When Sebastian Perioche arrived at Harvard to start work on his M.B.A. 12 years ago, he was shocked. Everybody in Paris had told him Boston was one of America's most cosmopolitan cities, but he could hardly find a theater screening the films of Claude Chabrol, Pedro Almódovar or any of the other European directors he liked so much.

'I used to always say to everybody, `With all these cable channels, there ought to be one where you could watch foreign film,' '' he recalls. 'And they would say, `What a great idea!' ''

Such a great idea that Perioche finally tried it himself. And now his video-on-demand brainchild Eurocinema is in 20 million homes and adding half a million more every month -- and doing it by defying practically all conventional wisdom about the tastes and habits of American television viewers.

The channel, headquartered in a Brickell Avenue high-rise, offers no movies in English, no movies that have won Oscars -- in fact, just about no movies that anybody in the United States has even heard of. In a day when everything in television is built around marketing, this seemingly perverse thirst for obscurity is nonetheless paying off. Eurocinema is now available on Time Warner and Charter cable systems across America as well as DirecTV's satellite service and will join the Dish Network satellite lineup next month. (Comcast, one of South Florida's largest cable carriers, does not offer the network.)

''We play some movies that have been in American theaters,'' says the 35-year-old Perioche. ``We have Summer of '04, the German drama that played a little bit here. But we don't run many of those. The idea of Eurocinema is to bring new stuff, stuff that people haven't been able to see.

``We're trying to take advantage of the limited availability of foreign films here. In New York or Los Angeles, it's easy to see foreign films. Denver, or even South Miami, not so much.''

OBVIOUS CHOICES

So seemingly obvious choices for a foreign film channel -- say, La Vie en Rose, which won Marion Cotillard an Oscar this year for her portrayal of French chanteuse Edith Piaf, or The Lives of Others, a Best Foreign Film Oscar winner about the fishbowl life in Stalinist East Germany -- won't make it to Eurocinema. The channel's buyers scour European festivals and back away from any movie in which channels like HBO or Sundance show interest.

''Our objective is to provide service to real foreign movie fans underserved by television,'' says Larry Namer, head of the channel's Northeast operations. ``If a movie is on HBO, wonderful, but then what's the point of us carrying it?''

The channel does try to feature some familiar faces from time to time, digging up films with stars well-known in America that somehow failed to find distribution deals here. Notable example: Amantes, a Spanish film featuring Victoria Abril, who built a U.S. following in the movies she made with Almódovar. Or Ellis in Glamourland, a Dutch take on My Fair Lady with Joan Collins in the Professor Henry Higgins role.

But even when the face is familiar, the film almost certainly isn't. ''You take 10 movies made in Europe, and maybe three are really good,'' says Perioche. ``Of the three, one will probably be picked up for distribution in the United States. And that leaves two very good films that won't be seen here. Those are the ones we want, even if nobody's ever heard of them.''

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