Montreal: Doc producer InformAction has justly earned a reputation for original and often challenging programming, pushing a broad social-justice agenda against television’s restrictive sensibilities and formats.

The Montreal production house is embarking on its 30th year of operations with an impressive slate of deliveries and startups including Bad Girl, an examination of the new role of women in the booming porn industry, and Salem Iran, about the struggle for change in Iran.

The company was founded in January 1971 by producer Nathalie Barton and directors Jean-Claude Berger and Alain d’Aix. D’Aix, also known under his real name, Gerard Le Chene, is a founder of the Vues d’Afrique film and cultural showcase.

Last month, the Cinematheque Quebecoise organized a retrospective screening of several of the house’s most prominent early (1971 to 1983) productions.

Raised in England and educated in France and in Montreal, Barton says three decades have passed but a connecting thread still exists with her partners. ‘We are still friends and we share a conviction that we should approach things in a rather unconventional way. None of us are politically correct.’

A case in point, 15 years ago the house produced Zones de Turbulence, a look at the geo-politics of Africa and the compromise many Black African nations made with the powerful and racist regime in South Africa. ‘We want to be different and do documentaries television doesn’t address,’ says Barton.

Barton, head of the apftq documentary sector for several years, points out many of the house’s early subjects went against progressive orthodoxy, docs like Contre-Censure, a ’76 film on human rights in West Africa, and Anyanya, the house’s first doc, produced in ’71, on the horrific war in the Southern Sudan.

Berger recently completed a commissioned social doc for the National Film Board and producer Eric Michel. He works with InformAction as well as for Radio-Canada programs Le Point and Enjeux.

D’Aix has broadened his African interests to include social and cultural trends (Investigating Tarzan) as well as films on Creole culture, among them, Les Iles ont une ames (1989), a poetic, award-winning history of Haiti.

Convincing people

Barton has worked full-time as a producer since 1985. ‘Production became heavier and more complex [then], but there was still less paper work. Now the paper work is devastating. [Before] it was more about convincing people to get on board,’ she says.

Three decades on, Barton says, ‘We don’t make political films in the same way. People are so bombarded with information one has to tell stories in a seductive sort of way.’

She has good words for commissioners at src, and especially Tele-Quebec, but adds the general tv landscape for docs is increasingly restrictive, ‘and it means distributors, especially for one-offs, really have to be on the ball.’

The house’s first big seller was Mercenaires en quete d’auteurs (1983), a profile of the deadly international mercenary business, while the best-selling title to date is d’Aix’s pop culture essay Investigating Tarzan (1997), showcased at fipa in ’98 and sold to Canal d, tvontario, American Movie Classics, HBO-Asia, France 2 and in various other European markets.

Carlos Ferrand’s doc on the gifted and very old, Vivre 120 Ans, has been sold throughout Europe, to various pbs stations and to sbs in Australia. Tally Abecassis’ portrait of a unique Boulevard St-Laurent supermarket, Warshaw on the Main, was licensed to CBC Newsworld’s Rough Cuts and is making sales in the Canadian non-theatrical market, says Barton.

InformAction’s primary distrib is Mediamax International (Distribution La Fete).

New InformAction production in delivery includes Marielle Nitoslawska’s Bad Girl, coproduced with France’s Taxi Video Brousse and distributed in Europe by Tele Images. It’s been sold to Tele-Quebec and Canal + and profiles the new ‘behind the camera role’ of women in the porn business. The doc was produced for $400,000, with funds coming from Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund. An English version is planned.

D’Aix’s inquiry into communications between humans and animals, Il ne leur manque que la parole (All They Need Is Words), is in competition at the Montreal International Festival of Films on Art (fifa) in March, and has been sold to src, La Cinquieme in France and rtbf in Belgium.

Philippe Baylaucq’s retracing of his own artistic roots, Les Couleurs de sang, also profiles his grandson, Canadian painter Andre Bieler. It also premiers at fifa and is slated to play at Ex-Centris or Cinema onf prior to its src airdate.

In the past year, InformAction also produced the Jean Claude Berger archaeological inquiry Trafiquants des civilizations perdues (src) and Manon Barbeau’s portrait of her artist father Marcel Barbeau, Barbeau libre comme l’art (src).

Filming starts in March in Iran on Salam Iran (Tele-Quebec), directed by Jean Daniel Lafond in association with Montreal author Fred Reed. The production has received funds from Telefilm, the ctf and sodec and has been presold to CBC Newsworld.

Le Voyage de Charlie from French director Stephane Begoin, another coproduction with Taxi Brousse, chronicles the spiritual (as in Latin American shamanism) search of an Inuit man. It’s in development at InformAction along with two doc coproduction series and a new Tally Abecassis project. One of the episodics is from Neptune Productions, formed by young filmmakers working closely with Barton and InformAction. •