La Fête is a privately owned company involved in the development, production and distribution of live-action feature films, documentaries and television programming. Its non-violent children and family films enjoy a worldwide reputation for exceptional quality. Many of these films were produced in cooperation with foreign partners on several continents, from Kratky Films (Czech Republic) to China Films (PRC), from Channel 4 (UK) and Pathé (France) to Showtime and Hallmark (US).

Founded in 1980 by Rock Demers, La Fête initially set out to produce nine films for family audiences. The huge success of these early films, produced under the umbrella title of “Tales for All”, in the tradition of the whimsical 1967 film The Christmas Martian, led to the expansion of the original project to twelve, then fifteen films. The sixteenth film in the collection, Dancing on the Moon, was released in 1998. The Hidden Fortress was released in 2001, Regina in 2002, My

Little Devil and Summer with the Ghosts were released in 2003. Daniel and the Superdogs, presently in post-production, will be released in the spring of 2004. Six other titles are slated for production over the next four years.

Several titles in the “Tales for All” collection have gone on to become family classics, including The Dog Who Stopped the War and Tadpole and the Whale, both winners of the Golden Reel Award for the highest Canadian box office gross in their year in release. There has also been wide acclaim for titles such as Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller, and Bach and Broccoli, which was cited by UNESCO in 1994 as a movie that all children could show their parents. The film Vincent and Me, shown on American television in 1992, won an Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Special.

Since 1988, several international film festivals have organized retrospectives of the “Tales for All”, which have earned La Fête more than 180 awards all over the world. The “Tales For All” collection also includes: The Peanut Butter Solution, The Young Magician, The Great Land of the Small, Summer of the Colt, Bye Bye Red Riding Hood, The Case of the Witch Who Wasn’t, Reach for the Sky, The Clean Machine, The Flying Sneaker and The Return of Tommy Tricker.

The success of “Tales for All” led to the publication of the original stories, 500,000 copies of which have been sold in Canada alone. All book titles are in print and continue to sell, year in and year out and are now being translated in other languages.

La Fête subsequently began diversifying its activities in the 1990s, producing television documentaries like Why Havel? directed by Vojtech Jasny with Milos Forman, as well as Pierre Elliott Trudeau : Memoirs, a five-and-a-half hour TV series which won the Prix Gémeaux for the Best Documentary Series in 1994.

Thanks to its “Tales For All” and various other productions, like The Song Spinner (1996) and Whiskers (1997), and ambitious projects like Armistead Maupin’s More Tales of the City (1997) produced in association with Britain’s Channel 4, Showtime and Hallmark, Bonanno: A Godfather’s Story (1998-1999) produced in association with Showtime, P.T. Barnum co-produced with Hallmark and Nuremberg (1999-2000), a co-production with Atlantis-Alliance for the Turner Network, La Fête has garnered much success and an enviable network of contacts and alliances around the world.

La Fête also produced Gold, a 10 x 1-hour prime time drama television series starring Marina Orsini and Karl Pruner, Vampire High, a 26 x half-hour television series for youth, Undying Love, winner of the Gemini for Best Historical Documentary 2003, Madame Brouette, winner of the Silver Bear Award for Best Music at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2003, Moving Sands, a one-hour TV documentary by Philippe Baylaucq, Coffee, a 3 x 1-hour TV documentary mini-series and My Brand New Life, a 13 x half-hour television series for youth.

In 2001 La Fête expanded its field of activities to include the new media of the world-wide web. iZzigo.com was created to give children 6 to 12 years of age an opportunity to learn about what happens in front of and behind the camera. iZzigo has since become the favourite website in Quebec for children interested in the world of cinema.

La Fête sells its own products internationally and distributes a vast array of works produced by third parties, in Canada and abroad, with titles totalling 500 hours in its export catalogue.

To date, La Fête has produced twenty-five feature films, some fifty hours of documentaries and six prime time TV drama series for networks around the world along with its first animation series: Turtle Island (26 x 30 min.) which has already sold to over 30 countries.

The company is poised to accelerate its production activities with a development slate that includes over 10 projects of feature films, documentaries, animated and dramatic series … while continuing to do what it has always done best: produce high-quality non-violent films and television programs for children and family.

March 2004

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Rock Demers, Producer

Founder and president of Productions La Fête and creator of the TALES FOR ALL collection of family films, Rock Demers has worn a multitude of cinematic hats over his long career. In the early 1950s, he co-founded the film magazine Images and was instrumental in the setting up of many ciné-clubs. In 1958, after training as a teacher, he spent two years travelling across Europe and Asia. Returning home, he joined the group that had just founded the Montreal International Film Festival and he served as its director from 1962 to 1967. He was one of the co-founders of the Cinémathèque canadienne (now the Cinémathèque québécoise) in 1963, and he founded Faroun Films in 1965.

In 1968 Demers devoted himself to Faroun Films, quickly making it one of the premier distributors of pictures for young moviegoers, extending its reach to dozens of countries and enlarging its scope to become an important distributor of art films. Before long the distributor became a producer as well, completing the production of Bernard Gosselin's The Christmas Martian (1970) of which he had already acquired distribution rights.

With the export of The Christmas Martian and other films, Faroun became the most important ambassador of Quebec films abroad, assuring the foreign distribution of such films as Les Mâles (Gilles Carle), La Vie rêvée (Mireille Dansereau) and Les Smattes (Jean-Claude Labrecque). In return, Faroun provided a Canadian gateway for many of the most important foreign filmmakers of the 1970s, including Kobayashi (Japan), Peter Weir (Australia), Fassbinder, Wenders (Germany), Tanner, Goretta, Soutter (Switzerland). Malle, Eustache (France), the Tavianis (Italy), Zanussi, Pojar, Zeman (Eastern Europe), Djibril Diop (Africa) and Rocha (Brazil), among many others!

In 1980, Rock Demers founded Les Productions La Fête, whose initial objective was to produce an anthology of feature films destined for family audiences, the celebrated TALES FOR ALL. The first film in the collection, The Dog Who Stopped the War, was released in 1984. The collection was an immediate critical and commercial success (garnering over 170 national and international awards in less than 16 years) and it has since expanded to 19 titles and has earned Rock Demers numerous awards in Canada as well as abroad.