latest Girard, Arcand pictures

montreal: Alliance Releasing president Victor Loewy reports the company has signed a worldwide distribution deal for director Francois Girard’s next feature film, Fantome d’Amerique. The $2.7 million romance/thriller is set against the machinations of the international drug trade and is being produced by Bruno Jobin and Barbara Schrier of Montreal’s Velvet Camera.

The deal with Girard and company is the second major announcement from Loewy in recent weeks, following news that Alliance will coproduce and distribute Denys Arcand’s next English-language film. It’s part of the company’s ongoing program to showcase and support the rather limited number of Canadian film talents with export potential, names like Arcand, Atom Egoyan, Jean-Claude Lauzon and Jean Beaudin, says Pierre Brousseau, Alliance’s vice-president, marketing and development.

Written by Girard (Cargo, Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould), Fantome d’Amerique is creating a lot of heat here among actors vying for the film’s truly challenging lead roles.

The story centers on an everyday kind of guy who meets a young woman in an airport and has a passionate affair only to find himself deeply involved in the rich and deadly world of drug trafficking and heroin addiction.

The film will be cast in early 1994 and will be shot, beginning May 1, in Montreal, Vancouver, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Producer Schrier was in Argentina scouting locations in mid-December.

Girard is currently editing some 45 hours of concert and tour footage for a 90-minute documentary chronicling British rock star Peter Gabriel’s recent Secret World Tour. Another Quebec talent, theater director Robert Lepage, served as production designer on the Gabriel tour. The film is being produced by pmi, the London, Eng.-based production arm of record giant emi.

And finally, word from Europe is that 1,300 attended a gala screening in Rome for Girard’s Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould. The event was organized by the Venice Biennale and the Philharmonic Society of Rome.

Action at Tele-Action

in the suitable for coproduction department, there are a number of interesting film and television projects in development at Productions Tele-Action.

President Claudio Luca says he’s looking for the right coproducer for both The Italians, a four-hour, $4.5 million miniseries proposal, and Undercover, a 13-hour tv series budgeted in the $10 million range.

Penned by playwright/actor Vittorio Rossi (Urban Angel), The Italians is a saga of three generations of immigrants as seen through the eyes of a writer. As for Undercover, the screenplay is from Montreal writer Gerry Wexler and is based on a novel of the same name by Robin Rowland and James Dubro.

Luca, who’s teamed up with executive producer Colin Neale (Company of Strangers, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance) on Undercover, says the series will be shot in the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and the u.s. It’s set in the period from 1910 to 1950 and tells the story of Frank Zaneth, the first ‘professional’ undercover operative in the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Apparently, he was a very short man, from Italy, hired precisely because he didn’t look like one of those tall British Mountie types.

Oui, hello…

busy Quebec Film Commissioner France Nadeau says her office is now handling as many as 10 inquiries a week from foreign producers.

1993 was certainly a better year than ’92. Five American productions were shot in Quebec in ’93. They are: Pat O’Connor’s Zelda, where Montreal was used to recreate New York and Paris in the 1920s, produced by Steve Saeta for Turner Network Television; Alan Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker and the Roundtable, produced by Robert Altman and Scott Bushnell; Indian Warrior, shot in studio in Montreal, in Rawdon, Que. and in Nova Scotia (the film is set in 17th century England and New England) and produced by Don Carmody for Walt Disney Pictures; John Flynn’s Brainscan, an action/adventure flick set in contemporary u.s. and produced by Michel Roy for Columbia Pictures; and Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s For Love Alone, a cbs mow set in Prague, New York, London, Valle d’Isere (France) and Aspen. It used 50 locations in Montreal and Mont-Tremblant and was produced by Michael Gallant for RHI Entertainment.

A $6 million summertime sizzler

a compelling historical drama is in the works at Productions Grand Nord Quebec, where producer Ian McLaren is developing the story of Betsy Bell & Mary Gray, a $6 million Canada/Scotland feature film coproduction with participation from French and German partners.

Scripted by Maria MacDonell, the film’s origin goes back to a popular ballad about the loves and destinies of two young women who escape the plague of 1645. A brief synopsis describes the picture as ‘a story of figures in a landscape, determined not to be conquered by its vastness and hostility… and a story of the disintegration of a society and a man whom both women love.’

Slated for the leading roles are Mary Stuart Masterson, Tom Conti, David McCallum and Hannah Gordon. Alex McCall will produce, Chris Butterfield is the executive producer and McLaren, Jorg Bundschuh and Joel Frage are the producers.

Coproduction partners are Armac Films, Glasgow, Kickfilm & Fernsehproduktions, Munich, and Artcam International, Paris.

McLaren’s most recent production, The Making of a Dancer (Le Jeune homme et la danse), aired on cbc’s Adrienne Clarkson Presents in November and is slated for Radio-Canada’s Les Beaux Dimanches in the near future.

Betsy Bell & Mary Gray will be shot in June and July of 1994.