer and an insightful, funny pr guy) who live and work in the famous tourism region.

New production includes director/writer Brian McKenna’s (The War of 1812) Prelude to a Revolution, a one-hour investigative social history on the 1955 Maurice Richard riot, the shocking back-room role played by hostile nhl owners, and the event’s impact on Quebec society. It’s budgeted at $420,000 and has been presold to Global Television and Reseau tva.

Galafilm and the u.k.’s Global Arts/United are coproducers on the $6.5-million youth series The Worst Witch, seen on ytv in Canada, itv in the u.k. and hbo in the u.s.

*TV movies, docs from Telefiction

telefiction producer Jacques Bonin and the company’s l.a. point person Suzanne Barron (Sonona Entertainment, Santa Monica) a former international distribution exec with mgm, Playboy Enterprises and abc, used mipcom to discuss a range of youth, documentary and long-form drama projects, in both French and English.

Feature-length drama pitches included Modern English, an English-track romantic comedy to be directed by commercial ace Jacques Fournier and coproduced with Montreal’s Locomotion, and Silent Day, a contemporary family story from a French writer, with plans to film in Canada next season. Bonin says he pitched Silent Day to production financing sources in the u.k.

On the French side, long-form tv projects include Nez Rouge, a romantic comedy from writers Sylvie Pilon (L’Homme Ideal) and Sylvie Desrosiers, and Mademoiselle Charlotte, a family film from writer Dominique Demers.

In the recently launched doc division, Telefiction and producer Micheline Loiselle pitched The Eight Fold Path, the fascinating tale of a wealthy man who becomes a monk.

In other Telefiction news, the house is editing the Jean Claude Labrecque turn-of-the-century utopian doc L’Epoque Meunier a Anticosti, while Ghyslaine Cote’s debut family movie Pin Pon, le film will be released by Films Lions Gate in time for Christmas.

*By popular demand – Dogs with Jobs

Cineflix producer Glen Salzman attended mipcom to pitch several documentary projects and as the producer of Dog With Jobs, a new 13 half-hour social series about working dogs around the world. Exporter Mediamax International used the market to host a splashy demonstration of doggy prowess for clients and the curious at a late-afternoon beach-side cocktail.

Shot on wide-screen digital video and based on the new Merrily Weisbord book, episodic profiles include a canine hero in Namibia who saves a cheetah from poachers, a super-smart sheperd on the front lines of mine detection in the former Yugoslavia, a husky pup in Canmore, Alta., initiated in the difficult rites and work of a sled dog team, and a four-footed pet detective in Santa Cruz, Calif., hired by distraught owners to track down their adorable missing pets.

Salzman says there are some 70 million dog owners in North America alone and predicts the $2.1-million series will be a major export winner, with sales already made to cbc/Radio-Canada, Life Network (first window) and pbs. Ali Kazimi (Narmada: The Valley Rises) is series director/dop. The show has Licence Fee Program top-up cash, but no agency funding because dogs were deemed to be below the cultural horizon, says the producer.

Cineflix (Milk and Honey, Power, A Brush With Life) will produce $4 million in docs and doc series in ’99/2000.

‘We’re moving from one-offs to international series and coproductions, and we are interested in drama and tv movies,’ says Salzman. As such, the house has taken on a new producer, David York, former head of docs at Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions. York will move to Montreal and brings in several new projects with interest from History Television and Discovery Canada.

New Cineflix projects include The Gene Hunters, a 13 half-hour science series coproduced with Cafe Productions of London, Eng. and distributed international by NatGeo.

Also new at Cineflix are two docusoap series – Birth Stories, ‘a change of life’ chronicle of nine pregnant women, scripted by Catherine Buck and presold to Life Network and tvontario, and producer/writer Trish Dolman’s Whistler, a profile of some of the more colorful characters who hang loose at the world-famous ski resort. Salzman is talking to ctv’s Mark McGinnis and Outdoor Life, a ctv specialty channel, on the latter. Foreign sales on Birth Stories are being handled by Regina’s Minds Eye International.