Europe Images Spotlights HD Docs, Period Dramas, Animated Series

BOULOGNE: On Europe Images International’s roster for buyers in Cannes are a mix of HD documentary series, big-budget period dramas, live performance specials and animated series, such as Timoon Animation’s My Giant Friend.

My Giant Friend is aimed at 7- to 12-year-olds and is set in a futuristic world where a group of street-smart kids team up with a mischievous extraterrestrial. Further on the animation slate is Lulu’s Island, aimed at the 4-to-6 set, following the rowdy misadventures of the animal inhabitants of the Wonderlees.

On the company’s slate of factual fare, Welcome to the Nanoworld is a science title that looks at the world of nanotechnology. Odyssey of the Continents reveals the slowly moving puzzle that is our planet. In the way of travel and discovery comes Between Earth and Sky, Beyond the Horizon, Living with Fire, Picture a Planet and Worlds Apart. There’s also current-affairs programming, including The Final Negotiation, in the lead up to December’s climate change conference in Copenhagen; The Other Side of the Wall, commemorating the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; and Mandela: In the Name of Freedom, a profile of the man who embodies the struggles of apartheid and the whole African continent.

Period dramas, in HD, include Adieu De Gualle, retracing the general’s clandestine journey to Baden Baden; Chateabriand, about the life of the romantic author; and Cartouche, the tale of a Robin Hood-style hero drive by vengeance. There’s also two new HD mini-series on the roster: Marion Mazzano, a crime drama, and Nouvelle Maud, a dramatic comedy.

As 2010 marks the centenary of Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s birth, three feature films from the Cousteau catalogue have been restored and remastered in HD. These are The Silent World, The World Without Sin and Voyage to the End of the World.