Michel Monty’s Life Begins launches Item 7 in 2009. Together with Jean-Marc Vallée’s Café de Flore and Kim Nguyen’s War Witch, Item 7’s first three productions receive great public and critical claim earning many nominations and awards, including a nomination to the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for War Witch.
Guided by our curiosity and instincts, the company shows its versatility in several genres, from art films to psychological drama, through comedy, suspense, science fiction, thriller. Recently, Item 7 has distinguished itself with three co-productions – Brooklyn, A Kid and Bon Cop Bad Cop 2 – all of which have had great success at the box office in Quebec and abroad. Brooklyn has also received several prestigious nominations at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the Canadian Screen Awards.
In 2019 Item 7 has released its most ambitious production to date, The Hummingbird Project, a third collaboration with writer-director Kim Nguyen. In 2021 we will release two feature films, Maria Chapdelaine the 4th film of director Sébastien Pilote, the co-production Best Sellers a first feature film directed by Lina Roessler starring Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza and, our first VR short film Marco & Polo Go Round.
Upon graduation from law school in 1990, Pierre immediately began his professional career in the film industry. He began in film distribution where he learned the mechanics of film marketing at Malofilm Distribution acting as Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs and Vice President and Secretary of Malofilm Production. He then continued with a one-and-a-half year adventure in television production as general director of television and film for Les Distributions Rozon (Just for Laughs) and quickly ran back to his passion, film.
He moved from distribution and television to script evaluation and funding portfolio management at Telefilm Canada as the director of the feature film unit of the Montréal office from 1998 to 2002.
Pierre leaves Telefilm Canada to become the Cirrus Communications feature film executive for almost 7 years. It was during his time that he launched his very first production, C.R.A.Z.Y. by Jean-Marc Vallée, acclaimed by critics all over the world.
In 2009, he founded Item 7, dedicated to the production of feature films by reconnecting with Jean-Marc Vallée for Café de Flore. Next will be Kim Nguyen’s War Witch, Podz’s Miraculum, Bon cop bad cop 2, Brooklyn and many others.
Pierre holds a Bachelor of Law from the Université de Montréal and a Diploma in Communication Studies from Concordia University. He is a member of the Board of Directors and President of Ciné-Québec and a member of the Board of Directors of the Cinémathèque québécoise. He is currently co-chair of the Regroupement des producteurs indépendants du Québec (Independent film producers of Quebec).
PROFESSIONAL SCENE
2009- Item 7 / Founder, President and Producer
2002-2009 Cirrus Communications / Producer, feature films
1998-2002 Telefilm Canada / Director of the Feature Film Unit (Montreal)
1996-1998 Les Productions Rozon (Just for Laughs) / General Manager, Television and Films
1990-1996 Malofilm Distribution / Vice President of Legal and Commercial Affairs
Malofilm Production (from 1994) / Vice President and Secretary
INVOLVEMENT IN THE INDUSTRY
2016- Ciné-Québec / Member of the Board and President since 2017
2016- Cinémathèque québécoise / Member of the Board of Directors
2013- Association of Independent Film Producers in Quebec / Co-president, Co-founder member
2004-2014 Quebec Cinema (formerly Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois) / Member and President from 2008 to 2014
2006-2010 Association of Film and Television Producers of Quebec (Quebec Association of Media Production since 2013)
Member of the Board of Directors
As far as she remembers, Jeannette has always wanted to work in the film industry. As a child, she scrutinized the end credits in movies on TV, read all the reviews that fell into her hands and had even developed her own evaluation system to rate the films she saw. At age 19, in order to achieve her dream of going to the Oscars, the young film-goer leaves Quebec to study make-up in Los Angeles. Back home, she becomes general Manager of ICARI, a private school for animated films, and later continues her career in the industry at Telefilm Canada. There, fascinated by the makings of film, Jeannette reads scripts and immerses herself in the works conceived of authors and directors. She meets Pierre Even, then director of the feature film unit, and later follows him at Cirrus Communications and Item 7.
Jeannette joins the Item 7 team in April 2010. She makes use of her fifteen years of experience in the film industry and television. She has worked on several series of fiction and documentaries, LA GALÈRE, THE WAR OF THE SEXES, NAKED JOSH and about twenty feature films from C.R.A.Z.Y. by Jean-Marc Vallée to REBELLE (War Witch) by Kim Nguyen. In 2018, she produced her first short film entitled FAREED by Rudy Barichello and produced the making of and EPK on THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT. Jeannette is Secretary of the board of directors of the FCTMN, Women in Film, Television and Digital Media and member since 2013; she is also a member of the Academy of Cinema and Television.
Paul-Emmanuel Audet has been working in television, film and digital production for nearly fifteen years. After first making his mark as an independent producer with several short films earning praise on the film festival circuit, he joins Cirrus Communications which would later become Attraction Images. During his nine years at this production company, he worked on dozens of productions in a wide variety of genre and scale, from mobile apps, to international co-productions, documentaries, TV series and feature films, being mostly involved in financing, distribution and legal and business affairs. In the spring of 2018, after a stint at Urbania and Sphere Media Plus, he rejoins at Item 7 his colleagues of the early days.
Paul-Emmanuel Audet holds a Bachelor of Communication from Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM) (2001), a Certificate in Business Law from Universite de Montreal (2009) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from HEC Montreal (2016). He also graduated from the Cinema Producer Program at the Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS) (2004).
Audrey Pacart is a creative producer and VR/AR consultant who assists producers and creators in the production and creation process of works that combine narrative and new technologies, as well as public institutions in the industry’s transformation strategy. She is currently producing a romantic comedy in virtual reality in co-production with Belgium, entitled “Marco Polo Go Round”, as well as a literary adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s “Miss Else”.
She is also an associate programmer at the Tribeca Immersive Festival.
Audrey led the programming, content and acquisitions of TOU.TV where she developed and produced numerous web series, as well as the digital strategy of Groupe V Médias.
Audrey has also been line producer on more than 40 television series, feature films, and documentaries as well as a content analyst at Telefilm Canada from 2008 to 2010.
Camille graduated in 2014 at INIS (Institut de l’image et du son) in the Cinema, Screenwriting program, where she received an award for her short film LA FEMME NUE. Camille Trudel quickly began writing a feature film that will be produced by Ô Films. Fellow of the National Apprenticeship Program of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television 2014, she was selected as a member of the Émile-Cantillon Jury at the International Francophone Film Festival of Namur in 2015.
She began her career as a scriptwriting consultant at Camera Oscura the same year, then her career lead her to script consulting. She first worked as an external reader at Telefilm Canada in 2017, then as a Content Analyst before moving to SODEC as a Project Leader and Young Creators Program Chair for a short term.
In 2018, she is pleased to join Pierre Even’s team at Item 7 as a content consultant, participating in the development of several feature-length fiction films, in both French and English. In parallel with her role as a content consultant at Item 7 and an external reader at Telefilm Canada, Camille is currently developing and producing her first short film as a director, NATURE MORTE. She is also developing several feature film screenplays, as well as offering workshops on dramatic structure and the art of pitch.
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