Filmmaker Paul Cowan (Westray, The Peacekeepers) is in Paris for 10 days with producers Gerry Flahive of the National Film Board and Paul Saadoun of France’s 13 Production, recreating history for the ambitious doc Paris 1919.

‘Paul’s shooting almost entirely handheld on film. We’ll be intercutting between stock footage from the period and new material [captured] with two film cameras for multiple angles, with a loose, fluid approach,’ Flahive tells Playback Daily on the phone from France. ‘It’ll have a rough and gritty feel — almost verité history, as if a documentary crew made their way into the [1919 Paris Peace Conference] and were filming.’

The $2-million doc, written by Cowan, is an adaptation of Margaret MacMillan’s book Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, a nonfiction account of the Paris Peace Conference, at which U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George and French premier Georges Clemenceau redrew the world map.

The Canada/France copro came together when Flahive and Galafilm Productions’ Arnie Gelbart partnered up with Saadoun in Toronto in 2004.

The producers opted for dramatic reconstructions — bringing to life the personal, behind-the-scenes struggles depicted by MacMillan — which Flahive considers ‘one of the strong elements of the film.’

Chalking up their three-year wait to ‘creative development and raising financing,’ Flahive explains, ‘there were limits how that [conference] could be documented. [In 1919] film was still silent and cameras weren’t allowed into the conference itself, although you’ve got amazing footage of the delegates outside, and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the end.’

Other challenges include reducing MacMillan’s comprehensive story of the six-month conference to a two-hour feature, and sorting through huge amounts of archival material.

Presale partners include ARTE in France — the first major broadcaster to come on board — followed by TVO and NHK Japan. SBS Australia and broadcasters in Belgium, Finland and Switzerland picked it up in November 2006.

‘That’s only a little over a year ago. Bringing it all together until all deals were completed took time,’ says Flahive.

Paris 1919 will be broadcast in two one-hour segments. The NFB plans to make it available on DVD as a 90-minute feature doc. It is set for late 2008.