Article content

Rhonda Baker spent the Christmas holidays in Regina, visiting family. Soon, it’s back to work in the booming Manitoba film industry.

Baker moved to Winnipeg in November 2012, months after the Saskatchewan government halted local film production by ending a long-running tax credit.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Six years after tax credit cut, Sask. film industry on 'life support' but not beyond saving Back to video

“It wasn’t drying; it was over. I couldn’t bring a project to Saskatchewan,” said Baker, a producer since the 1990s.

She didn’t want to leave her hometown, but “you get up one morning and go, ‘OK, do I want to work again or not?’ ”

Jeff Beesley held out a little longer. He and his family packed up for Winnipeg in autumn 2015.

Their roots in Moose Jaw were “too deep” to pick up immediately.

But, “it just came to a point where I really wanted to be directing again and I wanted to be in the film industry again,” said Beesley, a director who earned his University of Regina film degree in 1996.

That was the year that producer Virginia Thompson brought the Incredible Story Studio series to Saskatchewan, due to Alberta scrapping its film industry incentive.