Montreal: A teenager and friends are transported 300 years back in time to an exotic tropical island in Matusalem II: Le Dernier des Beauchesne, a $4.2 million family adventure sequel from director/writer Roger Cantin. The Montreal leg of the 35-day shoot wraps March 22, with a 10-day pickup in Cuba starting April 7. Producers are Jacques Bonin and Claude Veillet of Films Vision 4.

Cantin has emerged as a leading name in French-language family films, a diminishing category in recent years. The first Matusalem movie ranked second overall in Canada in 1993, earning $1.2 million at the box office.

The director’s filmography includes the mystery comedies L’Assassin jouait du trombone (1991) and La Vengeance de la femme en noir (1996) and the Andre Melancon-directed Golden Reel winner La Geurre des Tuques (1984), which Cantin cowrote for Les Productions La Fete producer Rock Demers.

Commenting on Matusalem ii, Bonin says there ‘was no free ride at Telefilm Canada,’ which demanded a number of rewrites before investing a cool $2 million via three separate envelopes. Bonin says Vision Four’s corporate mission is ‘to produce films that entertain and find an audience.’

In the sequel, the tween crowd from the first movie are now in their mid-teens as they prepare to welcome exchange students from France on a cultural visit. This time birthday boy Olivier and friends land on a tropical island, circa 1697. Fun, danger and adventure follow, but will the kids find their way back home?

Much of the original cast has returned. Marc Labreche is ‘le dernier des Beauchesnes,’ a French school teacher who moonlights as a treasurer-hunting obsessive. Raymond Cloutier plays the ne’er-do-well pirate El Diablo, and Emile Proulx-Cloutier plays Olivier, the story’s central character. Steve Gendron, Marie-France Monette, Germain Houde, Magali Geveart and Patricia Perez round out the principal cast.

Selected craft credits go to dop Eric Cayla, who is shooting on Fuji 35mm film stock, production designer Normand Sarrazin, pm Sylvie Roy, costume designer Francesca Chamberland, sound recordist Dominique Chartrand, mechanical f/x specialist Ryal Cosgrove and picture editor Richard Comeau. Multimontage is handling post. AstralTech is providing lab services.

Investors include Telefilm, sodec, the Quebec cultural funding agency, both tax credits, pay-tv movie channel Super Ecran and Coscient/Astral Distribution, which has world rights.

The film is slated for a wide-screen release throughout Quebec in time for the busy Christmas season.

-Paul-Hus does CineMart

Amerique Film producer Martin Paul-Hus says there’s a world of quality projects seeking Canadian partners and investors following exploratory trips to the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival in November and CineMart, the five-day market exchange program attached to the Rotterdam Film Festival in early February.

Paul-Hus has produced five smaller-budget French-language features since the late 1980s, often with first-time directors. Now he says he’s looking to ‘take a minority equity position’ in international projects.

CineMart produces an annual catalogue of 50 likely projects (typically budgeted at us$3 million or less) in search of buyers, coproducers, broadcasters and distributors.

The producer says he has at least three English-language projects in development with far-flung partners in Belgium, France, the u.s., England and Zimbabwe.

The Captain is a us$2 million mow about a female Canadian journalist who travels to war-torn Rwanda to investigate the genocide. A second project is a feature film romance based on The Tattooed Map, a novel by Canadian author Barbara Hogdson. Paul-Hus is also looking at a tv doc series proposal examining the historic culture and riches of Africa.

One of the city’s more active young producers, Paul-Hus’ latest features are Isabelle Poissant’s La Fabrication d’un meutrier (1996), distributed by Malofilm Distribution, and Isabelle Hayeur’s La Bete de foire (1993), distributed by Cinema Libre.

– B.C.’s Kendall shoots Kayla

Filming started Feb. 26 and goes for 30 days to April 9 on Kayla, a Productions Tele-Action family feature film drama from Vancouver director Nicholas Kendall (Cadillac Girls). Producers are Claudio Luca and Colin Neale, former National Film Board exec producer. Peter Behrens is the screenwriter.

Set in the Eastern Townships (l’Estrie) in the 1920s, Kayla is the story of 12-year-old Sam played by Tod Fennell (Lassie, The Kid). The imaginative but disturbed Sam refuses to accept the death of his famous Arctic explorer father even when his mom, played by Bronwen Booth, remarries a kind country doctor in the form of actor Henry Czerny.

Sam strikes up a friendship with Jaynie, a down-to-earth country girl played by Meredith Henderson (The Adventures of Shirley Holmes). Actor Brian Dooley plays Jaynie’s widower dad.

Inspired by his dad’s memory, Sam and Jaynie rescue Kayla (the real-life dog Alaska) from cruel neighbors and set off on a harrowing dog-sled adventure where they learn the meaning of friendship and family.

The stcvq crew includes dop John Berrie, production designer Stephane Roy, costumier Nicoletta Massone, pm Carole Mondello and first ad Anne Murphy.

Funding and presale sources for the $2.8 million shoot include Telefilm Canada, distributor Film Tonic, WIC Television and Beta Taurus, which has certain European rights.

Word on the street has it Tele-Action’s $4 million miniseries Les Orphelins de Duplessis, directed by Johanne Pregent from a Jacques Savoie screenplay, is first-rate primetime drama. The four-hour miniseries airs on Radio-Canada March 16 and 23.

Yet another historical story of abused children warded in a religious institution, the producers of The Boys of St. Vincent decided to play it safe this time, completely shutting down the set during production.

-The Sleep Room begins

One of the season’s major film shoots has begun principal photography, the four-hour Zukerman/Cinar Films miniseries The Sleep Room. Filming opened in Montreal Feb. 24, with Anne Wheeler (The War Between Us) directing a Bruce Smith screenplay adaptation of the Governor General award-winning book by Anne Collins.

The production chronicles the 25-year legacy of secret funding of psychiatric experiments, including the use of lsd and high-voltage shock therapy, and the subsequent legal battle against a range of entrenched authorities including the cia.

The $10 million shoot reunites Toronto producer Bernard Zukerman and Cinar Films exec producers Micheline Charest and Ron Weinberg, the team behind the landmark Million Dollar Babies miniseries, a ratings hit on both cbs and cbc. Irene Litinsky is the supervising producer.

Leads include Donald Moffat (The Evening Star), Leon Pownall as Dr. Ewen Cameron, Marina Orsini, Macha Grenon, Eric Peterson and France Castel. The Sleep Room wraps in early May and will be broadcast in Canada on cbc and Radio-Canada. Foreign sales will be through Cinar.