by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

What’s exciting about NúFilms, a local video-clip production house, isn’t just the gleeful leaping of the longstanding divide between anglo and québécois artists. Sure, they’ve done videos for the pûr laine types (Kevin Parent, les Cowboys Fringants), for crossover acts (One Ton, Grim Skunk) and for flat-out anglos (Copyright, Sam Roberts). What’s so cool, though, is that the clips they shoot are of international calibre, on the same level of quality as anything outta L.A., NYC or (shudder) T-dot.

“There was a stigma in Quebec,” says NúFilms head Paul Barbeau, “where music-video producers were using this vehicle as a way to pay their mortgages instead of being artistic. The philosophy at NúFilms is to put all the money where it counts, which is on the screen, and raise the bar for quality in music videos from Quebec. Now we get people from Toronto and France, and I’m bringing projects to L.A.”

The proof in the pudding was their success with “Don’t Walk Away Eileen” by Sam Roberts. “It beat out ’NSync that week on MuchMusic and got a better rotation,” gloats Barbeau.

It doesn’t hurt that NúFilms handles some crackerjack young local videomakers in the likes of Bernard Nadeau, Jean-François Pilon, Yannick Saillet, Francis Leclerc and Maxime Giroux (who did the “Eileen” joint), all eager to puch a hole in the tired old regional inferiority complex. “One of our goals,” says producer Martin Henri, “is to bring Montreal and its talent, our people, to another level. I’m kinda pissed off when I hear that artists from here, musicians, actors or anything, go somewhere else in the world to get talent because they don’t trust their own. It often happens, in our business particularly.”

Bridging the two solitudes helps - Barbeau gives props to the Dears, Stars, Sam Roberts and Butta Babees just as he would to French-tongued acts. “The anglo scene is getting huge,” says Henri. “They don’t have to go to Toronto to make it - Toronto’s coming here.”

Can L.A. be far behind? Barbeau is already working on his first feature film, tentatively titled Vlad. In the meantime, the hectic pace at NúFilms continues - since forming two years ago, they’ve done no less than 104 videos, or one a week, every week.

“We have no lives,” sighs Barbeau. “I work easily 80 hours a week, if not 100, but it’s not work! You meet wonderful people from different cultures, there are beautiful women and great music - it’s all good.” :

>> Movie Listings