Montreal: After a year of trans-Atlantic negotiations, Productions La Fete has signed a coproduction and distribution pact with Pathe Television of Paris worth a potential $50 million in production over the next five years.

La Fete president and ceo Rock Demers says the production aspect of the deal covers two feature films for 1994, five films in La Fete’s Tales for All/Contes pour tous children’s anthology, and four tv series, two aimed at adults and two at the international children’s market.

‘Europe is very important for a Quebec producer who can work in both French and English,’ says the veteran producer. ‘That’s not to say we won’t develop a partnership with an American company. In fact, we are talking to people in the u.s. at the moment.’

Pathe Television, headed by president/director-general Janine Langlois-Glandier, is a subsidiary of Societe Pathe, an integrated exhibition, distribution and production holding company.

‘In order to fulfill our commitment with Pathe, we will have to go public one way or another,’ says Demers. ‘We had plans to go public this summer, but with the general political and economic climate as it is, we think it might be better to wait until after an election.’

Mergers are also a possibility, he says.

On the distribution side, where the emphasis is likely to be on home video and tv merchandizing, Pathe has acquired all media rights in France to La Fete’s library, including 15 completed features in The Tales for All series, Micheline Lanctot’s latest feature, La vie d’un heros, the five-and-a-half-hour documentary series Pierre Elliott Trudeau:Memoirs, the feature-length documentary Why Havel?, and the refurbished children’s film Le Martien. Pathe’s initial tv sale on behalf of La Fete will take place this fall, says Demers.

La Fete is a minority investor no less than 20% in Charles Pathe, a Pathe feature film based on the life of the legendary film pioneer who founded Pathe in 1895. Shooting in Europe starts June 20.

In turn, Pathe will make a matching minority investment in a La Fete feature film, to be shot later this summer.

The two companies will coproduce five Tales for All features in the next three years. Demers says he intends to shoot five more films in the anthology – 16 to 18 are in advanced stages of development – with foreign partners other than Pathe.

As for the TV series coproductions, Demers says they’ll be shot over the next five years with input from both sides. But Demers says he has four projects ready to go.

In the international children’s market, very few Canadian producers can match La Fete’s 10-year international sales record.

Most of the films in the Tales for All series, launched in 1984, have been sold to more than 70 countries, while the best sellers – The Dog Who Stopped the War, The Peanut Butter Solution, The Young Magician, The Great Land of Small and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller – have each chalked up sales to 90-plus countries and territories.

In the u.s. market, three La Fete features have been released in theaters, seven in the home video market and 10 to television – Disney Channel and hbo.

The latest entry in the series is Michael Rubbo’s The Return of Tommy Tricker.

La Fete has a 17% share in Showcase, the new all-drama specialty channel majority controlled by Toronto-based Alliance Communications.

La Fete management includes Andre Luc Fragano, vice-president finance and president of Editions La Fete, a merchandizing and publishing division, and producer Kevin Tierney, vice-president, development and marketing and president of Distributions La Fete, a recently created distribution division which will be activated this fall. It will specialize in Canadian and international children’s films.