Montreal: Filming is underway in a fully reconstructed turn-of-the-century village in rural St-Charles de Mandeville on the big-screen adaptation of Claude Henri Grignon’s epoch-making 1939 novel, Un Homme et son peche.

The $5.7-million Cite-Amerique production from director Charles Biname shoots for close to two months through to Nov. 10, resuming production in January in time for a December 2002 release by distributor Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm.

The story, adapted for radio and TV (Les Belles Histoires de Pays-d’en-haut), was the subject of two black-and-white feature films, in 1949 and 1950, and holds a special place in Quebecers’ collective imagination. Un Homme is a rather rare entry in the epic period category, which includes films like Les Fous de Bassen and Kamouraska, says Cite-Amerique’s Lorraine Richard, who is producing with Luc Martineau.

AAV president Guy Gagnon has backed the project since the beginning (the director and cowriter Pierre Billon went through three rewrites) and nurtures big hopes for the kind of popularity achieved by Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. In short, expectations are very high and Un Homme is sure to be carefully scrutinized by all.

Biname (Blanche, Margeurite Volant) says he’s most inspired by Grignon’s novel, which tells the story of the darkly spirited miser Seraphin, played by Pierre Lebeau (Fortier, Matroni et moi); his lovely but abused wife Donalda, played by Karine Vanasse (Emporte-moi); and her lover Alexis, played by Roy Dupuis (Les Filles de Caleb, Nikita) in his first major Quebec film role in more than five years.

The all-star cast includes Remy Girard, Celine Bonnier, Benoit Briere, Julien Poulin, Pierrette Robitaille, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Normand Chouinard, Robert Brouillette, Robert Lalonde, Louise Portal and Marie Tifo.

STCVQ craft credits go to DOP Jean Lepine, art director Jean Becotte, head set decorator Josee Pilon and costume designer Michele Hamel.

Investors include Telefilm Canada, Radio-Canada, Astral Media, SODEC and AAV.

Doc East builds networking

The National Film Board’s Documentary East Studio in Montreal recently organized a ‘Meet the Programmers’ day intended to help the 80 to 90 emerging filmmakers on hand network among themselves and with invited TV programmers.

The event’s organizer and NFB special mandate producer, Germaine Ying Gee Wong, says the industry sometimes overlooks the challenges faced by young English-language filmmakers in Quebec. ‘With the changing specialty [TV] environment I think we need to do this from time to time, perhaps not every year, but maybe every two years,’ says Wong.

The NFB brought in an impressive lineup of broadcasters for the occasion, each of whom outlined both their network’s and their personal programming philosophies and objectives. That was followed by a non-pitch Q&A session.

Speakers included Rudy Buttignol, creative head, documentaries, drama and network at TVOntario and commissioning editor of the Gemini Award-winning series The View From Here; Paul de Silva, VP programming, Vision TV and One Body Mind and Spirit Channel; Judy Gladstone, executive director, Bravo!FACT and MaxFACT; Robin Johnston, CTV head of independent production, Atlantic Canada, representing the network’s VP of documentaries, Bob Culbert; Jerry McIntosh, executive producer, CBC Newsworld documentaries, which includes the Canadian indie showcase Rough Cuts; and Julie Smith, director of independent production at WTN.

Speakers from the NFB included Sally Bochner, executive producer, Documentary East, and Jacques Bensimon, the NFB’s new chairman.

The NFB operates a number of special programs supporting indie filmmakers, including the Filmmaker Assistance Program, which provides expertise and limited funds for post-production; the Aboriginal Film-making Program, aimed at encouraging high-quality work by aboriginal filmmakers from across Canada; and the Cultural Diversity, Equity and Training Program, which provides professional development and training experience for filmmakers of color.

Doc East is a production center, not a funding agency, operating offices in Montreal and Halifax.

Recent Doc East production from producer Adam Symansky (Cinema Verite: Defining the Moment) includes Promised Land, Yves Dion’s long-term portrait of refugee families in Canada, and Don McWilliams’ experimental The Exile.

Studio producer Mark Zannis’ (Colin Low’s Moving Pictures) latest projects include Darker than Black, about political refugees; a film on R&B pioneer Harry ‘The Captain’ Vann Walls; Beverly Shaffer’s adoption reunion film; Chances, a ‘Reel Diversity’ production; Great Expectations, a film about talented Quebecer’s living abroad; and a 12-part series on WWII aviators.

The 2001 Reel Diversity East competition permits one or two emerging filmmakers to direct a broadcast-quality doc of no more than one hour in length with a budget of up to $100,00. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 31. For more information go to www.nfb.ca/culturaldiversity.

All of Zoboomafoo

Tele-Quebec has acquired all 65 episodes of Zoboomafoo, Cinar’s wildlife preschool series.

The show stars the leaping lemur Zoboomafoo and series creators Martin and Chris Kratt.

‘We were seduced by [the show’s] humor, fast pace, originality and its creators’ knowledge and love of animals,’ says Alain Ergas, director of acquisitions for Tele-Quebec.

Zoboomafoo is produced in association with PBS and the Kratt Brothers Company and airs daily in Canada on CBC, TVOntario, Knowledge Network and Treehouse TV, and in the U.S. on the PBS Kids Ready to Learn service.

Cinar’s latest is Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings, the house’s second copro (following Miss Mallard Mysteries) with Shanghai Animation Film Studios.

Playing around and porn at VIFF

The eye-opening feature doc When Two Won’t Do had its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival (screenings on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1). The film offers an intimate examination of trends in open relationships. The Montreal filmmakers who developed and directed the project, Maureen Marovitch and David Finch, are also the doc’s ‘on-camera’ subjects. To further complicate things, they are also a romantic twosome, each holding totally opposing views on relationships. Marovitch says she wants an ‘open’ relationship, while Finch still believes in monogamy. Rather than just give up, this gutsy filmmaking duo embarked on a journey of discovery of non-monogamous practices.

When Two Won’t Do is produced by Galafilm in association with Picture This Productions. TVOntario, Knowledge Network and Access/Canadian Learning Television. The Canada Council for the Arts, Rogers Documentary Fund and the CTF Licence Fee Program provided funding. The project was developed with the support of SODEC.

Meantime, after seven months of difficult negotiations between producer InformAction and broadcaster Tele-Quebec, the unedited version of Marielle Nitoslawska’s Bad Girl, also in the VIFF lineup, is being screened in its original uncut version at Cinema Parallele/Ex-Centris, with a follow-up release at refurbished rep house Cinema du Parc later this month.

The $400,000 coproduction is an international doc survey of women filmmakers in the lucrative hard-core porn industry.

Some background: the filmmakers and two commissioning editors with the network, all women, carefully developed the project’s content – with approval for each stage over two full years – only to have senior management (a male) cancel the broadcast five days before it was slated to air.

Tele-Quebec has now agreed to air an uncut version (at 10:45 p.m. on Oct. 27), which features interviews with French director Catherine Breillat (Romance), X-rated director Virginie Despentes (Baise-moi) and American performance goddess Annie Sprinkle.

An English version was selected for VIFF, and producer Nathalie Barton says Distribution La Fete will make the show available in the English TV market.

Bad Girl was developed by Nitowslaska based on a concept from journalists Pascale Navarro and Nathalie Collard. The doc is an official coproduction between Barton and Iolande Cadrin-Rossignol of InformAction and Arnaud Hantute of Taxi-Brousse, Paris.

Bad Girl is distributed in Europe by Tele Images and licensed by Canal+.*