Halifax’s Jeremy McCormack is following up his popular documentary Camp x with a film about legendary Canadian cameraman Osmond Borradaile. McCormack is batting around a couple of titles for the project, including Cameraman and Borradaile’s Century.

McCormack, who heads up Halifax’s Victory Motion Pictures, says the one-hour doc will trace Borradaile’s work as a cameraman and filmmaker, a career which started in Hollywood in 1915 and took the dop to six continents.

‘He was one of the last 20th century adventurers and had traveled all over the world,’ says McCormack. ‘The film is a celebration of filmmaking, centered around one filmmaker, who happened to be Canadian.’

Although a budget is not confirmed, McCormack expects it will be ‘large’ and has secured development backing from History Television and the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation.

McCormack will serve as producer/director on the project. A writer has yet to be named.

Borradaile was born in Manitoba in 1898 and lived to be 100. His life’s work is widely available in video stores and film libraries. McCormack says he has secured material that will help him to make the film he wants to make.

‘We already have exclusive permission or rights to a manuscript that he and his daughter wrote based on his diary and we have preliminary permission for use of film that he shot. There is other archival material on him, but there is a tremendous amount of research still to do.’

The director says the film will be important for both history and film buffs to see.

‘In a way it is going to be a groundbreaking documentary because this guy is unwittingly a major player in the collective, metaphysical shift of how we perceive time and space,’ he says. ‘Of all the technological advancements in the 20th century, the development of cinema has played one of the larger roles in how we perceive time and space and the collision between time, space and action.’

McCormack says the film will not only investigate Borradaile’s contribution to filmmaking, but will also help viewers understand Borradaile’s relationship with his camera.

‘A cool aspect of his life was that the camera kind of made his life because he was considered one of the greatest exterior cameramen in the world. His life was about the camera. While he was shooting stuff in World War ii, a German plane bombed the boat he was on while he was filming. The camera was destroyed but it saved his life. The camera made his life and saved his life.’

On the subject of war footage, McCormack suspects some of the footage used in his film Camp x was shot by Borradaile, but has no way to prove this. There is no question though that the cameraman made appearances throughout the world over the course of his life, all in the name of filmmaking. Borradaile reportedly kept company with Howard Hughes, Rudolph Valentino and Alfred Hitchcock and worked with many of the top people in the film business from the silent era on up.

‘He is kind of like the Little Big Man of film,’ says McCormack. ‘He is kind of like an unknown character who’s connected through all of these huge people and different events.’

McCormack says he will spend the fall getting the film financed and hopes to head into production in the spring of 2001.

‘It’s a huge story and this guy is a seminal figure in the early evolution of the Canadian film industry,’ says the filmmaker. ‘It’s a really cool opportunity to do something seminal, plus it is our perspective of how this man’s work has effected us.’

*Black Swan goes swimmingly

Black Swan, a new feature film from writer/director Wendy Ord, wrapped a 19-day shoot in St. Martins, n.b. July 8. New Brunswick-based producer Jaime DiPaolo says even though Black Swan has wrapped, Black Swan Entertainment, the production company founded by herself and Ord to produce it, will continue to produce other projects.

Playback caught up with DiPaolo three days before the film’s wrap. At the time, DiPaolo, Ord and their crew were shooting in the Bay of Fundy. Their subjects were two five-year-olds and she heralded the day as the ‘cutest’ she had ever worked on.

Black Swan is a black comedy/murder-mystery set in a small town called Hopeville. One of the town’s residents, a woman named Helen (played by musician Melanie Doane) is anxious to leave town. Her boyfriend (played by Michael Riley) is the neighborhood’s bad seed and is accused of murder the night before Helen plans to leave.

The cast also features a number of New Brunswick-based thespians including Stephen Morgan, Peggy Gedeon, Janet Monid and Darcy Allen.

The budget for the project, says DiPaolo, is under $1 million and was financed with assistance from Film nb and personal investments by the filmmakers.

Ord and New Brunswick writer Chris Bruce penned the script based on a stage play by Matt Evans.

Black Swan marks DiPaolo’s first producer credit, but she has settled in quite nicely as a partner in Black Swan Entertainment (she worked as a casting director for the past three years). She says she and Ord hope the film will be ready to hit the festival circuit in 2001.

*AFF in prep

The complete schedule of events and programs for the 20th Atlantic Film Festival will be available Aug. 24, but here is what is already confirmed for the nine-day East Coast schmoozathon, beginning Sept. 15.

According to festival co-ordinators, Don McKellar will be in town to interview two men with whom he shares a great deal of history as part of the Canadian Directors’ Series. McKellar will chat with filmmakers Bruce McDonald and Francois Girard on Sept. 16 and 17, respectively.

The popular Strategic Partners conference will take place Sept. 17-19, with the focus being coproductions between Canada and the u.k. The Script Out Loud event, where actors read from scripts as part of the festival’s fifth Script Development Project, will be held Sept. 17.

Sept. 18-20, the British First Features Series will spotlight short films from u.k. directors, while the Great Eastern Shorts program, Sept. 19, will screen a series of shorts from Atlantic-based directors.

Industry brass and filmmakers get together Sept. 20-22 at the NSFDC Industry Series, and then again at the Academy Luncheon on Sept. 21. This date will also serve up the festival’s anniversary party aboard the HMCS Ville de Quebec.

The festival concludes on Sept. 23 with an awards luncheon at Pier 21.

*Veni Venezuela

Halifax’s imX communications currently has a number of hotel rooms booked in Venezuela. The company, along with Spain’s Interracial and Venezuela’s Cinema Sur, is in production on the three-way international coproduction Una Casa con Vista al Mar (A House with a View of the Sea), currently shooting in Merida, Venezuela.

The film is about a peasant who lives in a dry valley and, after losing his wife, creates a beautiful but fictitious place for his son through stories and imagery. The father and son eventually find themselves at odds because of a murder, with the one thing still connecting the two being the impossible dream locale.

Budgeted at $1 million (with $125,000 coming in from Telefilm Canada for production financing) the drama was penned and is being directed by Alberto Arvelo. It stars Gabriel Arcand and Imanol Arias. Chris Zimmer is producing on behalf of imX, while Juan Carlos Lopez Duran is producing for Cinema Sur and Miguel Perello for Interracial. The producers and crew will be in Venezuela for a total of seven weeks, wrapping production in mid-summer.

Una Casa con Vista al Mar is scheduled for release in 2001. *