Nathalie Larivière

TV Real Weekly, October 8, 2008

Director of Television & International Sales

TVA Films

Formed to represent the former TVA International catalogue, TVA Films has been best known on the worldwide market for its portfolio of classic European features. Owned by Quebecor Media and a sister company to TVA, the market-leading French-Canadian broadcaster, TVA Films is now focusing on expanding its reputation on the global landscape, positioning itself as a multigenre content provider and mining the depths of its diverse slate. “Films, documentaries, TV series, musicals—anything that we feel for, that we think is solid content, we can pick and choose from the library,” says Nathalie Larivière, who is leading TVA’s sales efforts.

Fine-tuning and organizing that collection of content has been Larivière’s priority since joining TVA after stints at Seville Pictures and CINAR (now Cookie Jar Group). When she started at TVA, the catalogue had not been available globally for some time. “We had lot of cleaning up to do. Now we can really push forward.”

Among the genres that Lariviè²¥ is highlighting from the TVA offerings is documentaries, led by Let It Ride, a 90-minute biographical special about Craig Kelly, a pioneering professional snowboarder who died in an accident in an avalanche in 2003. The film picked up several awards on the festival circuit last year. It was directed by Jacques Russo, who had developed a friendship with Kelly while filming him snowboard over a ten-year period.

Larivière also expects strong interest in the 90-minute Well Done, which takes a behind-the-scenes look at two of Montreal’s best restaurants, and the personalities behind them. The film sees the world-renowned chefs traveling to destinations like Hong Kong, Spain and Portugal to showcase Quebec’s cuisine. “It’s about their love of cooking. You follow them all over the place and see how they deal with creating haute cuisine with what they have to work with. They drink, they love to party. They just love food!”

Also culinary related is the series ?la di Stasio, in which chef Jose di Stasio travels across Italy, from Naples to Rome, showcasing local specialties.

So that broadcasters can find what they need from the TVA catalogue, the company has launched a new website. “It’s user-friendly, and has our complete catalogue on there,” Larivière says. “We’re trying to work with the tools we have to make it easy for clients. TV is changing a lot and we are trying to find out where [broadcasters are] heading and what they need.”

—By Mansha Daswani