Every June since 1984, film and television producers from the four Atlantic provinces have been meeting at the Atlantic Film and Video Producers Conference in Charlottetown to discuss the future of their industry. And every year the numbers of producers attending the conference increases.

Does the rise in attendance mark an increase of producers and production in the area? Or are more producers becoming concerned about the future of their industry?

Perhaps, it’s a little of both.

General market conditions for film and television production vary among the provinces. Nova Scotia has had two major motion pictures filming in the area over the last couple of months – an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Dolores Claiborne and Roland Joffe’s The Scarlet Letter – which will bring in an estimated $20 million.

Barry Cowling, president of Halifax-based Citadel Communications and president of the Nova Scotia Producers Association, says the province’s film and television industry is developing in direct relation to the Canadian industry as a whole. ‘If the national figures show a 10% to 12% growth potential, we’re sharing in this growth,’ he says.

Citadel itself has been keeping busy with two feature films, Les Secrets de Jerome and Symphony Number Three and the Horned Prophets of Doom, and a children’s tv series, Video Pen Pals, all on the go.

Tony Merzetti, co-ordinator of the New Brunswick Filmmakers Co-operative, says ‘things are slow,’ since New Brunswick does not have a large indigenous industry and not much work comes into the province. The co-op currently has eight short independent films in various stages of production: Side Effects, Reading Tom Sawyer, Parable in Black and White, Masks, Hilda Tucker, It Must Be Monday, The Cafeteria and Dried Flowers.

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