Despite at one time being hailed the best-ever Canadian film, Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine will get a Quebec-only DVD release of just 2,500 to 3,000 units on Nov. 7 from Christal Films. Marketing will selectively target video shops in la belle province. Special features include A Chairy Tale, a 10-minute short Jutra did with animator Norman McLaren.

‘We have the rights to Canada, but our network [of retailers and rental houses] is in Quebec,’ says Christine Saucerotte, director of video for Christal, adding that partner Maple Pictures, which distributes some of the same titles in English Canada, wasn’t interested in taking on the Jutra film. ‘If we get some demand from the rest of Canada, we’ll definitely provide them with [units], but we’re not set up here to distribute to more than Quebec.’

The National Film Board drama – set on Christmas Eve in a small Quebec mining town in the 1940s – won three Canadian Film Awards in 1971 (for best pic, director and lead actor), a National Society of Film Critics Award in the U.S. in 1973, and was crowned best Canuck film in a 1993 Toronto International Film Festival poll.

Jutra’s masterwork was restored by the NFB in the mid-’90s under the supervision of cinematographer Michel Brault. It first appeared on DVD in 2002 in a two-disc set from the NFB that included Jutra: An Unfinished Story, a feature-length doc that won’t be part of Christal’s release. Saucerotte says Christal asked the NFB for all the supplements it had, but the decision to limit the home video rollout to amazon.ca in English Canada was dictated by market demand.

‘What kind of technique could we use to market Mon Oncle Antoine in, say, Vancouver?’ she says. ‘Big video clubs don’t care about [these films]. People just rent the stupidest comedies and B action movies. Movies like La vie avec mon père and L’Audition didn’t rent better than Cheaper by the Dozen 4 or 5.’

Saucerotte says that big box chains Wal-Mart and Future Shop would take Mon Oncle, but they wouldn’t advertise it.

‘The market [for them] is Les Boys or a Harrison Ford movie,’ she admits. ‘But that’s okay. We know that a lot of people will buy it because they want to have it in their collection on DVD.’

Also…

* Season 3 of Corner Gas debuted on the Nielsen VideoScan charts at a respectable number nine for the week ending Oct. 8, while director Charles Binamé’s biopic of Maurice Richard, The Rocket, held strong at number 15, marking its third week in the top 20.

* On Nov. 14 Maple Pictures will street 15,000 units of Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, a documentary on the legendary Canuck poet, novelist and singer, which screened at TIFF in 2005.

* This is Daniel Cook debuts on DVD with This is Daniel Cook Celebrating the Holidays from Corus Entertainment’s Treehouse Presents label. The 70-minute DVD will be supported by the launch of eight books.