Montreal: Documentary director Bernard Emond (L’Epreuve du feu, L’Instant et la patience) is directing his first feature film, La femme qui boit. The 24-day shoot goes from March 20 to April 21, with Bernadette Payeur of production house acpav producing.

La femme tells the life story of Paulette, an old woman who dies after an intimate and lifelong relationship with the bottle. Elise Guilbault plays Paulette at ages 28, 45 and 65. Fanny Malette plays a younger version.

‘Bernard says it’s a film about dignity even if she had her benders and drank too much,’ says Payeur. ‘She had her happy moments, although perhaps there were more sad moments. The difference in this film is that her personality is not condemned.’

Luc Picard, Michel Forget, Gilles Renaud, Pascale Desrochers, Lise Castonguay and Alexandrine Agostini round out the cast.

Prix Albert-Tessier winner Jean-Claude Labrecque is shooting on Super 16mm film. Louise Cote is editing. Andre-Line Beauparlant is the art director and Sylvie De Grandpre is pm.

acpav is also shooting the Robert Monderie feature doc La loi de l’eau – a year-long examination of water’s worrisome future as an increasingly commercial commodity – for both Tele-Quebec and Radio-Canada. Monderie and Richard Desjardins codirected the influential doc L’Erreur boreal.

Payeur has had an unusually busy season, wrapping the Pierre Falardeau historical drama 15 Fevrier 1839 in late February.

La Femme has a budget of $1.6 million, with funding from sodec, Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Television Fund’s lfp, the Quebec and federal tax credit programs, and pubcaster src. A theatrical release by Films Lions Gate is anticipated for next February or March.

*Coolbrook, Locomotion shoot Xchange

Toronto’s Coolbrook Productions and this city’s Locomotion Pictures, an affiliate of international spot shooter La Fabrique d’Images, are coproducing the sci-fi action thriller Xchange. The $6.5-million film is being directed by Allan Moyle (Pump Up the Volume, New Waterford Girl, Jailbait) and stars Stephen Baldwin, Pascale Bussieres and Kim Coates.

Producer Jean Desormeaux has a full second unit in operation for action and stunt scenes as well as a New York plate-unit, the latter keyed on background requirements for the film’s cgi elements.

Set in New York City and San Francisco in the ‘near-future,’ the complex story chronicles the fate of a character – played by three different actors – who loses his body (more than once) via a body exchange technology called Xchange. When the character morphs into someone else, things take an unexpected turn; in the first instance, he becomes ‘a really bad guy.’

Xchange is being originated in 35mm film by dop Pierre Gill, but will be delivered in film, hdtv and digital video formats.

Buzz Image Group is producing the cgi. Andre Chamberland is art director, Martha Fernandez is pm, Marianne Carter is the costume designer, and Dean Balcer is editing. Deluxe Pictures is handling post. Marc S. Grenier is producing with Desormeaux. ‘[hd] is pretty well a standard these days. When you’re delivering to the Americans, everyone is saying hd now,’ says Desormeaux.

Xchange is the first of a two-picture deal with the same financing package. Next up is the thriller Wet Works, likely to prep in June for an anticipated Nova Scotia shoot.

Coolbrook Media has licensed u.s. pay rights to hbo and holds Canadian rights to Xchange. Trimark Pictures has international and residual u.s. rights.

Desormeaux (Due South, Johnny Mnemonic) and partner Gord Haines are graduates of the now far-flung Alliance school. ‘We have good friends in America. We’re doing things carefully and we don’t want to give up everything. We don’t want to be line producers. We want to do our own thing,’ says Desormeaux.

Last year, Coolbrook (Bone Daddy, Valentine’s Day) and Motion International coproduced Bruce Pittman’s The Unconcerned for hbo and Kari Skogland’s Courage to Love for Lifetime.

*Live from Tinseltown

This spring’s Quebec promotion delegation in l.a. was really on a roll. Quebec on Wheels was partly an experimental alternative to last month’s Location Expo, the official film commissioners annual get together. Instead of making the trek to Expo, the location group commandeered an outsized Star Suites production mobile and made the rounds of several of Hollywood’s major film studios.

Replete with ‘working executive suites,’ its own ‘posh cafe-terrasse and communications ports,’ the Quebec tour included a visit to Warner Bros.’ lot March 21, moving on to Disney Studios the next day, and wrapping March 23 at the Hilton Universal Towers’ Hotel for talks with studio execs from Fox, Universal and mgm as well as independent producers.

The delegation was led by Stephane Lestage, president of Film Quebec, commissioner Jacqueline Dinsmore of the Quebec Film & TV Office – sodec, and commissioner Andre Lafond of the Montreal Film and TV Bureau.

On the phone from the Disney lot, Dinsmore said studio execs in finance, production and post ‘dropped by for a coffee, and then we’d corner them.’ A meeting with an exec from Disney’s children’s department proved particularly promising. ‘They have not shot in Montreal before and we sat down with her and went over everything. Now she’s sending up a script.’

Lafond says the promotion gambit worked out well, especially in view of what he claims is a ‘lack of quality clients’ showing up at Location Expo. He says there were initial worries, but on the other hand, only two (Toronto and Alberta) of Canada’s 22 big, small and very small film commissions actually attended.

Lafond says Montreal continues to gain ground in terms of mega-movie projects, however, there were fewer u.s. mows shot in Quebec last year. Part of this year’s mission is to soothe fears that film and tv projects in the $5-million range might have a tough time finding quality crews at a reasonable price, a notion Lafond says had been reinforced by Quebec’s well-organized Canadian competitors.

As for the l.a. buzz on the dizzying Cinar saga, Lafond says, ‘Not a word. It doesn’t exist.’

Other Quebec reps on the excursion included Lorraine Boily of the Quebec Region Film Commission (Quebec City), Dany Brassard of Argenteuil, Rene Fortin of the Eastern Townships (Sherbrooke), and Pierre Lafrance and Claude Rainville, representing the stcvq.

u.s. producers spent $213.4 million on a dozen Quebec location shoots in ’99.

*Spectra descends on Cote d’Azur

L’Equipe Spectra will have eight or more production and distribution execs at this year’s mip-tv, April 10-14. Not only does Spectra International Distribution director Marie-Sylvie Lefebvre have a growing catalogue to show off to buyers, but vp finance and television Luc Chatelain says the integrated entertainment company (show venues, festivals, recording and artist management, variety, children’s and drama production) and its partners expect to do between $20 million and $30 million in new production this year.

Spectra’s tv producing elements include:

* children’s and drama producer Productions Sogestalt (Albertine en cinq temps), headed by producer Pierre Beaudry;

* music program and series producer Amerimage Spectra (OSM Branche, a new series featuring the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and conductor Charles Dutoit, and the 18-hour live music anthology Cafe Campus Blues), headed by producer Pierre Touchette;

* variety and comedy show producer Sogestalt 2001 (the Tele-Quebec Sunday night variety showcase Le Plaisir croit avec usage), headed by veteran impresario and producer Guy Latraverse; and,

* the latest to join the fold, BBR Productions, headed by drama producer Suzanne Girard.

L’Equipe Spectra has nine series on the Canadian Television Fund’s lfp money list, including 40 episodes of the kiddies show Tohu-Bohu (Sogestalt), the musical variety show TV5 en Scene (Amerimage-Spectra), a new feminist comedy series, and a variety show called Belles et rebelles for Radio-Canada and TV5.

Other lfp winners are Variations on a New Generation 2000 (Amerimage), the ‘small and intimate variety series’ Pour une chanson (Amerimage), 100 epsiodes in the second season of the children’s series Operation Cameleon (Sogestalt), season three of Le Plaisir (Sogestalt 2001), and Un flambeau a reprendre, another variety series (Amerimage-Spectra).

Chatelain says each producer in the group is a partner and president of his or her own business, so the entrepreneurial spirit of the producer is not reduced to employee-service status.

‘Mostly, these people are producers, and with a structure like Spectra’s, it means they’re free to concentrate on production. Otherwise, they’re small companies without the resources to invest in an overhead. So they can develop projects, and when they go into production, Spectra’s machine moves into gear,’ he says.

*New film production

U.S. producer David Roessell and director Stephen Gyllenhaal begin filming April 3 in and around Montreal on The Warden, a Turner Network Television movie from Maximum Security Productions. Manon Bougie is supervising producer and Anne Pritchard is the shoot’s production designer.

Cinar Films and a u.s. partner started principal photography March 27 on the Make A Wish Productions family tv movie Forgotten Attic. It’s loosely based on the popular kids book The Velveteen Rabbit. Serge Denis is producing. Eric Cayla is dop, Jean-Baptiste Tard is the art director and Michael Landon Jr. is directing.

Spelling Television Quebec is shooting the tv movie drama All Souls (a.k.a. The Tower) from March 22 to April 7. Stuart Gillard is director/exec producer. Irene Litinsky is pm, Mark Frost is co-exec producer and Stewart Harding is producing.

In prep for May starts, according to the stcvq freelance film union, is Ardglasson Productions’ inaugural shoot, Varian’s War, a u.s. cable movie from veteran director Lionel Chetwynd and producer Kevin Tierney (P.T. Barnum, Bonanno: A Godfather’s Story).

Also gearing up for May is Further Tales of the City, a reprise of the More Tales stories from director Pierre Gang (Ichabod: A Legend of Sleepy Hollow), cinematographer Serge Ladouceur and BBR Productions (L’Equipe Spectra) producer Suzanne Girard.