The New Waterford Girls, a $3.2-million feature film coproduction between Halifax’s Imagex and Toronto’s Sienna Films, will start shooting in Halifax and Cape Breton Island in early October and continue rolling into November.

The story takes place in the late ’70s and focuses on two teenage girls – one from New York who ‘punches out young boys and men who are `guilty,’ ‘ says coproducer Julia Sereny – the other from New Waterford, n.s. who desperately wants to escape.

Alan Moyle (Pump Up The Volume) will direct and dop Derek Rogers will shoot the picture based on an original script penned by Trisha Fish.

Producing with Sereny is Jennifer Kawaja and Chris Zimmer is executive producing.

Alliance is the distributor.

– Clark’s Demon

After plugging away every summer since 1994, filmmaker David Clark has wrapped shooting on Maxwell’s Demon just in time for it to unspool at the Atlantic Film Festival (Sept. 18-26), and in the process has ‘broken all the rules of low-budget filmmaking.’

The budget for the 85-minute movie is just over $100,000 ($150,000 with deferrals), which a resourceful Clark rounded up by applying for a pile of grants, starting with a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

He worked with money from the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, got some assistance from the National Film Board, and to finish up, received funding from Telefilm Canada.

Although Clark has been based in Halifax since Christmas as a visiting professor in multimedia design innovation at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, his film was a cross-country initiative. Shooting took place mostly in Calgary; the music, a big jazz band, was recorded in Vancouver; he did some work in London, Ont.; and for the post portion, it was back to Halifax.

A film noir detective story, Clark describes Maxwell’s Demon as a retelling of the Oedipus Rex tale. ‘It weaves together a very bizarre plot that involves a time-traveling kind of paradox wherein a computer virus in the future, called Oedipus, is released and the character is sent back in time to conceive himself.’

And if low-budget filmmaking does have set rules, Clark stepped way outside their boundaries.

‘You are supposed to have all your budget together, you aren’t supposed to have a live orchestra score, and you aren’t supposed to have prosthetic makeup,’ says the filmmaker, who included all of the above in the project.

Maxwell’s Demon was written and directed by Clark and David Coole produced. Angela Baker handled the offline at the nfb in Halifax and Collideascope is handling online along with special effects and 3D work.

– Halifax film school in the offing

After years of talk within the local film industry about the viability of a film school in Halifax, the nsfdc in conjunction with nscad conducted a study which concluded that a film school is a worthwhile initiative.

Two committees have been formed, one to determine the curriculum and another to come up with a finance model. Both committees have until October to deliver.

Curriculum chair David Clark says the plan is to run three different kinds of programs: professional development workshops for industry professionals; a certificate program in the screen arts where students can get intensive training in editing, cinematography and art direction; and above-the-line incentive programs for actors, directors, writers and producers.

Heading up the finance committee is, appropriately, nsfdc director of finance Ann MacKenzie.

Currently there are no film schools east of Montreal, although film programs have been offered at various schools in Halifax.

– Gemini nominations

The Nova Scotia production scene fared well in the 13th annual Gemini nominations, announced Aug. 11 in Toronto and Vancouver.

Halifax-based Cochrane Entertainment’s Pit Pony picked up eight nominations, including best tv movie or miniseries.

Salter Street’s Emily of New Moon (coproduced with Montreal’s Cinar Films) also nabbed eight nominations, including best dramatic series, while Salter’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes is up for three awards, including best performance in a comedy program or series.

– AFF preps

Approximately 200 films are set to unspool at the 18th Atlantic Films Festival Sept. 18-26 in Halifax.

Program streams include Atlantic Focus, with a strong Newfoundland and New Brunswick presence, Canadian Perspectives, International Perspectives, The Late Shift, Screen Scene and, new this year, an Animation program.

The festival will host a retrospective of features from France celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Cannes film festival. The French program will feature films from France, Quebec and New Brunswick.