Nancy J. Lilley's career as an award-winning filmmaker was founded on a lie.
The veteran Coquitlam film and TV actress made her first foray behind the camera as a director when her first-grader rushed home from school to tell her about the huge food fight at lunch time.
"She gave me so many details of what happened that I totally believed her," Lilley said.
But there was no food fight. And when, embarrassed, Lilley found out the next day, she decided that seven-year-old Shanna's "punishment" would be to help her mom turn the fib into a film.
That was 2009's homemade The Messy Lie, which went on to win an award for Best International Family Short Film at the New York International Independent Film Festival.
Since then, when the Coquitlam actress, singer and stunt performer isn't crashing cars on the set of X-Men III or acting the "angry customer" in commercials for Future Shop, she can be found spending her Friday afternoons at Rochester elementary teaching kids from Grades 1 to 5 how to act, how to fall and how to punch each other in the face - without getting hurt.
And that's where The Tri-City News caught up with her recently, shortly after finding out that Friends and Fools, a movie she made with students at her Porter Street elementary school film club last year had just won the Canada International Film Festival's Rising Star Award, which will be handed out in Vancouver early next month.
"It's pretty darn exciting," Lilley said. "And the kids at Porter are all really excited about the award, too."
But for now, Lilley's focus has already shifted from last year's film about friendship to the project at hand, tentatively named A Tattle Tale.
"It's going to be a film about bullying and right now we're just getting a feel for who wants to be a victim and who wants to be a bully," Lilley said.
That split was fairly even among the 17 kids in the Rochester gym as they repeated the vocal warm-up: "I'm not a tattler, I'm a reporter" - the apparent mantra of the new film.
"Nancy's friends from movies come in and we do lots of fun things," one young student told The News. "Once one came and we did this thing where three times we shouted, 'I'm a star!' and it was really fun."
And while fun is the obvious by-product of Lilley's Friday film club classes for these kids, she stressed education and empowerment are the program's first priorities.
"Bullying in elementary schools has just become unbelievable to me. In my days, I don't remember ever having to deal with this. And if I did, it was not at the level these kids have to deal with it. This group was really adamant that this is what they wanted to do the film on and so we're doing it."
Once Lilley and the kids all agree on how the 15-minute film will unfold, she will write the stage direction and script, allowing some room for improvisation once she brings in her industry friends to shoot it.
"She's been bringing in very technical people for the program," said Rochester principal Barb Gillies, "and that's just something that we wouldn't be able to do to teach these kids as a school."
Once filming on A Tattle Tale wraps in mid-May, Lilley and her club hope to have their third award-winning film, completing a triptych she hopes to package and distribute as a teaching aid to schools.
"It really has been on a hope and a prayer that any of this has come together," she said. "And now I'm hoping and praying on the next one."
Any students or adults looking to help out with the Rochester elementary film club can contact Nancy Lilley at [email protected] or through nancyjlilley.com.
