Montreal: Leading man Roy Dupuis plays a French-Canadian musician swept up in the glory days of the Montreal jazz scene in Gilles Noel’s evocative historical drama Jack Paradis, which films over 25 days from April 22 to May 28.

Noel (Erreur sur la personne, Le Pays dans la gorge) wrote the screenplay based on an original idea by Richard Langlois. Anouk Brault of Nanouk Films and Aimee Danis of Verseau International are producing.

The story covers the period beginning in 1929 in Paradis’ youth through the wide-open era of the ’40s and ’50s, when the city played host to many American jazz legends, to the latter part of his career as a big band player, circa 1970.

Roxan Bourdelais is cast in the role of Petit Jacques and Johanne-Marie Tremblay and Benoit Dagenais play his parents. Dorothee Berryman plays a highly independent-minded aunt and Gregory Hlady is an Italian-Irish club owner and singer. Dawn Tyler Watson and Genevieve Rioux also star.

Danis says the film is filled with musical performances and the dialogue is essentially half French, half English.

DOP Sylvain Brault is originating on Super 16mm film and musical coordination is by Daniel Mercure.

Selected craft credits go to supervising producer Daniele Bussy, PM Martin Dufour, casting director Murielle Laferriere, art director Louise-Marie Beauchamps, costume designer Nicoletta Massone and sound recordist Claude Hazanavicius.

Funders on Jack Paradis, budgeted at $2.8 million, include SODEC, Telefilm Canada, the LFP, broadcasters Tele-Quebec, Super Ecran and The Movie Network and Canadian distributor K Films Amerique.

Verseau and Toronto house Alpha Nova are developing the feature film project called La Cote de sable.

Nanouk’s latest is the one-hour Historia doc La Manic from director Michel Brault and DOP Sylvain Brault.

The house, in association with Paris-based MC4 and the National Film Board, is also in advanced development on the Yukon adventure theatrical doc Le Dernier Trappeur. The film will be shot in Super 35mm under the direction of Nicolas Vanier. Major distributors attached to the $7.5-million production include Miramax in the U.S., TF1 in France and Christal Films Distribution in Canada.

A beauty pageant unlike any other

Producers Kevin Tierney of Montreal’s Park Ex Pictures and Lazlo Barna of Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions have acquired the life rights to the remarkable story of 2002’s Miss Canada, Lynsey Bennett, now in development as an MOW for CBC.

An Ottawa native, 22-year-old Bennett made headlines around the world last November when she abandoned the Miss World Pageant in Nigeria following demonstrations and outbreaks of violence aimed at stopping what was perceived as an insulting and degrading display of western immorality during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Bennett’s actions inspired other contestants to leave, forcing organizers to cancel the event in Nigeria and later move the show to London, where Miss Turkey was the ultimate winner. When Bennett returned home, she learned she had been ‘fired’ as Miss Canada for reasons that remain a mystery, says Tierney.

Writers of the project will be announced shortly, with a summer 2004 shoot envisioned, says Tierney.

The Miss Canada project marks the second collaboration between Park Ex and Barna-Alper, following their happy partnership on the CTV MOW Choice: The Henry Morgentaler Story, filmed on location in Montreal late last fall under the direction of John L’Ecuyer.

Vallee, Cote get C.R.A.Z.Y.

Cirrus Communications producers Pierre Even and Jacques Blain are in financing for a summer shoot on a new Jean-Marc Vallee feature film project called C.R.A.Z.Y., a touchingly surreal, father-and-son story told over several decades, starring Michel Cote and scripted by Vallee and Francois Boulay.

Vallee’s filmography includes the hit box-office thriller La Liste Noire, distributed by Astral Films, the Genie Award-winning short Les fleurs magiques, Les mots magiques, the HBO anthology series Strangers and the surreal Wild West grunge feature Los Locos (1997), starring Mario Van Peebles and produced by Propaganda Films/PolyGram.

Cirrus will coproduce with Vallee’s Crazyfilms. Distributor TVA Films is on board.

Cirque launches int’l series

Cirque du Soleil executive Daniel Lamarre has announced the start of principal photography on a 13 one-hour multi-format performance series presold to Radio-Canada and CBC as well as broadcasters in the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan.

In a speech to the Canadian Club in Montreal, Lamarre said the as-yet-untitled series breaks the traditional TV mold through a non-verbal mix of variety and circus performance, sitcom and dramatic elements.

The show is being shot at the Cite du Cinema studios over the next four months under the direction of Pierre Seguin (La Petite Vie) and features more than 270 performers backed by a production crew of close to 150, adds Lamarre, former CEO of Groupe TVA.

Since its launch in 1984 with 73 employees, Cirque du Soleil has become a multi-billion-dollar multinational employing 2,500 worldwide. It operates eight stage shows in the U.S. (in Florida and Las Vegas) and is negotiating three new permanent installations in New York, London and Tokyo. The Cirque has commissioned new live performance shows from Rene-Richard Cyr (Zumanity), Varekai creator Dominic Champagne and O creator and filmmaker Robert Lepage.

The company’s multimedia production division, Cirque du Soleil Images, is headed by VP Vincent Gagne.

In other news, CIBC and the Cirque have signed a three-year sponsorship agreement for a series of cross-Canada tours.

Nathalie Synnett doc at Ex-Centris

INIS screenwriting alumna and East Coast director Nathalie Synnett’s first feature, the documentary Faut-tu que j’tue mon pere?, opens at Ex-Centis May 9. Produced by Andre Mailly of Productions Prise XIII, the film delves deep into the personal stories of six young adults, all of whom hail from the Gaspe Peninsula region. Synnett’s film won two Rendez-Vous du Cinema Quebecois 2003 awards, the Prix Pierre et Yolande Perrault prize for most promising young documentarian and the Prix Rendez-vous/OFQJ.