Montreal: Principal photography on director/writer Renny Bartlett’s first feature film The Furnace wrapped earlier this month after two-and-a-half months of filming on location in St. Petersburg, Mexico and Odessa and Kiev in the Ukraine.

The Furnace stars British actor Simon McBurney (Kafka) in an ‘art versus power’ dramatization of the life of famed Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein’s filmography in the period 1924 to 1946 includes Strike, Battleship Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible and October.

‘The two people battling essentially are Eisenstein and Joseph Stalin,’ says Bartlett. ‘It is also the story of the rise and fall and redemption of Sergei Eisenstein, but the battle is over his films, the truth and his emotional life.’ The director says Eisenstein was ‘a very complex character of ambiguous sexual orientation, a brilliant yet scathing wit who had more enemies than friends.’

The Furnace is a $6-million Germany/Canada (40%) coproduction between producers Martin Paul-Hus of Montreal’s Amerique Film and Regine Schmid of Vif Filmproduktion Gmbh. The exec-producer is Wolfram Tichy.

The film chronicles Eisenstein’s life from the revolutionary Russian avant-garde period of the 1920s through to the dark days of the political purges of the late 1930s to 1948. Cast includes Jonathan Hyde (Titanic), Barnaby Kay, Leni Parker, Sonya Walger, Ray Coulthard, Jacqueline Mckenzie and Daniel McIvor. Craft credits go to dop Alexei Rodionov (Orlando), sound recordist Claude La Haye, post supervisor Peter Measroch and designer Susanne Dieringer.

Paul-Hus and his partners are discussing a new feature project for the fall. The producer says the experience on The Furnace, involving complex areas like international financing and casting, has helped redefine the house’s business. Amerique Film’s earlier credits include various low-budget films, among them Isabelle Poissant’s La Fabrication d’un meurtrier and Olivier Asselin’s La Liberte d’un statue.

Bartlett is working on Frog Boy, a comedy set in the late 1960s, and another movie screenplay called The Triumph of Death, about a 14th century Viking expedition trapped in the frozen Arctic.

Fortissimo will distribute The Furnace internationally. Film Tonic is the Canadian distrib. Paul-Hus says the hope is to introduce the production to buyers at the Toronto International Film Festival.

*Avanti begins shooting on Willie

Filming begins June 5 for 45 days on the Avanti Cine Video drama Willie, a five-hour Reseau tva miniseries on the life and times of country music legend Willie Lamothe.

The hot-blooded Lamothe was the first Quebec artist to sing in French at the Grand Ol’ Opry in Nashville and the first to sell a million records. Luc Guerin (Le Masque, Urgence) plays Willie. Nathalie Mallette plays his saintly and sometimes unhappy wife Jeannette.

Willie is being directed by Jean Beaudin who coscripted with Marcel Sabourin and Claude Paquette. Jean Bissonnette, Jean Claude Lesperance and Luc Wiseman are producing. Avanti is the producer of the Prix Gemeaux-winning miniseries Cher Olivier and the top-rated sitcoms La Petite Vie and Un gars, une fille.

The action covers the period from 1926 to 1992 and opens in the fall of 1981 as Lamothe returns home from Florida for a Prix Felix music industry tribute in his honor. The trip is the starting point for some personal introspection by Willie, who reflects on his career, his hard drinking, his womanizing and his relations with loved ones.

Beaudin’s filmography includes the feature films Souvenirs intimes and Being at Home with Claude and various tv dramas including Les Filles de Caleb, Shehaweh and Ces Enfants d’ailleurs (Children from Elsewhere). Beaudin actually directed Lamothe in the film Trois fois passera. The singer also had a role in Gilles Carle’s La Mort d’un bucheron.

Department heads on the stcvq film shoot include pm Sylvie Trudelle, art director Michel Proulx, costume designer Denis Sperdouklis and dop Louis De Ernsted.

Willie is budgeted at $975,000 per episode.

Production highlights at Avanti this year include season four of Un gars, une fille, the sitcom Catherine, both broadcast on Radio-Canada, Les Mecs comiques for Television Quatre Saisons, Chicken Swill, a new ‘absurdist-comedy’ series for src, the eighth season of Quebec’s top-rated game show, Piment Fort, seen on Reseau tva, and Les fils a papa, a morning show for tqs.

Avanti is 10 years old this year and is one of the most reliable suppliers of top-rated tv shows. Producer Wiseman points out the house has garnered 15 Prix Gemeaux and 13 Felix Awards for its musical varieties.

*Le monde de Charlotte

An extremely energetic and curious but otherwise well-adjusted little girl seeks and receives permission from her parents, themselves normal if slightly doting, to begin a series of weekly visits to a psychologist.

Such is the unusual premise of the new Radio-Canada family drama Le monde de Charlotte. During her weekly sessions, Charlotte, an eight-year-old played by Catherine Brunet (Watatatow, Sauve qui peut), learns a great deal about life’s ups and downs, getting answers to all the questions mom and dad can’t handle. The parents are portrayed by Marie-Therese Fortin and Louis Chasse. Jean Besre plays granddad and Benoit Gouin is Gary, a 35-year-old, anti-conformist psychologist.

The show uses visual and audio special effects, animation and freeze-frames to illustrate Charlotte’s rich imagination.

Le monde de Charlotte is the first series from producer Jocelyn Deschenes’ new house Sphere Media. Deschenes is also coproducing along with Jacques Blain of Cirrus Communications on the drama series 2 Freres, licensed for a second season on Reseau tva.

The scripting team on Le monde de Charlotte includes head writer Richard Blaimert, Danielle Dansereau, Isabelle Langlois and Sylvie Denis, all of whom worked on the Sovimage series Diva and the long-running Jean-Pierre Morin youth series Watatatow. Richard Lahaie and Richard Lalumiere are the directors. The show will be taped entirely in studio at src.

According to src management, Le Monde de Charlotte typifies the broadcaster’s interest in working with new artists.

*Pagnol’s Marseillaise

La Trilogie Marseillaise, a European/Canadian coproduction adapted by Jacques Nahum and based on the classic Marcel Pagnol story, has been licensed in Canada by pay-tv movie channel Super Ecran and Radio-Canada.

Set in the evocative portside city of Marseilles in the 1930s, La Trilogie is the story of Marius, Fanny and Cesar as told in three telefilms to be broadcast in May, June and July on Super Ecran.

La Trilogie premiered last month on France 2, drawing a huge audience of over eight million.

French actor Roger Hanin (Navarro, La Femme du boulanger) plays Cesar, proprietor of the Bar de la Marine. Gaella Le Devehat is gentle Fanny and Eric Poulain is Cesar’s troubled son Marius. Quebec talent includes Lenie Scoffie, Sebastien Delorme, Badia Drouin, Jerome Tiberghien and Roger Joubert.

La Trilogie Marseillaise is a $10-million majority Europe coproduction between Mars International (Expand Images) of France, Montreal’s Cite-Amerique, France 2 and France 3 and Saga Films and broadcaster rtbf of Belgium. Canadian coproducers are Lorraine Richard and Louis Laverdiere.

Cite-Amerique says it may prepare an English adaptation of La Trilogie for the North American market.

In other news from Cite-Amerique, director Lea Pool (Emporte-moi) began filming May 23 on the feature film Lost and Delirious (aka The Wives of Bath). Seville Pictures will distribute in Canada. TF1 Int’l has international rights.

*Muse gets ready

Muse Entertainment is in busy preproduction mode on two Montreal shoots. Jackie, a four-hour cbs miniseries on the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, shoots from June 19 to Aug. 18. Tony Mark is the producer.

Tina Andrews is co-exec producer/writer and Georges Stelzner is exec producing for Pearson Television International. The director is David Burton-Morris. Michel Chauvin is pm and the budget is us$16 million.

Muse is also prepping the $4.5-million Canadian tv movie The Hound of the Baskervilles. Irene Litinsky is pm/producer. It films in Montreal and area from July 10 to Aug. 6. Hallmark Entertainment has international sales. Muse president Michael Prupas is exec producer. Rodney Gibbons is signed to direct. Jean-Baptiste Tard is the designer and Renee April is the costume designer. Joe Wiesenfeld (A Legend of Sleepy Hollow) wrote this Sherlockian mystery and casting is underway at Andrea Kenyon and Associates.