Indiescreen spoke with industry representatives from across the region to hear their takes on where they’ve been, where they’re going, and the new projects that are building momentum for the industry out east.

NOVA SCOTIA

Laura Mackenzie

Executive Director and Film Commissioner of Screen Nova Scotia (film commission and industry association)

NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR

Laura Churchill

CEO and Film Commissioner of PictureNL (film development corporation)

NEW BRUNSWICK

Steve Foster

President and Chair of Media NB (not-for-profit organization for film and television sector), and CEO of Hemmings House Pictures and Hemmings Films

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

Meaghan Brander

Film Industry Growth Specialist at Innovation PEI (economic development agency and film office)

What has the past decade (or so) been like?

Laura Mackenzie: To be honest with you, I’m not a huge fan of focusing on the past-I think we’re well beyond it at this point. But it is part of our story, so I always start with the fact that it was nine years ago that Nova Scotia’s tax credit was eliminated. Since then, to make the longest story short, we’ve now recovered to the point that our production volume is higher than it was pre-2015.

Laura Churchill: Newfoundland and Labrador’s production industry was struggling, in large part because the government had other priorities. Our current premier, Premier Furey, has identified film and TV production as a real growth area. He understands what is going on with the rest of Canada, where production is booming, and he wants the same for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Steve Foster: New Brunswick lost our tax credit back in 2011, and nothing happened for quite a few years after that, so there was a fairly mass exodus of our crew and our producers to Nova Scotia. Then they had their debacle, and they recouped from that, but ours didn’t recoup for years. But eventually something started to come back, and we moved to a grant program. I think we’re at a stage where we’re still building, and we can take the best pages from everyone else’s books and try to make them our own.

Meaghan Brander: I can echo similar statements for PEI. We have a very supportive government currently, and this specific government increased our rebate back in 2021. We’re finding that the industry is attracting more younger people, and part of the work we’ve been trying to do to grow the industry on the Island is educating the educators: making them aware that a career in the arts and film is a viable opportunity.

What has allowed the industry to survive and thrive?


LM: Having a strong community is probably the most important factor—a strong film community that didn’t leave and stayed and rallied and worked with government to reinstate the current incentive. But having a strong government that supports your film industry is what will ultimately make or break the success of any jurisdiction.

What was interesting is when the government changed and Premier Houston’s government came in, it was a couple of years before anything actually changed—before we had any changes to our incentive, before we had any investment across the industry—but what we had was hope. And that was enough to create the kind of momentum required to bring people into the industry, so that when the financing came, we were ready. It sounds somewhat whimsical, but it’s just true. When the new government came in and was encouraging and welcoming and got the math and understood the return on the investment, the feeling in Nova Scotia just changed.

All of a sudden, we were attracting service productions back to the province.

LC: Government support, the creation of a new all-spend tax credit, and the investment in education (a new film school was launched). It’s understanding what the community needs and then making it happen. When the government is able to do that, your growth can become exponential, which is really exciting for us.

What production(s) catalyzed growth in your province’s screen industry?

LM: The Lighthouse, which came to Nova Scotia in 2018, was pivotal for us in terms of encouraging other productions to come as well. As we know, it’s a small community out there in Los Angeles, and everybody talks, and as soon as you’ve got A24 and Robert Eggers and Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson speaking highly about your crews and your performers and just generally about the industry, that word spreads far and wide pretty quickly.

LC: One thing that has really helped us is getting a television show. We traditionally were doing smaller features, that type of thing, but Republic of Doyle was really the show that started us off on our path of “This can be a living”—for creators, but also for other people in the community, who can actually work in film and not leave Newfoundland and Labrador to pursue other things in hubs like Toronto and Vancouver. They can stay here and create and be a part of something. And that really did build our crew base. And it gave people the confidence to create their own works. That strong base helped us then build toward where we are now, where we’re trying to do more with service production and things like that.

SF: In 2020, at the very beginning of COVID, we produced Race Against the Tide, and it was one of those happy shows, and we were able to be unapologetically New Brunswick in it. It aired across Canada at a time when people wanted to watch fun things. I think that’s when the Higgs government really saw the potential of the production industry.

MB: When the government increased our rebate, we were able to attract a season of a CBC series, Diggstown, which was the first big experience on a film set for a lot of folks on the Island. Previously, we’ve had reality shows come through, and there have been a lot of smaller commercials; but after that series, a local team was able to make a feature film, Who’s Yer Father?, which has really helped shine a spotlight on the Island in the last 12 months. And that experience has been great for the Island. I think when people see the success of their peers, it makes them want to participate in that as well, and think about their own stories and their own ideas.

What’s a recent notable production in your province?

LM: I’m going to shine a spotlight on Vollies, which is a Bell Fibe TV series that has been produced in Nova Scotia for the last three years. The series centres on a small-town fire department where the volunteers have too much time on their hands, and they never actually have any fires to fight. Creator Jonathan Torrens is a hometown hero who’s a prolific actor as well as director and producer, and we’re just really proud of that show.

LC: Disney’s Peter Pan and Wendy was instrumental for us—it was the government’s trial of how an all-spend tax credit could work. It was not a local production, but the on-the-ground producer was Allison White (Sara Frost Pictures). To be able to run a show of that size while we also had two or three other TV shows going, plus all the Hallmark productions, really showed us our capabilities.

Also, the two television shows Son of a Critch and Hudson & Rex show off our province as Newfoundland and Labrador. We’re not trying to double as something else, and there’s a lot of pride in that as well.

SF: We just finished a co-production between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Unseen, about unseen homelessness. It was Telefilm funded, and it was a really beautiful project, and I’m really proud of how it ended up. We’re hoping to get to the festivals this year, but there will be a theatrical release and then it’s going to Crave in 2025.

MB: Who’s Yer Father?, which was filmed in 2022 and released theatrically last November. It’s among the top 10 English-language Canadian films within the last year, which is great. They hired 50 Islanders to work on the film, so it was a really great opportunity for everyone.

What do you hope the future has in store?

LM: I think all of us have big visions for our provinces, and we have to—that’s our job. But, practically speaking, I’d like to cement the foundation that we’ve built over the last couple of years. Really make sure that we’re building out our workforce in a very specific way. We have been looking for a location for a soundstage for the past couple of years, and we’d like to get that up and running.

We are also really excited about our first Telefilm national budget that we have filming this year, called Places of Ghosts, by Bretten Hannam, who is a two-spirited Indigenous filmmaker in Nova Scotia. What a success, to have an Indigenous national feature budget filming in Nova Scotia. So that is really exciting. So we want to increase our allocation from national funding bodies across the country, and in order to do that, we have to focus on the creativity and the support that exists in our own provinces. I’m really focused on developing our filmmakers in terms of their scriptwriting.

LC: For us, we have always based decisions on funding, which is good and important, but because of that, we haven’t been focusing on our creators, our filmmakers, our writers, in that way. In the future, I would love to see us focusing more on developing that side of things, so that the creators, the showrunners, the writers, they’re not just writing for Newfoundland and Labrador shows, they’re being exported in many different ways and getting those sensibilities out to national and international audiences.

And, like the others, I’d like to see us build our infrastructure. Certain parts of film and television can happen here, but because we don’t have studios, that goes to another service area. How can we double down and offer a more holistic way of producing in Newfoundland and Labrador?

SF: I think things are looking up. We’ve got a large series coming, and I think that’s what needs to happen. We need to start bringing in large series, so that we can build crew. One series a year isn’t going to sustain anything. So we’re really trying to educate the province and the government on how to make that work here. Like PEI, we’re working with the educators: we’re working with New Brunswick Community College, we’re working with the different guilds and the unions, to offer courses to New Brunswickers that are subsidized by the government, and to subsidize producers for hiring the people who take these courses. It allows producers to hire juniors with little risk, and the juniors get experience.

Also, a soundstage would be nice. We don’t have anything like that in New Brunswick, anywhere. Building capacity, educating, building infrastructure—that’s really where we need to go at this stage.

MB: We’d love to, like Newfoundland, have a local series shooting on the Island. We saw the success of Republic of Doyle, and we want a piece of that for ourselves. We want to tell more stories, different stories, current stories. The Carley Fortune novel, This Summer Will Be Different, has been a big deal here locally, so it would be great to get that adapted to a feature.

In terms of local talent, last year we had two projects funded through Telefilm, which had never happened before. Some of the success of the recent shows and films that have shot here have helped get people excited and wanting to work. One of the projects funded through Telefilm is an Indigenous documentary, and we can’t wait to share that story with the country.

Call them pioneers, call them innovators, call them trailblazers—Eastern Canada’s current production strength is the result of the dedication and work of industry champions across the region. Here, we applaud four of the heavy lifters.

JAN MILLER

Industry champion, connector, driving force: Nova Scotia–based Jan Miller deserves all of these titles. The list of initiatives she’s helped create, launch and run is eye-poppingly long: the Local Heroes Film Festival in Edmonton, back in 1984; Strategic Partners, an international co-production event that encourages collaboration between Canada and the world; Trans Atlantic Partners, an international training program for established film and TV producers; the National Screen Institute film and TV training school; Women in Film and Television Atlantic (WIFT-AT) and Women in View—and always with a commitment to raising up diverse creative talent. According to Mackenzie, “She has this incredible history of driving growth in the film industry across Canada.” The Maritimes are proud to claim her.

MICHAEL VOLPE

From Mr. D to Trailer Park Boys to The Lighthouse, it seems everything that Michael Volpe produces turns to gold. The president of Halifax’s Topsail Entertainment has had a similar effect on the province’s screen industry. He was instrumental in getting Nova Scotia’s film tax credit reinstated, and it’s no coincidence that his tenure as board chair of Screen Nova Scotia has seen a huge boost in government investment in the sector, including $23 million toward building capacity and a new soundstage. Clearly, he’s a good one to have on your team.

DAVID MACLEOD

Canada’s production industry was gutted to lose David MacLeod in February of this year. The industry builder and veteran producer (North of 60, Black Harbour, Pure) was a long-time board member of the CMPA—he also served as chair for two years—and founding member of Screen Nova Scotia. “‘Pioneer’ is the right word for David,” says Laura Mackenzie of Screen Nova Scotia. “He was at the head of the table when Screen Nova Scotia had to come together to rally around the reinstating of the tax credit, and he was absolutely foundational in the work that we had to do.” He helped lay the foundation for many of Nova Scotia’s successes, and he is deeply missed.

PAUL POPE

When Paul Pope passed away in 2022, the City of St. John’s called him “a dynamic force in Newfoundland’s film and television industry.” The long-time producer (Grown Up Movie Star, Hudson & Rex) was a founding member of NIFCO (Newfoundland Independent Film Makers Co-op), which offers practical support and a post-production facility for film and TV creators; vice-chair of the Canada Media Fund; and a member of the CMPA board of directors. An unselfish mentor with many accolades to his name (including the Legend Award from St. John’s), Pope worked toward the establishment of a film school in Newfoundland, which was announced through the College of the North Atlantic shortly before he passed away. Says Laura Churchill of PictureNL, “Paul saw what film could do for a province and its people.”