Montreal: Filming goes over 27 days through Feb. 20, most of it after dark, on Erik Canuel’s second feature film, the romantic comedy Nez Rouge.

The film stars Patrick Huard, Michele Barbara Pelletier and Pierre Lebeau and is being produced on a budget of $3.8 million by Jacques Bonin and Claude Veillet of Films Vision 4. Sylvie Pilon and Sylvie Desrosiers are the screenwriters.

In a story where goodwill overcomes personal vengeance, the Pelletier and Huard characters meet as ‘volunteers’ with Operation Nez Rouge, a long-standing prevention program aimed at curtailing drinking and driving. Huard’s Felix, a literary critic, promptly falls for Pelletier’s Celine, a novelist, but Felix somehow forgets Celine’s first published work was the object of one of his particularly vicious writeups.

Veillet says Nez Rouge will get the local ‘blockbuster’ treatment, with an anticipated Christmas ’03 release of up to 100 screens by Christal Films Distribution. Funding comes from Telefilm Canada, SODEC and Radio-Canada.

Assurances generales des caisses Desjardins, an Operation Nez Rouge sponsor for 19 years, will be a big part of the release promotion. The Caisse also invested about $100,000 directly in the production, says senior VP distribution Michel Verreault.

DOP Bernard Couture (Largo Winch) is shooting on 35mm and the film will post in HD at Technicolor Creative Services – Montreal. Jean Becotte is the art director, Francesca Chamberland is costume designer and Dominique Chartrand is the sound recordist. Jean-Francois Bergeron is editing at Splice.

Canuel (La loi du cochon, Seriously Weird) is also slated to direct the Bloom Films/Christal Films thriller Le Tunnel, starring Michel Cote and Jean Lapointe, later this spring.

Upcoming Films Vision 4 feature action for fall ’03 and winter ’04 includes L’Incomparable Mlle. C. with director Richard Ciupka (La Mysterieuse mademoiselle C., Le Dernier souffle) and the $6.5-million historical epic Le Survenant with director Louis Choquette.

In kids TV, associated television company Telefiction and producers Carmen Bourassa (Cornemuse.com) and Lucie Veillet are delivering 80 half-hours of the SRC tween series Ayoye! and 25 15-minute episodes of Dominique raconte, a new SRC show for three- to eight-year-olds featuring Dominique Demers.

Redeeming tale of Lesra Martin

The National Film Board documentary The Journey of Lesra Martin travels across Canada during a six-city tour marking February’s Black History Month.

Written and directed by Cheryl Foggo, the 46-minute film tells the inspiring story of Lesra Martin, a poor illiterate kid who is rescued from the violent inner-city streets of a Brooklyn slum and given a fresh start in Canada. Martin later becomes a hero, helping to bring justice to wrongfully imprisoned American boxer Rubin ‘The Hurricane’ Carter. Today, Martin is a lawyer and motivational speaker with international engagements.

Tour dates include Toronto (Jan. 28), Montreal (Feb. 5-6 at the NFB Cinema) and Vancouver (Feb. 24 at Pacific Cinematheque). Three additional dates, Edmonton (Feb. 4), Winnipeg (Feb. 19) and Halifax (Feb. 27), are programmed as part of the NFB Film Club, a free public screening and discussion series.

Selwyn Jacob produced The Journey of Lesra Martin for the board.

Big-screen tiger tale from Primesco

Primesco’s latest giant-screen production is India – Kingdom of the Tiger, a visually stunning portrait of the majestic Bengal tiger. The 40-minute film tells the story of hunter-turned-conservationist Jim Corbett and is set against the richness and beauty of the Indian subcontinent.

The film was produced on a budget of $7 million by Montreal’s Primesco and the National Wildlife Federation, based in Reston, VA, with support from the Export Development Corp. It was directed by Bruce Neibaur (Mysteries of Egypt) and shot on 70mm Kodak film over 17 weeks on location throughout India last year.

Goulam Amarsy and Afsana Amarsy produced for Primesco. Christopher N. Palmer exec produced for National Wildlife Productions and Keero Singh Birla was the film’s writer/line producer. Matthew Williams was the shoot’s principal DOP and Jean-Marie Drot did the picture edit. Digital F/X contributions are from Big Bang F/X Animation and Kellikon.

Canadian actor Christopher Heyerdahl stars as Corbett.

Primesco distribution manager Andrea Stokes says Kingdom of the Tiger has been leased (for periods ranging from six to 12 months) to more than 40 theatres worldwide, including the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, QC, Ontario Place in Toronto, the British Film Institute in London, the BMW Pavilion IMAX in Capetown, SA, Discovery IMAX in Berlin and The Science Museum in Boston.

Kingdom of the Tiger is the first in a new series of Primesco giant-screen destination films, says Amarsy. Amarsy’s strategy is to wed production to popular tourist destinations and the construction of new IMAX venues. The destination-development slate includes Prague – Symphony in Stone and Paris – I Love You. A third project, America, America, will be produced in association with Life Magazine.

While Primesco’s large-format films are financed through pre-lease advances from exhibitors and benefit from a higher production tax credit than most Canadian productions (combined federal and Quebec programs make up about 28% of the budget), Amarsy says Telefilm Canada has no programs for IMAX films. ‘IMAX is an entirely Canadian invention, and we should be supported in a big way by the Canadian government agencies,’ he says.

Primesco has five other large-format films in its library: SuperSpeedway, directed by Stephen Low and seen by more than five million worldwide; Wolves, directed by David Douglas; Lost Worlds: Life in the Balance, directed by NYC filmmaker Bayley Silleck and narrated by Harrison Ford; Bears, produced in association with NWF and Sudbury’s Science North and directed by David Lickley (Shooting Star, Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees); and the Discovery Pictures film Wildfire: Feel the Heat.

Harmonium rocks TQS

The story of Harmonium, one of the coolest Quebec bands in the heady 1970s, has been dramatized in a new Zone 3 four-hour miniseries licensed by Television Quatre Saisons. Martin Desgagne, Olivier Aubin and Tobie Pelletier play band members Serge Fiori, Michel Normandeau and Louis Valois, respectively. Most of the shooting was done in August and September under the direction of Stefan Miljevic. Andree Pelletier wrote the screenplay. Andre Chamberland was the DOP and Louise Gendron produced for Zone 3.

Harmonium disbanded and disappeared just as the band was set for international success. But they were a genuine sensation at home, driving lit-up SRO crowds completely wild with tuneful melodies and trippy lyrics.

TQS opens with Harmonium en coulisses, a one-hour ‘making of’on Feb. 13.