Montreal: Apparently a first in the rich annals of Quebec tv history, Productions sda is reviving the classic early ’60s Radio-Canada teleroman Sous le Signe du Lion. Originally written by the late Francoise Loranger (La Dame de Cents Ans) the series was praised as one of the best crafted and most intense of its era (1961-62), and because of its controversial themes, adultery and euthanasia, it had to be broadcast as late as 10:30 p.m.

In its remade version the series consists of 16 one-hour episodes from writer Helene Pedneault and tells the story of a tyrannical, self-made millionaire patriarch and a family with more than its share of secrets.

Jacques Godin plays the patriarch, Jeremie Martin, and Danielle Proulx is his mistress and the household servant. Other leading roles go to Suzanne Clement, Jacques Lussier, Eric Cabana, Alexis Martin, Denys Paris, Sylvie Legault, James Hyndman, Jean Besre, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Gabriel Sabourin, Claude Pregent, Roger Leger, Nathalie Naubert, in flashbacks as the tyrant’s deceased wife, and veteran actor Huguette Oligny.

The three-camera digital video shoot is underway at Studio Lasalle for 55 days, with about a third of the taping, a high percentage for a teleroman, done on location. According to producer Claude Desorcy, the actors do a full dress and decor rehearsal one week then shoot the next. Maude Martin and Yvon Trudel are the directors. Andre Picard is sda’s exec producer.

Sous le Signe du Lion is budgeted at $3 million with funding from Telefilm Canada, sodec, r-c, the ctcpf and both federal and Quebec tax credits. Production wraps at the end of July with a premiere set for September on r-c.

-Tarzan kicks off AMC marathon

U.S. cable channel American Movie Classics, delivered to over 60 million homes, has purchased the one-hour InformAction documentary Investigating Tarzan. Sold to amc by Montreal exporter Mediamax International, now a part of La Fete Group, the production premiered in early June as the opening piece of a marathon 32-film Tarzan retrospective.

The film was directed by Alain d’Aix and produced by Nathalie Barton and explores the myth of Tarzan and his fascinating social evolution since first appearing in the 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs short story. The loin-cloth-clad king went on to launch 90 books, 40 movies, 350 radio serials, three tv series, countless Web sites, a city (Tarzana), a flotilla load of merchandising, and the latest, next month’s animated Disney feature George of the Jungle.

Investigating Tarzan scored great reviews when it premiered on Canal D this spring.

Mediamax vp and partner Annick De Vries says she probably could have sold the show to hbo, but amc was so keen they bought it based only on the promo. amc acquired an exclusive five-year cable run for somewhere in the $130,000 range.

So it seems the future for docs of all kinds is brighter than ever.

Not only are there a record number of documentaries being funded by Telefilm Canada, producer Barton says Tele-Quebec has established a new one-hour primetime docs window for next fall while Radio-Canada recently created a one-hour spring/summer showcase called Zoom.

InformAction has five one-hour docs in advanced stages of development: two pov entries on the future of aging, a Carlos Ferrand project called Visionairies on the potential of mankind in the future, an examination of Castro’s Cuban end game from director Jean Daniel Lafond entitled Fidel’s Last Cigar and the latest Alain d’Aix project, All They Need Is Words (working title), a film on communications between people and animals.

-Tana’s Reve de J’e

In Paul Tana’s (Caffe Italia, La Sarrasine) fourth feature, Le Reve de J’e (working title), actor Tony Nardi plays a rich Italian patriarch who commissions a video to mark the 25th anniversary of his successful construction company. Widowed, with a mentally handicapped son, J’e’s greatest hope is to pass on his business to daughter Bennie who in turn is dismayed by her father’s obsessive jealousy.

On a night of deep solitude, as Bennie up and disappears with an improbable immigrant artist, J’e dreams of oranges and uprooted trees, a foreboding premonition announcing an unexpected arrival and his own death.

Le Reve de J’e wraps this week after 25 days of 35mm filming and is being produced by acpav’s Marc Daigle and Bernadette Payeur on a budget of just under $2 million. Hugolin Chevrette plays the disabled son and Michele-Barbara Pelletier (La Comtesse de Baton Rouge) plays Bennie. Mario Hervieux is the art director and Michel Caron is the cinematographer.

acpav and director Serge Giguere are also shooting the five-part half-hour doc series Les Artisans du cinema, a portrait of film craftspeople set for broadcast on Tele-Quebec in February 1998.

Feature films in development at acpav include Bernard Emond’s La Femme qui boit and Zelda Zyk, a comedic drama from writer Josee Frechette (C’Etait le 12 du 12 et ChiliŠ).

Payeur says there’s still a desire to see Pierre Falardeau’s 15 fevrier 1839 go forward, at least in some quarters, but the production ‘remains eternally suspended,’ with about half the $2.7 million financing ­ the sodec and Quebec tax credit contributions ­ in place.

-Sanjines tribute

One of Bolivia’s great social activist filmmakers Jorge Sanjines is visiting Montreal as a guest of Presence Autochtone, a film, video and cultural festival dedicated to the world’s aboriginal peoples. An expanded seventh edition runs June 16-23.

Sanjines, 61, is the subject of an eight-film festival retrospective tracing close to 50 years of his film career, from the founding of a documentary school at the time of the nationalist revolution of the early 1950s to his appointment as director of l’Institut national du cinema bolivien in 1965.

Sanjines’ filmography includes Para Recibir er canto des los Pajaros (1995), the festival’s opening night film; La Nacion clandestina (1987), a powerful story of the political betrayal and subsequent rejection of a young peasant man who leaves the countryside for the city; La bandera del amanecer (1983); and Bolivia avanza, a doc series produced in 1964.

Selected program highlights include two James Cullingham documentaries, We Have Such Things Here (1997), an examination of the segregation systems of Canadian Indian reserves and apartheid in South Africa, and Duncan Campbell Scott, The P’et and the Indians, a historical portrait of the ‘p’et’ and notorious head of Canada’s Indian Affairs Department.

Cullingham’s films are distributed by the National Film Board and produced by Tamarack Films.

The program also includes Authur Lamothe’s Le Silence des Fusils (1996), produced by Rock Demers and La Fete; Greg Coyes’ No Turning Back (1996), a documentary on the work of the Erasmus-Dusseault Royal Commission produced by the nfb and narrated by Tina Keeper; Louise De Grosbois’ Opticiwan (1997), a Les Films du Tricycle film on the great Saguenay floods as recounted in ancestral legend; and two docs from u.s. filmmaker Sandra Sunrising Osawa, Pepper’s Pow-Wow (1995), a portrait of Cree jazz great Jim Pepper, and Lighting the 7th Fire (1994), an examination of the Wisconsin Chippewas’ struggle to hold on to traditional fishing rights.

Presence Autochtone ’97 is organized by Montreal publisher Terres en Vues in association with the Montagnais Betsiamites Band Council, Canadian Heritage, the Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs and the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications, with funding from sodec and Telefilm Canada.

All screenings take place at the downtown Cinema nfb.

-Upcoming Quebec action

The stcvq, Quebec’s technicians union, and the Directors Guild of Canada-Quebec Branch are reporting as many as a dozen new production starts in the weeks ahead including the 30 half-hour Telescene Film Group teen sitcom Student Bodies, shooting from June 17 to the end of August; the Paramount Pictures blockbuster Snakes Eyes from director Brian DePalma, with producers Louis Stroller and DePalma scheduled to begin principal photography Aug. 11; and the Doug Jackson/Allegro Films thriller Random Encounter, producer Bob Wertheimer, slated to shoot four weeks starting June 19.

Also on tap are the Productions La Fete tv drama anthology More Tales of the City, with Pierre Gang directing and Suzanne Girard and Kevin Tierney producing, and the Max Films feature Simone en 1997, director Denis Villeneuve (Cosmos), producer Roger Frappier.

Other projects include The Blouse Man from actor Dustin Hoffman’s New York production company, with Josette Perrotta the supervising producer, Jay Cohen producing and Tony Goldwyn directing; l.a.-based Bluster Productions’ musical Barney’s Great Adventure, slated to shoot here July 14 to Sept. 19 with Steven Gomer directing and Martha Chang producing; and the Taurus 7 Film Corp. feature The Arrival ii, director Kevin Tenney, producers Claudio Castravelli and Jean-Guy Despres.

Other film shoots are also on the horizon: Kingsborough Greenlight Pictures features Out of Control and Treasure Island; Francois Bouvier’s Quai #1 from Productions sda, the France/ Canada miniseries Une Voix en Or from Max Films Television and the Shostak Rossner Productions feature Ultimate Weapon starring Hulk Hogan, with John Strong directing.

In the first half of June, the stcvq had an unprecedented 15 crews in action. ‘It looks like it will continue strong through to the fall,’ says Fortner Anderson, the dgc’s Quebec business agent.