Sidney Furie is in Saint John, n.b. shooting his newest courtroom/ mystery drama, In Self Defence.

The film features Marlee Matlin, whose last New Brunswick shoot, Children of a Lesser God, won her an Academy Award. Curtis Petersen is the dop on the April 27 to May 11 shoot. Jean-Marc Selio and Aziz Alaoui of Montreal-based Les Films St. Paul are producing.

Abdul plays The Waiting Game

pop star Paula Abdul is in Nova Scotia for the Alliance/Blue Wave Films’ Harlequin Romance The Waiting Game, which began shooting April 27 in Dartmouth.

Vic Sarin is director/dop on the $2.7-million romantic spy story. Gilles Belanger is producing and Jennifer Black and Peter Lauterman are exec producers. The mow will air on Showtime in the u.s. and Baton/ctv in Canada.

– News from The Rock

The Newfoundland and Labrador Film Commission has released its preliminary production figures for fiscal ’97/98. Indigenous productions were in the neighborhood of $3.2 million, coproductions came in around $4 million, visiting sponsors such as commercial shoots brought in about $465,000, National Film Board productions another $325,000, and location shoots are pegged at $200,000, bringing the total estimate for the year to $9,790,000.

Meanwhile, Walt Disney scouts have been checking out the region as a possible location for upcoming feature Miracles and there is talk of TriStar using the East Coast locale for the majority of shots for the upcoming feature The Shipping News.

Shooting is currently underway in St. John’s on Imagex feature film The Divine Ryans.

– Victory Victorious

Halifax production company Victory Motion Pictures has picked up the $100,000 Rogers Telefund Core Funding Grant, which will go to support Jeremy McCormack’s Camp-X, a one-hour doc for History Television about a Canadian commando spy school which trained more than 500 agents during wwii.

Also in production at the new company, headed by McCormack and Leslie Ann Patten, is Loyalties, a one-hour doc for Baton based on the story of two women linked through the ancestral lineage of slave owner and slave.

Loyalties, a coproduction with the National Film Board, will shoot in July and August on a budget of $400,000. Patten is director/producer.

In development at Victory are two animation projects and a feature which they plan to shoot this year.

– The Bette’s on

Topsail Entertainment has the green light from cbc for The Bette Show starring East Coast stand-up comic Bette MacDonald. The budget for the six half-hours of comedy is over $1.3 million and shooting will get underway at the beginning of June. MacDonald will also be penning the show with This Hour Has 22 Minutes writers Paul Bellini, Ed MacDonald and Tim Steeves, who will be featured.

– AFF names new director

The 18th Atlantic Film Festival has appointed journalist and regional film industry veteran Ron Foley Macdonald as director of ’98 programs.

Macdonald is in charge of festival programming including the preselection process, program scheduling and coordinating all festival catalogue copy.