McNeil Government’s Culture Action Plan – All Talk, No Action

Stephen McNeil and Minister of Communities, Culture & Heritage Tony Ince held a big event yesterday to announce their new Culture Action Plan. McNeil danced (literally, and then figuratively when he spoke), and Ince talked about his commitment to culture, a speech that stood in stark contrast to the silence that he maintained when McNeil and Diana Whalen blew up the Nova Scotia film and television industry in April 2015. The cultural bureaucrats in the private sector predictably lined up and said it was all a wonderful thing, because they never want to offend or call into question the government that provides them with much of their operating funds, and everyone went home happy.

Well, here’s the thing. We’ve heard this all before from the McNeil government. Freeman, Ivany, Broten… reports have come with great fanfare and commitment to change, and then they get circular filed. Anyone who would trust the McNeil government to follow through on any of the cultural “action plan” almost deserves the inevitable disappointment that we have seen with these reports so many times before.

Oh, sure, it sounds good, just like all of these reports do – bureaucrats and their enablers have it down to a science when it comes to writing these things. But what does it really all mean? The “value of culture” stuff is easy to write, probably because it’s been written many times before. I’ve seen this language for twenty years, both during my time in government in the late 1990s and in the years since. There’s an art to it, ironically, but it doesn’t mean anything. They’re just words, and words are a dime a dozen, especially with the McNeil government.

Where are the actual plans? You know, things like specific new budgetary provisions, or real programs, or success measurement benchmarks and matrices. Those kinds of things, which are what you’ll find in an actual plan, are missing.

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Mary Tyler Moore in Nova Scotia

The recent passing of actress and cultural pioneer Mary Tyler Moore received the usual global media interest, with emphasis on her eponymous 1970-1977 television series that had her portraying a single, career-oriented professional when, up to that point, women had been relegated to the role of married foils to working husbands.

The continued steep decline in local media was revealed again when no reports on her death mentioned that Moore filmed a movie for TV here in Halifax in the summer of 2003. Blessings was adapted from journalist and author Anna Quindlen’s 2002 novel, and told the story of an eccentric 82-year old woman played by a heavily made-up Moore, whose life is revitalized by the arrival of a baby, dropped off anonymously on her doorstep.

Local actors Cory Bowles and Laura Regan provided supporting roles, and the project was broadcast on CBS in October, 2003, right after the catastrophic landfall of Hurricane Juan in Halifax. That might be responsible for the mass amnesia in Nova Scotia concerning the project. There were, in fact, two movies filming in the South End of Halifax throughout the Juan disaster, and they distinguished themselves by providing electricity through their generators for some of their neighbours after the power went out.

Whether Blessings was one of those films remains a question that perhaps the greater public can answer. Still, to have such an important media figure in our midst doesn’t seem to faze Bluenosers much (we’ve played host to the likes of Charlton Heston and Kirk Douglas over the years ), but it is a reminder of the reach of Nova Scotia’s motion picture production scene.

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“First Features” Film Series Begins at Dalhousie Art Gallery

A new film series begins at the Dalhousie Art Gallery this Wednesday evening (January 18th), curated by my good friend and colleague Ron Foley Macdonald. This time out Ron has created an eclectic program of “first features” by well known film directors. As Ron puts it in his write-up for the program:

“Some directors arrive fully formed on their debut features. Others never recover. In this survey of first features, we begin with one of the greatest motion pictures of all time,Citizen Kane, and then progress to more contemporary times where some directors—Duncan Tucker and Transamerica, for example—disappear from the scene after tackling some exceptional subject matter. Female directors and stories of gender determination dominate more modern times; Art House staple directors such as Lars von Trier (The Element of Crime) and Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood) help anchor the series to the traditions of ‘serious’ cinema, while other directors’ debuts mark them for ‘serious’ Hollywood success.”

All of the screenings start at 8 pm, and are free to the public. If you’re a filmmaker, or someone who wants to become one, you should make a point of going to as many screenings as you can. It’s like a masterclass in how to make a film, enhanced each time by Ron’s introduction.

Here is the schedule, with Ron’s notes. The series begins with Citizen Kane, a film that many people consider the greatest film of all time – which makes for quite the first feature, indeed – although there is a group of Kane admirers who believe that The Magnificent Ambersons was actually Welles’ best film.

Let the debates begin!

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View 902 Podcast Episode 2 – Dillon Garland

In this episode of the View 902 podcast, Paul Kimball is joined by his good friend and fellow director Dillon Garland for a discussion about the state of independent filmmaking in Nova Scotia, particularly for a young filmmaker like Dillon, as well as his first feature film Afraid to Speak, which debuted this past fall at the Parrsboro Film Festival after being snubbed by the Atlantic Film Festival (which they discuss). Along the way, Dillon talks about his upbringing in the Shelburne region, what inspired him to get into filmmaking in the first place, and where he wants to go from here. Paul and Dillon also get into an in-depth conversation about what it’s like working with actors, and how trust between actors and a director is fundamental to being a successful filmmaker. Finally, they manage to find time to chat about pro wrestling, telepathic space otters, and their experiences at the old Shelburne Sound Stage.

Dillon Garland is an award-winning filmmaker based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Originally from Barrington, Nova Scotia. Dillon graduated from the Centre for Arts and Technology in 2012 with a Diploma in Digital Filmmaking. He has since directed over thirty music videos, for artists including The Stanfields, The Town Heroes, Like A Motorcycle, Jon Mullane, and Gloryhound. He has won two East Coast Music Awards, two Hollywood Music in Media Awards, an IMEA Music Award, a Los Angeles Music Award, and a Music Nova Scotia Award. His short films include St. Rick, Last Day of Fall, and Ageless, which won the Best Short Film Award at the 2013 CAT Film Festival. He produced, wrote and directed the web series Leon, has worked on the television series Big Brother Canada, Amazing Race Canada, and The Bachelor Canada, and served as the Assistant Director on the feature films Roundabout and Exit Thread. In 2016 Dillon’s first feature film, Afraid to Speak, debuted at the Parrsboro Film Festival.

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Following the Money of Film Funding in Nova Scotia

When the McNeil government got rid of the old film financing system in April 2015, it eventually replaced the tax credits and equity investments that had formed the foundation of that system for almost twenty years with the Nova Scotia Film and Television Production Incentive Fund (NSFPIF). The NSFPIF, which is administered by NSBI, was capped at $10 million per fiscal year (although the government stated more than once that if demand was greater than the $10 million in any given year that it would consider putting in more money); it was based on an “all spend” model of Nova Scotia costs, and it was designed to be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Through all of the controversy, one of the things that the McNeil government stressed repeatedly was that the new funding system would be more transparent than the old one. That was always a red herring, because the former system was as transparent as any government funding program (a look at any annual report from Film and Creative Industries Nova Scotia, or its predecessor agencies, would tell you exactly who was getting funding). Nevertheless, the NSFPIF is indeed transparent, in that NSBI reports on a regular basis which productions have been funded, and for what companies.

The problem with the film and television industry, however, is that even transparency can appear opaque to the general public. Almost all funding is still given to single-purpose production companies, because that’s how the industry functions. That can make it hard for people who don’t have a scorecard to know who really has care and control of the money.

I was curious to see which companies (and which individuals) were doing the best under the new funding regime, as well as which types of production, so I did a bit of digging at the Registry of Joint Stocks. Had the veteran players been replaced by newer ones, or had the new system more or less worked to the benefit of the same folks as the old system had?

The answer is that the same people who were successful under the old system have been the same people who have generally been successful under the new system.

But is that good enough in 2016?

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Viola Desmond’s Story on Film

The announcement that Viola Desmond will grace Canada’s ten-dollar bill has brought her story to the attention of a new generation of Canadians. It is a story of profound courage and resolve that Iain MacLeod and Brian Murray, two Nova Scotian filmmakers, have told in different but equally compelling ways.

MacLeod’s film was a drama shot in black and white back in 1996, whereas Murray’s film is a documentary made in 2012 for his employer, Communications Nova Scotia, to commemorate Canada Post issuing a stamp in Desmond’s honour. Both films run about 45 minutes.

MacLeod took an oblique approach “November 1946,” never showing the actual incident itself but rather letting the word “spread around the town.” Ultimately he used Desmond’s narrative to set up the tension in order to portray an inter-racial romance. The film was an ambitious costume drama that played to a packed house at the 1996 Atlantic Film Festival. Its unusual length and rough language made further distribution a challenge, and sadly it is mostly unseen today. I remember it vividly, however, as it marked MacLeod as a filmmaker of vision and substance.

For Murray, the story of Viola Desmond was one that needed to be simply and directly retold using modern-day documentary techniques. Because there is little to no footage of Desmond herself, Murray used a blend of dramatic re-creations, punctuated by expert ‘talking head’ testimony and period stock footage.

Perhaps most importantly, Murray’s “Long Road To Justice” provides more depth and insight to a story that continues to gain resonance and momentum. As national audiences now catch up to speed with the narrative, we can all consider the extraordinary contribution Viola Desmond has made to Canada’s cultural fabric.

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Leonard Cohen’s Nova Scotia Collaborators

The passing of Leonard Cohen last week at age 82 got me to thinking of his connections to Nova Scotia, particularly two important people who worked with him on signature projects. Filmmaker Don Owen, a resident of Halifax in the 1980s and 1990s, co-directed the major 1965 National Film Board of Canada portrait of the then poet and novelist entitled Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen. Jumping forward to the mid-2000s, the composer Philip Glass, a longtime Cape Breton resident, collaborated with Cohen on a musical setting of the singer / songwriter’s first book of poetry in 22 years, Book Of Longing.

The massive response to Leonard Cohen’s passing reveals just how much his work and worldview affected all of us. These two collaborations by Nova Scotian residents broaden and deepen our understanding of one of Canada’s most beloved artistic figures, and are essential viewing and listening as a result.

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Afraid to Speak – A Review

Dillon Garland’s feature film debut, Afraid To Speak, announces the arrival of a natural-born filmmaker.

The 24-year-old Halifax-based, award-winning music video director, “v-logger” and social media maven has been turning out motion pictures since before he graduated from high school. Currently onscreen with a web series entitled Leon, Garland garnered more than one hundred thousand hits for his filmed reaction to a recent Star Wars trailer.

Clearly, this is a young image-maker on his way up. A viewing of his long-form first feature, Afraid To Speak, mostly shot in 2014 but finally finished in 2016, confirms that a major new voice in Atlantic Canadian filmmaking has burst out on the scene.

Afraid To Speak is a small-scale drama that tackles the subject of depression. Its timely subject matter is matched by the sincerity and effectiveness of its delivery, from the finely-tuned acting to the astonishing surety of framing and camerawork. Taking a strikingly original view of a difficult matter, the film sets a very high standard from the beginning, and then consistently surpasses it.

It is a remarkably mature, compelling and effective piece of movie-making. As a first feature film from such a young writer and director, it marks Dillon Garland as a major new player on Atlantic Canada’s ever-changing cinema scene. Having recently played the Parrsboro Film Festival, watch for it on small and big screens in your locality.

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Did D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” Play in Halifax?

In the Saturday, October 1st edition of the Halifax Examiner writer and activist El Jones quotes an academic paper by Greg Marquis on whether D. W. Griffith’s epic motion picture The Birth Of A Nation ever played in Nova Scotia.

Marquis “suggests” that through researching Nova Scotian newspapers of the time (1916 and 1917) he discovered that The Birth Of A Nation didn’t play in the province in those years. An interesting assertion indeed. Having taught a film history course at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in association with the National Film Board of Canada for a decade and a half, I had access to information that positively disproves Marquis’ “suggestion”.

According to my sources, which mostly are gleaned from oral history, Griffith’s notoriously racist film played at the Neptune Theatre site, then called the Strand Theatre. Admission was an extraordinary two dollars, when regular admission to film shows in Halifax was regularly only a nickle. Special trains were run up from Yarmouth for showings of the film in Halifax.

All of this controversy comes exactly on the North American release of the 2016 film Birth Of A Nation. Co-written, directed and starring Nate Parker, an African-American who has had his own share of controversy over a past rape allegation, this new film chronicles the slave rebellion of Nat Turner. It is one of the most hotly anticipated films of the season, having made a splashy debut at the Sundance Festival last January, gaining a $17 million distribution deal and a great deal of publicity.

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“Shakespeare 400” at the Dalhousie Art Gallery

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare.

As Film Curator at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, I thought it was a good idea to revisit some of the cinematic versions of the Bard’s plays.

There is certainly no shortage to choose from. I did have a couple of guidelines. One was the 140 minute mark. The seats at the gallery are hard plastic, and most people are used to feature films being around two hours long. Shakespeare’s plays, however, generally run longer in their theatrical form. In film, some of the more famous ones – Roman Polanski’s Macbeth from 1971 for example – run 140 minutes or more. Alas, out went Roman’s well-known and well-loved film.

I’ve also found that people’s attention spans have shrunk a bit in the age of electronic devices and premium episodic television. Longer films will almost always lose audiences. I’ve actually seen this happen at the gallery.

Still, the films I’ve chosen for the series are all worth seeing for one reason or another. They run from the 1930s to the modern era, and include great productions from Orson Welles, Max Reinhardt, Julie Taymor, Ralph Fiennes, and others.

“Shakespeare 400” screens Wednesday evenings at 8:00 pm at the Dalhousie Art Gallery. Admission is free but donations are gratefully accepted; seating is limited so come early to guarantee admission. The series is supported by the Canada Council and Arts Nova Scotia.

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Inside “Head Space” with Nicole Steeves & Struan Sutherland

I first met Nicole Steeves in 2012 when my friend John Rosborough recommended her for a leading role in a low budget feature film I was directing called The Cuckoo in the Clock. We wound up casting her, and she did such a good job that I cast her again the following year when I made my next feature film, Roundabout, and she turned in another fine performance.

As talented as she is in front of the camera, however, Nicole also has a passion for working behind the camera, particularly for writing and directing, so I was pleased to hear in April that she had been selected as one of the five recipients for the 1K WAVE Atlantic program. The initiative, which is sponsored by Women in Film and Television Atlantic (WIFT-AT) and pUNK Films, provides an opportunity for five female filmmakers the opportunity to make a feature film under the guidance of industry mentors. Projects can be any genre, from narrative fiction to documentary to experimental. The budget? $1,000.

That’s right. $1,000.

Let me just say that the prospect of making a quality feature film for $1,000 is… well, the polite word would be “daunting.” Even most independent films will spend that much just on catering and food for cast and crew alone. To shoot an entire film with just a grand? I’m not sure most filmmakers I know could pull that off – including me!

But Nicole has done just that with her debut feature film Head Space. She was kind enough to let me have an advance look at the film, which premieres at the 2016 Atlantic Film Festival. Displaying the same commitment, creativity and resilience that I saw in her work on both The Cuckoo in the Clock and Roundabout, she has crafted a strange, off-kilter and utterly affecting low-fi film that punches well above its budgetary weight. Yes, there are some rough edges, but that’s part of its charm.

It’s a comedy, but it definitely inhabits the darker corners of the room, sliding and shifting just outside the warm and fuzzy laugh-track light of more mainstream fare. The film is anchored by a convincing performance from Struan Sutherland as Floyd, an agoraphobic with no intention of ever leaving his basement. His past as a comedian and TV pitch-man has left him broken and unable to face the outside world. Sutherland spends much of the film either alone or acting with a headless mannequin as his scene partner, and he brings a real sense of understated pathos to a role that could have easily been overplayed. When they consider who should win the best actor award at the Atlantic Film Festival this year, he merits strong consideration.

After watching Head Space, I asked Nicole if she would be willing to sit down and talk about the film for View 902. She readily agreed, and brought Struan along as well, which made perfect sense – as you’ll see, they are very much a creative team.

Here is my interview with Nicole and Struan, conducted at the Humani-T Cafe in the North End of Halifax on Tuesday, August 30th.

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Bruce McDonald’s “Weirdos” is a Wonderful Paean to Can-Con Identity

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky to see a sneak preview of the new Bruce McDonald film Weirdos courtesy of my cousin Mark Almon, who was one of the producers of the film.

While there are many fascinating angles to talk about in what is a wonderful film overall, the one that stood out to me perhaps the most is the theme of English Canadian nationalism, which is expressed visually through constant background coverage of the US Bicentennial celebrations (the story is set over the July 1st to July 4th weekend of 1976) and then contrasted by the constant audio of early and mid-1970s “Can-Con” pop radio that pours joyously out of the various cars that transport the young characters from place to place in the film.

While there has always been a unique vitality to French Canadian nationalism, the response from the English side of the equation has often been marginalized in the broader transatlantic imperial Anglo-Saxon monoculture. As a result, it was for many years reduced to a small but important stream: the Confederation Poets, the Group of Seven, and the CBC and the National Film Board in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In 1970, the iconoclastic Don Shebib film Goin’ Down the Road added to the mix.

English Canadian nationalism’s ground zero in the 1960s was marked by the Halifax philosopher George Parkin Grant’s 1965 book Lament For A Nation. It set forth the argument that English Canada was doomed to vanish into the great mush of the endless dynamic of America’s dominant culture.

The book, posted on the Literary Review of Canada’s 2005 “Most Important 100 Canadian Books Ever” list, challenged a generation of nascent nationalists to prove Grant wrong. Inspiring the likes of Margaret Atwood and James Laxer, a new English Canadian nationalism did eventually arise, but it was rarely expressed in the broader popular culture.

Except in pop music.

Eclectic. Distinct. Glorious. Catchy. Irresistible.

It was, culturally, the only thing that seemed to be ours.

It’s all there, raging in the background of Weirdos, a quintessentially Canadian film in the very best sense, and that you positively have to see… and hear!

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It’s Time to Abolish the Maritime Film Classification Board

Last month’s announcement that the beloved and long-running Quinpool Road film rental store Video Difference, along with its Bedford satellite site, will shut down August 20th and sell off its stock of films brought a range of emotions from its customers.

The store was acclaimed as classy and well-run with a reputation for service and selection. A victim of changing times – like the blacksmith shops of a hundred years ago – the closing of Video Difference marks the end of an age.

With any luck, a bit of long-overdue collateral damage should be the Maritime Film Classification Board. The agency of the provincial government that issues ratings for theatrically played films and video store selections, the MFCB has lost about half of its rather thin reason to exist with the closure of last major video rental store in Halifax.

The system is a dinosaur – a relic from a bygone era. If we really need ratings (a debatable point in the era of free-flowing online information), they can come from either Ontario, or the MPAA in the United States. Nobody needs Nova Scotian film ratings anymore. The old saw of “Community Standards” has been eclipsed by the flood of material on the Internet. Besides, “Community Standards” always brought up the question of “whose community, whose standards?”

So with only three hundred or so films to be classified from now on, it’s time for the Maritime Film Classification Board to be put to bed.

Permanently.

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West In East: Sam Shepard In Nova Scotia

From the late 1960s to 1984, the playwright and actor Sam Shepard lived in Nova Scotia, in a place called Hilltop Farms between Advocate and Parrsboro.

It’s not a widely known fact. A few “connect-the-dots” references float around the internet; there’s a couple of pictures of Shepard with a rifle, hunting; there’s a thin thread of mentions by other writers. And some years ago in the musical biography book Girls Like Us, the author figured out that Shepard was the “Coyote” of Joni Mitchell’s 1976 song, pursuing her even though he was, in Mitchell’s words, “Too far from the Bay of Fundy.”

Poet / musician Patti Smith stated in her National Book-Award-Winning memoir Just Kids that she and Shepard performed their play Cowboy Mouth in New York City in 1971. She goes on to say that Shepard then left the production abruptly to go to Nova Scotia.

Of course, Sam Shepard didn’t spend all of those fifteen years or so in the Bluenose province. According to a recent feature documentary, Shepard and Dark, the playwright and actor kept a busy schedule writing and filming while mostly living in San Francisco and New York City. In 1984 he left his wife and son to live with the actress Jessica Lange, which may have precipitated his departure from Nova Scotia. He sold Hilltop Farm to the Canadian actor Megan Follows, best known for her starring roles in the 1980s versions of Anne of Green Gables.

Sam Shepard was hardly an anomaly in landing in Nova Scotia. A raft of world class American artists started showing up in the province in the late 1960s. The East Coast of Canada beckoned to the likes of composer Philip Glass, filmmaker / photographer Robert Frank, screenwriter / novelist Rudy Wurlitzer, and artist / sculptor Richard Serra.

Many of these artists interacted with Nova Scotia’s culture. Glass, for example, was the featured composer and performer for the Scotia Festival of Music, and he also lectured on writing music for motion pictures for the Dalhousie Art Gallery, where I had the pleasure of meeting and introducing him to the audience. Frank taught at NSCAD in 1972 and presented his work at Dalhousie in 1997. Frank hosted an exhibition of his work at the Art College as recently as 2014. Serra accepted an honourary doctorate from the Art College and delivered a fascinating commencement speech which revealed some of his work habits. Wurlitzer has given extensive interviews about his affection for Nova Scotia, detailing some of his connections to Cape Breton’s Buddhist community. He even named one of his characters in his novels ‘Halifax’.

Sam Shepard, on the other hand, seems to have come to the province to get away from everywhere and everything else.

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Karma hits Stephen McNeil as Halifax filmmakers get involved in politics

It was inevitable after Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government decimated the Nova Scotia film industry in April 2015 that politically-conscious film industry professionals would fight back. In the year and two months since that disastrous decision – one of many mistakes made by the McNeil Liberals, who have pinballed from self-made crisis to self-made crisis during their three years in office – we have seen a massive protest at Province House, the rise of Screen Nova Scotia as a politically active and savvy lobbying group, and a non-stop barrage of letters to the editor, radio interviews, and articles from film industry workers determined to defeat the government at the first possible turn (a factor that probably led to the election of NDP MLA Marian Mancini in a Dartmouth by-election last year by a tight margin).

Now two veteran and award-winning Halifax-based filmmakers, both of whom were instrumental in crafting the old film funding system during their time as Program Administrators at the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation in the 1990s, have decided to take the fight against the Liberal government one step further. John Wesley Chisholm and my friend and colleague Paul Kimball have decided to seek the nomination for the progressive Conservative Party in the ridings of Halifax Chebucto and Halifax Needham, respectively.

Both Chisholm and Kimball are highly educated, very articulate, and very media savvy.

In other words, they may just be Stephen McNeil’s worst nightmare.

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Wormwood’s Memories… and lessons for the arts in Halifax in 2016

Wormwoods Dog & Monkey Cinema closed in 1998. That’s almost 20 years ago, and Halifax is no closer to finding an adequate 7-day-a-week replacement specialty motion picture house.

It’s a disheartening situation, considering Wolfville has a thriving independent cinema scene at the Al Whittle Theatre, which provides a vigorous level of non-mainstream programming. Despite the Atlantic Film Festival, the Halifax Independent Film Festival, and weekly screenings by the Carbon Arc from October to April, neither the private sector nor the public sector have managed to re-create in Halifax what Gordon Parsons and a smattering of Atlantic Film Co-op people put together in the mid 1970s.

Pinpointing what is missing from Wormwood’s long absence is difficult. Some organizations have managed to make do, organizing haphazard screenings here and there in the city. We have come close once or twice. The Paradise Sisters group was $30,000 short of opening a new facility on Market Street. Former Dalhousie President Tom Traves wanted a major screening setup in the McCain Building when it was being constructed; the expense of the specialized projection exhaust system put an end to that dream.

Why, in a city with a metropolitan area population of four hundred thousand, we can’t have a functioning specialty cinema tells you a great deal about what is and what is not possible in Halifax, and the priorities of our current ruling class.

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Marc Almon – The Happy Warrior of #NSFilmJobs

I first met Marc Almon back in 1998 when he was the proverbial bright-eyed and bushy-tailed president of the Kings College Independent Film Society and I was the Program Administrator for the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation. Marc had applied for a small operating grant for the society, and while I was inclined to recommend it my boss was less enthusiastic. So I arranged a meeting in which I asked Marc to basically tell me how he wanted me to sell the proposal to my superiors. I left that meeting thinking this was a kid who was going to be a successful film producer someday if he pursued it as a career, because he was passionate and because he was a natural at making the best case for why he and his group deserved the money. Needless to say, they got their grant, and when I attended their annual screening of the short films they made with it some months later, I wasn’t surprised in the least that Marc and KIFS had managed to pack the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium.

As it turns out, Marc did indeed pursue a career in filmmaking, and by 2015 had emerged as one of the top up-and-coming young film producers in Canada. He produced the critically-acclaimed and award-winning feature film Blackbird by director Jason Buxton, and had a number of other projects in development.

And then all hell broke loose in April, 2015, when the Liberal government of Stephen McNeil released a budget that contained massive cuts to the Nova Scotia film industry, including the closing down of Film and Creative Industries Nova Scotia and the slashing of the film tax credit to levels that were simply unworkable for producers. As the chairperson of the fledgling industry association Screen Nova Scotia, Marc was thrust into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, as he led the fight to save the film industry from complete disaster even as he tried to keep his business going and get his own productions financed in a world where the old financing model no longer existed.

It’s a testament to Marc’s ability as both a producer and a leader that he managed to succeed in both tasks. While the film industry in Nova Scotia isn’t what it was prior to the Liberal cuts, it also isn’t gone altogether, and that’s due to the efforts of Marc and his colleagues at Screen Nova Scotia. In terms of his own business, Marc managed to recover from the setback of last April and found a way to pull together the financing to get the feature film Nineteenseventysomething made, directed by Bruce McDonald and written by Daniel MacIvor (the film is currently in post-production, and Marc plans to debut it at this year’s Atlantic Film Festival).

Marc’s term as chairperson of Screen Nova Scotia came to an end last month, so I thought it would be a good time to sit down with him and reflect upon the hectic events of the past couple of years. Here is that conversation.

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David Manners – Nova Scotia’s First Movie Star

David Manners is arguably the most significant actor to ever hail from Nova Scotia. The suave Halifax-born thespian, who made 38 movies in Hollywood between 1930 and 1936, was the star of not one, not two, but three enduring horror classics made by Universal Studios: Dracula, The Black Cat and The Mummy.

Born Rauff de Ryther Duan Acklom, Manners took advantage of his smooth good looks, athletic bearing and sophisticated-sounding mid-Atlantic accent to work his way onto the Hollywood A-list. Taking his mother’s maiden name for a more manageable moniker, the young actor was in high demand for leading man roles against some of the most eligible females stars of the time.

It’s those Universal horror films that keep Manners’ name and face in circulation today, however. In the credits to Todd Browning’s Dracula from 1931, Manners gets equal billing with Bela Lugosi, who he also co-starred with in The Death Kiss. In Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat, from 1934, Manners would face not only Lugosi but the immortal Frankenstein actor himself, Boris Karloff, who had also co-starred with the in-demand Haligonian in Karl Freund’s The Mummy in 1932.

Manners was receiving, at one point in his career, 100,000 fan letters a week. Up to his passing he was still receiving fan mail from star-struck punters who explained just how much seeing Dracula, The Mummy and The Black Cat had changed their lives.

Never comfortable with Hollywood, which he found to be a “false place,” the iconoclastic Manners retired from the screen in 1936 at the height of his fame. He moved to the desert, painted and wrote novels, one of which is set in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, and performed on stage until his retirement from acting altogether in the 1950s. He passed away in December 1998 at the age of 97, one of the last links to the earliest years of Hollywood.

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The PWC Report on The Nova Scotia Film Industry

Screen Nova Scotia released the long-awaited independent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) yesterday on the economic impact that the Nova Scotia film industry had in Nova Scotia prior to the cuts to the film financing programs and Film and Creative Industries last April by the Liberal government of Stephen McNeil. The PwC Report is detailed, well-researched, methodologically sound, and comprehensive. What is shows, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that the film industry as structured prior to the Liberal cuts was a net economic benefit to the Province of Nova Scotia on many levels.

The film & television industry is a net economic benefit for the Province of Nova Scotia, it employs a more highly educated and younger workforce, it is primarily locally owned and operated, and the rate of the tax credit as it stood prior to the Liberal cuts was in line with Ontario and British Columbia, despite the fact that both of these provinces have significant competitive advantages over Nova Scotia in terms of industry resources.

In other words, everything the Liberals have told Nova Scotians about the film and television industry has been false, and remains false. There is no other way to look at it.

The Premier’s response?

He hasn’t read the report, and it won’t make any difference anyway.

And that sums up simply, and sadly, the shameful and incompetent state of governance in Nova Scotia today.

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MLAs who support the Nova Scotia Film Industry – Karla MacFarlane

Karla MacFarlane is the Progressive Conservative MLA for Pictou West. The owner and operator of The Ship Hector Company Store in Pictou and an active community volunteer, she was first elected to the House of Assembly in 2013. She is currently a member of the Human Resources and Law Amendments Committees, and is the Progressive Conservative critic for the Environment, Municipal Relations, the Public Service Commission & Communities, Culture & Heritage.

MacFarlane is one of the opposition MLAs who have worked hard to hold the Liberals to account for their disastrous film industry policy. For example, in a letter to the editor of the New Glasgow Evening News that MacFarlane wrote in May, 2015, she noted the film industry controversy within the context of Liberal policies that were on the whole devastating for rural Nova Scotia:

“I went into this session of legislature optimistic about the future of our province and with the hopes of a budget that cut wasteful spending and offered plans for the future and job creation. Instead we got a budget that is taking away jobs and making it more difficult for people and industries, like the film industry, to survive. I voted against the Liberal budget because it does nothing for rural Nova Scotians… During the election campaign in 2013, the Liberals promised the film industry that if elected they would not cut the film tax credit. The McNeil government cut the film tax credit on budget day putting our province at a competitive disadvantage. This is another example of a decision where the full impact of the consequences won’t be felt until it is too late.”

While the Liberals have spent the past year showing Nova Scotians what bad governance looks like, MacFarlane has stood out on the film industry controversy as a dedicated proponent of a system that worked well for twenty years. In the process, she has demonstrated to Nova Scotians that there are informed, reasonable and honest alternatives to the regressive and bad faith austerity-based politics practiced by the government of Stephen McNeil.

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Draegerman Courage – A Nova Scotia Tale

Every once and a while Nova Scotia finds itself in the center of world attention because of a tragic event. Whether it’s the sinking of the Titanic, the Halifax Explosion, the Springhill mine disasters (1891, 1956, and 1958), or the Swiss Air Crash, this province on the edge of North America suddenly gets thrust upon the world stage for all the wrong reasons.

Such was the case on April 12, 1936, when the Moose River gold mine grabbed headlines all over the world. While three men were inspecting a mine, it caved in and the world stood transfixed as J. Frank Willis, the Regional Director in the Maritimes for the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (the precursor of the CBC) dropped a specially made microphone down a drilled hole to the trapped men.

650 radio stations across North American tuned in, with an estimated 100 million listeners; even more listened through the BBC, which transmitted the live updates to the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. It was the first live radio remote broadcast in Canada, and it was a story that resonated around the world, holding people’s attention in the midst of the darkest days of the Great Depression.

A year later, Hollywood told the tale in Draegerman Courage.

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How The Liberals Swiftboated the Nova Scotia Film Industry

The public relations campaign waged by the Liberal government of Stephen McNeil against the film and television industry in this province over the past year has been a textbook example of Swiftboating.

It began when then Finance Minister Diana Whalen made a pre-budget speech to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce on March 25, 2015. In her remarks, which warned of austerity measures to come, she singled out the film tax credit in particular as a program that was “under review” (usually a political euphemism for “on the chopping block”). According to Whalen, the program “costs taxpayers $24 million dollars a year. With it, Nova Scotia tax payers pay up to 65 percent of the eligible salaries for film and television projects. Now by contrast, our payroll rebate program for other industries are capped at 8 to 10 percent for eligible salaries. Surprisingly, within the rules, there is no requirement to film in Nova Scotia. It may be called a tax credit, but it isn’t used to offset taxes that are owed. 99 percent of the money is being paid directly to companies that don’t owe taxes in Nova Scotia.”

In one speech, Whalen had portrayed the film and television industry as a group of money-grubbing fat cats who cost the Province $24 million based on a super-rich subsidy and that had no obligation to even film or pay taxes here. She might as well have included a picture of Scrooge McDuck lounging in his money bin with “Nova Scotia Film Industry” plastered all over it.

The problem was that her statement was a gross distortion of the facts. Nova Scotians deserve better.

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Liberal Government’s Film Industry Cuts Hit Rural Nova Scotia Hardest

I posted my article “Why The Film Industry Controversy Matters To All Nova Scotians” in the Film Nova Scotia group on Facebook, and a reader posted the following comment, which I think is worth a response because it touches on a popular misconception about both the Nova Scotia film and television industry in general, and the areas in which it has the most impact.

“I applaud the effort here,” he wrote, “but I don’t think it’s the correct argument to make (although it is accurate) – at least not to the constituents that matter. After the decision on the tax credit cut, the government popularity *INCREASED* in most rural Liberal ridings. That’s because the government paints film makers as, more or less, ‘godless, scruffy city living hipsters that only work 11 weeks a year.’ That perception, widely held in rural ridings, is never going to change – at least not in a time frame that is useful to us… Add to that the perception that people in the industry make too much money (based on zero data, but still a belief that is widely held among rural Nova Scotians) and you get no sympathy. Combined with the anti-Halifax sentiment, rural Liberal voters are always going to side with the government. The only way to move the government is to change the perception in the ridings where they are most vulnerable. TO do this, we can’t argue trust, or government failure etc. The only thing that may work is to argue directly at the self-interest of the people who vote Liberal in Liberal held ridings.”

In broad strokes, this perception seems accurate. Almost all of the Nova Scotia film and television production companies that form the core of the industry, for example, are based in Halifax, or nearby. The equipment rental companies, such as William F. White, are based here as well. The unions all have their headquarters in Halifax. Film and Creative Industries was located in downtown Halifax before the Liberals closed it down last April, as is the head regional office for Telefilm Canada, the National Film Board, the CBC, and so on.

But dig deeper and you see that this perception is fundamentally flawed, because it overlooks the key factor in determining the overall benefits of the film industry to the Nova Scotia economy – where productions are filmed, and the effects that they have in that area.

Indeed, the negative effects of the Liberal government’s actions in dismantling the 20-year old film funding structure and government film agency last April will be most strongly felt not in Halifax, but in the rest of the Province, and work directly against the goal of revitalizing and diversifying the economy of rural Nova Scotia.

In other words, we are all in this together.

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Why The Film Industry Controversy Matters To All Nova Scotians

Much has been said and written over the past year about the Liberal government’s decision in April 2015 to do away with the government funding structure for the film and television industry that had existed in Nova Scotia for twenty years. Financing structures for the industry are a bit of an arcane art to begin with (as they are with most industries), and it has been made even more difficult for the average Nova Scotian to follow given the fact that there have been different numbers and statistics put forward by both the government and the industry to attempt to justify their respective positions – the industry has largely relied on numbers provided by the former government film agency in previous years along with industry sources such as the Canadian Media Producers Association, while the government has primarily relied on figures provided by the Department of Finance. The issues involved in terms of the actual mechanics of the production and financing system of the Nova Scotian film and television sector, which after all is but a very small part of a much larger globalized multimedia industry, are complex and difficult to distill into media-friendly soundbites. Nova Scotians could be forgiven if they threw up their hands in frustration and said, “we don’t know who is right, and really… why should we care?”

The answer is simple: The film industry controversy centers on two issues of fundamental importance to all Nova Scotians:

(1) Our ability as citizens to trust our government (and our concomitant ability to believe that it is dealing with us in good faith); and

(2) The way that government does business with the private sector.

When we examine how the Liberal government has dealt with the film industry, serious problems are evident on both counts.

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The Liberal Government’s Nova Scotia Film Industry Debacle – One Year Later

A year ago this coming Saturday the NS government released its 2015-16 budget, which contained measures (the elimination of Film & Creative Industries Nova Scotia, the dismantling of the film financing system, including the tax credit and equity investments) that devastated the industry.

On the “almost anniversary” of that disastrous decision, I think it’s worth taking a look at an internal government document that shows exactly how good the film and television industry – as structured prior to the changes by the Liberals – was for the Province.

Accordingly, here is the 2010-11 business plan for Film Nova Scotia (which later became FCINS), which shows in detail (a) a Crown agency that actually worked, and was committed and knowledgeable about its brief, and (b) statistics, from the government itself, showing the value of the industry, on many levels.

One can have a reasonable debate about whether the tax credit rate had gotten too high (I believe it should have been reduced); one can have a reasonable debate about what kind of industry we should have been focusing on (I believe we should have been placing greater focus on local production, and less on courting come-from-away service production). Indeed, one can have a reasoned debate about all sorts of things with respect to film financing policy.

The one thing for which there can be no reasoned debate is the nature of the system that had been carefully built up for twenty years, by all parties (Liberal, Progressive Conservative, and NDP), and which was destroyed a year ago by the McNeil government. The system worked. It created an industry that rarest if things these days – a Nova Scotia success story.

Throughout this entire debacle, the Liberal government has shown a stunning lack of vision, made a series of broken promises, and evidenced a fundamental failure to be honest with the citizens of Nova Scotia about the value of the industry and the nature of the system that supported it and which they destroyed.

It is a damning indictment of their inability to govern effectively, and in good faith.

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10 “Must See” Nova Scotia Films of the Past Decade

I have been involved in the film and television industry in Nova Scotia for almost twenty years now, first as the Program Administrator at the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, and since 1999 as a filmmaker myself. During that time, I have seen pretty much every film made in this province. Some have been terrible (including one of my own), and most have been fair to middling – but some have stood out to me as compelling examples of the kind of original filmmaking, to the point of true artistry, of which Nova Scotians are capable when they have the resources and the infrastructure to support and encourage their inspiration, and their aspirations.

Here are the ten films made in Nova Scotia by Nova Scotians (in whole or in significant part) from the past decade that in different ways really made an impression on me. As with all such exercises the choices arrayed below in alphabetical order are highly subjective. There will accordingly be folks who think that any “list” like this should include their favourite, and that’s eminently fair – indeed, I encourage them to offer their thoughts in the comments section. In the meantime, I’m happy to recommend these films without hesitation as some of the best cinematic storytelling that not only Nova Scotia but Canada has to offer.

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William D. MacGillivray – An Iconoclastic Visionary

As he approaches his seventieth birthday this May, William D. MacGillivray is still a busy and visionary writer, producer and director. A recipient of multiple awards and retrospectives, MacGillivray has little to prove to anyone. Being the subject of doctorates and representing Canada abroad at prestigious film festivals like Berlin, he is a motion picture artist who could easily just rest on his laurels.

Instead, however, he’s continually upending expectations, as in the extraordinary The Panther Next Door and the moving Hard Drive, all the while still intent on locating the soul of the East Coast. And while that might always be something of a moving target, so is Bill himself – always shifting, always changing, always re-adjusting his vision.

It’s a vision that has brought the Atlantic Cinema into a very sharp focus indeed.

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Nova Scotia’s “Titanic” Filmmaking Legacy

Last month’s column on Nova Scotia’s Oscar connections generated some interesting discussion, particularly in the case of James Cameron’s 1997 epic Titanic. Most people don’t know that one-third of that motion picture was filmed in Halifax, and that the original ten-day shoot turned into a three month marathon.

If you don’t think the saga of RMS Titanic is at least in part a Nova Scotia story, the reaction to the event’s 100th anniversary, held around April 12th, 2012, certainly should have convinced you otherwise. The Atlantic Film Festival, for example, held four standing-room only screenings of non-Cameron Titanic-related films: the 1953 Hollywood-made Titanic, which won the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay; the 1943 German-made Titanic, commissioned by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joeseph Goebbels, who later banned it; The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a fictionalized account of Margaret Brown, who survived the sinking of the Titanic; and the 1958 British-made classic A Night To Remember, which most critics regard as the most historically accurate cinematic portrayal of the disaster. There was also a lively seminar on “Titanic in the Media” which I had the pleasure to chair.

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Robert Frank – The Man Who Brought Avante-Garde Filmmaking to Nova Scotia

Robert Frank is arguably the most important photographer of the post-WWII period. First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, his work The Americans changed the course of twentieth-century photography. Less well known is the key role he played in the development of the Nova Scotia film community.

Born in Switzerland in 1924, Frank was a legend of the post-war avante-garde by the time he came to Nova Scotia in 1969 as part of a wave of world-class artists who have lived in the province, off and on, more or less ever since (some of those artists include sculptor Richard Serra, screenwriter and novelist Rudy Wurlitzer, actor and playwright Sam Shepard, and composer Philip Glass).

While Frank’s extraordinary cinematic work can hardly be called mainstream by any stretch of the imagination, many of his techniques and attitudes still resonate within the more adventurous elements of the international motion picture community, including Nova Scotia, where he left an indelible mark.

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Gregor Ash… Unplugged

If you had to compile a list of the twenty most important and / or influential people in the arts and culture scene in Nova Scotia over the past fifteen years, it would probably include Gregor Ash. Starting from his first arts gig as sales and promotion manager at CKDU radio in 1991 – 1992 through his various key roles in the music industry at the height of the Halifax Pop Explosion to his tenure at the Atlantic Film Festival, first as Operations Manager from 1996 until 2000 and then as the very forward-looking Executive Director of the Festival from 2000 until 2012, Gregor was on the front lines of what was a true Renaissance period for film and music in the province. He has also served as a member of the Nova Scotia Arts & Culture Partnership Council in 2010 – 2011, and as the Director of the Institute of Applied Creativity at NSCAD University from 2012 until 2014. A two time candidate for elected office as a New Democrat (federally in 2011 and provincially in 2013), Gregor currently runs his own independent consultancy firm. I’ve known him since he was at the Film Festival and I was the Program Administrator at the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, and I’ve always had a great deal of respect for his commitment to the arts specifically, and public policy in general. He describes himself on Twitter as “a passionate servant of the Arts, a political junkie, a food lover and proud Newfoundlander, living a content life in the wonderful city of Halifax, Nova Scotia,” and I think that pegs him pretty much spot on. In an industry full of poseurs and provocateurs (and that applies to both the arts and politics), Gregor is genuine,passionate, and hard-working.

I asked him a couple of weeks ago if he would be willing to sit down and discuss his career in the arts and politics to date, and he readily agreed. We finally managed to sync our schedules for Friday afternoon, the 26th of February, and we got together at the Second Cup in the Killam Library at Dalhousie for a wide-ranging conversation about arts, culture, the creative economy, and politics. We had actually been chatting for about twenty minutes – and both of us had been airing our opinions freely – when I finally said to him that I was going to turn my tape recorder on and start the interview. He looked a bit surprised and said that he thought I had begun recording at the beginning. I replied that I would never record anyone without letting them know, and that I thought perhaps what we were talking about might be things that he wouldn’t want on the record.

Gregor laughed. “Screw it,” he said. “Roll the tape!”

So I did.

Here is the conversation that followed – Gregor Ash… unplugged.

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