Category Archives: Cinema

Arts Friday | Tom Charity’s Vancity Theatre of Transcendence

May 18, 2018Cinema, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

The inaugural edition of Rupture is a showcase of innovative, odd and otherworldly films that bend rules, blend genres, explore inventive takes on venerable tropes and elude easy categorization, presented by the Vancouver International Film Festival, at the
Vancity Theatre, May 24th thru May 27th 2018.

In Vancouver there is a cinema of beauty, programmed by the indomitable Tom Charity, who has turned the Vancity Theatre into the most successful year-round cinema attached to a film festival, anywhere on the continent.
Tom, an arts journalist of some note and distinction, and as we are wont to say on VanRamblings, a person of conscience — as is our friend Selina Crammond, the chief programming director of the recently-wrapped, and wildly successful 17th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival — to employ an oft-used phrase, is a “man of the people”, which is to say that he is one of our city’s true social justice heroes, an activist of substance, meaning and involvement in the affairs of our city, our province, our land and the world, and in simple terms on Vancouver’s arts scene, a creative genius.
Since assuming the helm of the Vancity Theatre in 2012 — yet another acute hire by then Festival Director, Alan Franey, now the festival’s Director of International Programming — Tom has found the pulse of Vancouver’s cinema arts-going public, and programmed the Vancity Theatre to a fair thee well, a reflection of his core values of engagement, equity and humanity, and an extension of the empathetic window on the world values of the Vancouver International Film Festival, of which the Vancity is very much a part. If you’ve not been to the Vancity: GO! Attend! You must!

That’s Curtis Woloschuk pictured above, VIFF’s ‘RUPTURE’ series programmer

Tom points out that it is not he, but another creative genius (VanRamblings’ wording, but only because it is true!) who is responsible for the inaugural edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s RUPTURE series — which, if we had our wits about us, we would have figured out on our own … alas — the one, the only, the very huggable collective hope of our future and Associate Director of Programming at VIFF, Curtis Woloschuk, who has long programmed VIFF’s Altered States (or ALT, if you will) programming, an amalgam of “international genre films come out to play” (read: films that are a little off-centre), having assumed that responsibility when VIFF’s Sandy Gow turned his focus to programming VIFF’s absolutely stunningly beautiful Shorts Programme — a part of VIFF you should never, ever miss.
On Arts Friday, a preview of the upcoming programming at the Vancity …

Débuting last December at the 17th annual Whistler Film Festival, film critic Lucy Lau writing in The Straight says of Venus …

A feel-good film that admirably defies the conventions of white, straight, and cis-gendered Hollywood, Venus tells the tale of Sid (played dazzlingly by Debargo Sanyal), a transitioning woman whose life takes a surprising turn when Ralph (Jamie Mayers), the 14-year-old biological son she never knew she had, shows up unannounced at her door” … ending her review with, “Heartwarming and an absolute delight to watch — with an infectious bilingual soundtrack, to boot.

Venus will play at the Vancity, as is usually the case at the idiosyncratic and successful Vancity Theatre, on six occasions, beginning tonight, ending next Wednesday, May 23rd. Screening times may be found by clicking here.

Advance tickets for Ma vie de courgette are sold out, but if you get down to the Vancity by 11:30am, there may be some standby tickets available.
Check out the full programme of Vancity screenings this and next month.
Next Saturday, there is what VanRamblings considers to be a very special event occurring at the Vancity, followed by a Sunday once only screening of a film that took Sundance by storm this past January.

Filmmaker David Lowery ready for his Creator Talk at the Vancity Theatre on May 26th

Here’s the Vancity programme on next Saturday’s ‘Creator Talk’ event …

The Vancouver International Film Festival is thrilled to welcome David Lowery back to our city for the inaugural edition of Rupture (May 24-27), a celebration of films that bend rules, blend genres and uncover innovative takes on venerable tropes. David has always been refreshingly forthcoming with his daily routine as a filmmaker and we look forward to our conversation with him as he shares his insights into a unique creative process that has sent him on a trajectory from beautifully handcrafted short films to an astonishing assured indie début (the lyrical, fatalistic Ain’t The Bodies Saints) to an inspired re-imagining of a storied Disney property (Pete’s Dragon, one of VanRamblings’ three favourite films of 2016) to setting out to make the idiosyncratic A Ghost Story that, in wowing the critics, became a fixture on a surfeit of Best of 2017 lists.

Tickets for the Telus STORYHIVE Creator Talk with David Lowery are still available — Curtis advises that you should go, immediately, to the VIFF website, and click this link to order your tickets to the “you’ll regret it if you miss it (our words),” Creator Talk with David Lowery! Tickets are only $20.

Tickets are still available for Damsel, starring Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska — otherwise known as ‘the’ actress of her generation. Here’s what Owen Gleiberman had to say in his Variety review …

A mega-deadpan Western comedy starring Robert Pattinson as a cracker-barrel hero on a romantic mission – who hits the perfect note of drawling flaked-out good cheer – set to marry his beloved financée, Penelope (Mia Wasikowska), but things go awry.

Penelope turns out to be the toughest character in the movie: a righteous and self-protective post-feminist Calamity Jane, who takes out her bent shotgun and uses it only because of how badly she’s been wronged. She has no patience for any man who would destroy her happiness. Wasikowska, under a chopped wedge of blonde hair, gives her true grit; her straight-shooter line readings are punchlines of rationality. She’s as alone in the world as any of the other characters, but she’s the one who won’t be dragged down.

See Damsel at the Vancity on Sunday, May 27th, or miss out on it forever.

DOXA Documentary Film Festival | A Window on Our World

May 4, 2018Cinema, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

The 17th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival kicked off Thursday evening with a raucous and jam-packed sold-out screening of filmmaker Teresa Alfeld’s indispensable chronicle of Vancouver’s most beloved City Councillor ever, the lauded première of Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical.
The second DOXA 2018 screening of Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical, scheduled for this upcoming Tuesday — sad to report — is also sold-out.
Fortunately, for those who were not able to secure a ticket to Alfeld’s wildly popular DOXA 2018 opening nignt film, the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Vancity Theatre programmer, Tom Charity, has booked two additional screenings of the film, in early June, with tickets available here.
Of course, every cinéaste in town, every person of conscience who knows how critically important it is to support the arts in Vancouver, and to remind ourselves in the most compelling way possible — through film and the window on our world independently-made cinema presents to us — knows how important it is to turn up for the DOXA Documentary Film Festival. All of which means, that if you haven’t booked your tickets, Festival Pass, ticket pack or Industry pass, you’ll want to do so now by clicking right here!

The first question VanRamblings is asked by any filmgoer planning to attend one or another of our town’s many film festivals is: what do you recommend, what’s worth seeing, where do I start?
Well, Shawn Conner — long one of our town’s most-respected arts critics — in an article written for and published on Inside Vancouver, has found five DOXA films that you just shouldn’t miss. Otherwise, DOXA 2018’s incomparable Programme Director, Selina Hammond — one of our town’s very best people, an activist (and lover of cinema) of the first order presents a few stirling ideas for you, as to where you might turn your attention between now, and DOXA 2018’s end date, Sunday, May 13th.

“At DOXA, we pride ourselves on programming independent documentaries and unique voices.

In 2018, I would like to highlight for your readers our FRENCH FRENCH programme, another spectacular programme this year, curated for the fourth consecutive year by Thierry Gorel. This year, DOXA’s Spotlight French Programme is dedicated to the work of Alain Cavalier.

Cavalier, was awarded the Maître du Réel (Master of the Réel) at the Visions du Réel Film Festival last year, as a renowned member of the Nouvelle Vague. At DOXA 2018, we’re presenting six Cavalier shorts, 13-minute beautifully observed mini vignettes of the most elegant and intimate kind, focusing on women and trades, which are paired with his latest film — which, by the way, is a North American première — Six Portraits XL, created from material Cavalier filmed of six different friends over the course of many years.

There are also several new French documentaries by women directors that are amazing. Secret Nest is one of my favourites, The Neighbours is also quite lovely, and very much worth catching. We are fortunate this year to have the directors of both films at DOXA 2018, Sophie Bredier and Ruth Zylberman, respectively, will who will present the screenings of their films, and afterwards engage in a Q&A with the audience.

For many years, Ms. Crammond — who as we’ve written above — loves film, and in consequence has worked with the good folks who bring us the Vancouver International Film Festival each autumn, where a much-looked-forward-to highlight of VIFF’s programme are the “shorts” lovingly curated by Sandy Gow. Such, musta rubbed off on Selina Crammond, cuz …

“As is the case every year, if folks are looking to gain an inside track on filmmakers on the verge of worldwide feature film recognition, DOXA’s shorts programme just can’t be beat, each year and again this year challenging the viewer with groupings of the most humane and provocative films you’ll find inside of a darkened movie theatre.

Shifting Worlds includes some beautiful work, as does Framing Landscapes, and the Rethinking Representation shorts programme.

In Vancouver, we don’t really have a proper venue for filmmakers working in different lengths. The various elements of DOXA’s shorts programme presents an opportunity for the work of great filmmakers to shine, and an opportunity for filmgoers to be blown away, always the best part of attending one of our town’s many film festivals, don’t you think?”

Well more than 100 films, lovingly curated by an activist, democratically-inspired programming group, and the one opportunity that you’ll get this year to attend western Canada’s première non-fiction film festival.
DOXA 2018. Requires your support. Get your tickets now. See ya at DOXA!

Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical | Vancouver’s Cherished Politico

May 2, 2018BC Politics, Cinema, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical
Première of Teresa Alfeld’s new documentary film
17th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival
Thursday, May 3rd, 2018, at 7pm
Venue: The Vancouver Playhouse, 600 Hamilton Street, just off Dunsmuir
SOLD OUT DÉBUT SCREENING
Tickets still available for the Tuesday, May 8th repeat screening

Cantankerous, opinionated, possessed of a pithy and often biting sense of humour — particularly around the Vancouver City Council table, where he sat, but more often stood on his feet, championing the interests of working people and the most vulnerable among us, the nemesis of veteran, ‘right-of-centre’ Vancouver Non-Partisan Association City Councillor George Puil (seeing the two of them go toe-to-toe in Council chambers was to witness transcendence and deliverance on Earth) who, if the whole truth be known, loved Harry Rankin as much as the rest of us (if not more), which is to say almost to distraction, for Harry Rankin was a charismatic figure who every Vancouver citizen loved — absolutely adored — as a great orator and champion of the public interest, whose often boisterous conduct at Council was tempered with a huge dollop of humility, and inveterate good cheer.
Harry, who died at the age of 82, on February 26th 2002 — his passing mourned by everyone who ever knew, or knew of, him — ran for civic office more than a dozen times before being elected to Vancouver City Council in 1966 as the sole independent “alderman”, as elected officials were called back then, sitting as the lone voice and soul champion of working people in Vancouver, on a City Council that was dominated by the corporate-minded, and ultra-conservative Non-Partisan Association.
In 1968, Harry was instrumental in co-founding — along with the Vancouver & District Labour Council — the Committee (now, Coalition) of Progressive Electors (COPE), who this year celebrate 50 years of championing the interests of working people, and the vulnerable among us, a legacy of caring among progressive political parties in Vancouver which has no equal. Teresa Alfeld’s new documentary on the legacy of Harry Rankin, offers a fitting tribute to a champion of the people, a political figure for whom most held great affection, others seeing him as “polarizing.”
In her interview with Ms. Alfeld, veteran PostMedia arts critic Dana Gee writes that “while the film outlines all Harry Rankin’s social causes and policies, the film doesn’t mythologize him to the point of revisionist history. There is no shying away from Rankin’s sexist views, views that had him once call fellow Councillor, a member of the NPA, Helen Boyce, “stupid.”

“As a feminist filmmaker of course I am disappointed, but I am not surprised. We work with it. We don’t shy away, and we don’t pretend things were different because we love Harry and we love his politics,” filmmaker Teresa Alfeld stated to Ms. Gee is the course of her interview.

So, yes, Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical is not hagiography, but as Ms. Alfeld avers …

“I think 2018 is the year to see this film and to understand as citizens we have a choice and a responsibility to get involved and to think about the kind of city that we want to live in.”

Although Thursday’s début screening of Ms. Alfeld’s film is sold out, there is one final DOXA screening of Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical on Tuesday, tickets available by clicking the link at the top of today’s post.

Perhaps it is fitting that the final word on the making of Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical should be given to the person who played a central role in getting the film made, retired Park Board Commissioner and Vancouver City Councillor Tim Louis, who raised the funds necessary for Teresa Alfeld to spend two years of her life in the making of a film, which — along with the invaluable contribution of Phil Rankin, whose Vancouver law practice is much in the tradition of his celebrated lawyer father, and who along with many others, including the work of Peter Smilksy, who gathered together clippings & memorabilia during Harry’s 1986 candidacy for Mayor, shooting 33 reels of 16mm film, with the intent of making a documentary in 1986 — along with the monetary contributions of good people, made the début of DOXA’s screening of Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical possible.
Here, then, is political activist Tim Louis, on his friend Harry Rankin …

“Harry played a key role in my decision to go to law school – intervening on my behalf with the university, and supportive through all my years at UBC Law School, bringing me into his office as an articling law student near the end of my university days, and hiring me following my graduation from law school. Throughout the 20+ years I knew and worked with Harry, up until the time of his passing in 2002, and throughout the early years of his mentorship of me when I worked long hours with Harry in his law office just off Gastown, Harry politicized me — and in consequence, and I say this unabashedly, Harry is responsible for my political career.

In my time on Park Board, in the 1990s, and as a Vancouver City Councillor and Finance Committee Chair on the majority, progressive COPE 2002 – 2005 Vancouver City Council, I adhered to the advice Harry gave me early on in my political career …

“Don’t waffle. Get to the point. See past all the bafflegab.” Harry taught me to always treat the public with respect, because at the end of the day, it is the public, the working people of our city, who are the employers of the elected officials who sit at the Council table, in the Park Board meeting room, or in the large meeting room at the Vancouver School Board.”

Harry Rankin’s Political Legacy

“Harry’s legacy to the citizens of Vancouver remains to this day the acknowldegment that we, as citizens of Vancouver, have an obligation to care for one another, to care for all of our neighbours, every one of us resident in any one of the 23 neighbourhoods that make Vancouver the welcoming and diverse city that is has become.

Harry’s success as a political figure in the history of British Columbia, and Vancouver city governance, was due in no small part to the role he played in championing and giving voice to the interests of working families and children, and the vulnerable among us.”

If you don’t have a ticket for Thursday’s début screening of Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical, VanRamblings urges you to attend DOXA’s second and final screening of the film, this upcoming Tuesday, May 8th at 6pm, at SFU Goldcorp Theatre, adjacent to the Woodward’s building downtown.

Indie Cinema, The Summer and the Salvation of Good Movies

April 27, 2018A & E, Cinema, Jude and Megan, Pop Culture, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

VanRamblings has always loved the cinema, from the time we held our younger sister’s hand to keep her safe, while on our way to the Grandview Theatre, just south of 1st Avenue on Commercial Drive on the east side of the street, every Saturday in every month throughout 1955 until near the end of August in 1958, when our family moved to Edmonton, where our movie-going regimen was kept up — alone this time, on the bus at the age of eight heading downtown during the most unforgiving of 40-below winter nights cascading towards the Rialto Theatre to see the latest Hayley Mills film, for we were in love with Hayley Mills and never, ever missed one of her films … through to the mid-1960s when we were once again resident on Vancouver’s eastside, just north of Semlin Drive & 1st Avenue, in the neighbourhood where we were raised, and where we lived for most of our first 18 years of life, through until … now, to this day, when this year we celebrate 50 years as a published film critic, and ardent lover of film.

Not for us, the big blockbuster films that have dominated movie landscapes for most of the past three decades. No, we’re a ‘window on the world’ foreign film aficionado, as Rocky Mountaineer President and founder Peter Armstrong will tell you if you ask him, and we love small, lower-budget independent films to near distraction, and we love reading and writing about the film festivals that dot the cultural landscape throughout the year, from January’s Sundance Film Festival — founded by Robert Redford in Salt Lake City in August 1978 — to the Berlin “Berlinale” Film Festival in February, to March’s annual, Austin, Texas-based South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, followed in April by Robert DeNiro’s Manhattan-based Tribeca Film Festival — and this next month, the grand mama of them all, the prestigious and much-anticipated Cannes Film Festival, which has taken place on the leisurely French Riviera every year since 1946.

As we write above, VanRamblings loves independent — or, indie — film. But what is indie film? Hang on to your hat, because here we go …
Indie films are movies produced with a low budget, most often by small, boutique production companies, and produced for less than $20 million.
Originally, the defining quality of indie media (film, music, publishing, etc.) was that it was produced outside of the traditional systems of production. So in film, for example, movies produced without the support of the major Hollywood studios would be independent films, or “indies” for short.
After a few decades of independent media, however, aesthetic patterns and themes have emerged that make “indie” more of a style or genre label.
Confusing matters even more, in recent years the six major Hollywood studios — Fox, Paramount, Warner, Sony, Universal, and Disney — have brought indie films in-house, with Disney acquiring Miramax, Paramount (Vantage), Sony (Classics), Fox (Searchlight), Universal (Focus, Working Title), and Warner (New Line, Castle Rock), the major studios competing each year for prestigious Oscar attention with their much-ballyhooed “independent” art house releases, most of the films acquired by the studios but not financed by them, from many of the film festivals mentioned above.

With indie films, the director’s approach is paramount, these auteur films creative, artistic and personal in tone, with subject matter that reflects the lives of everyday people, or as is sometimes the case, the marginalized persons or communities within our cities, provinces or states; indie films also often take on forbidden subject matter considered to be taboo by conventional society. Indie films will more often than not use music sourced from bands or indie music groups or artists, rather than employ original orchestral scoring to aid in the telling of the film’s story.
At the most recent Oscars ceremony, as the latest clutch of arthouse films — including Darkest Hour, The Shape of Water, Call Me by Your Name and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri — were feted throughout the awards season, indie films grappled with Hollywood’s blockbuster addiction, and the new challenges presented by Netflix and Amazon.
While the big six Hollywood studios made 113 movies last year, taking in $11 billion in domestic box office and another $14 billion internationally, a record number of smaller-budget films were released from the beginning of January to the end of December 2017, most —&#32but not all — of the indie films released onto silver screens at a multiplex near you.
Why “not all”? Where did the “other” indie films secure release?

With 80 independent films currently set for production at Netflix, none of which will be given a theatrical release, in 2018 if you want to watch what might be a few of the most provocative films of the year, films made by some of the most prominent names in filmmaking, you’re going to have to stay home, or watch the latest Netflix “indie” on your smartphone or tablet.
Over the past couple of years, Netflix’s dominance of streaming platforms has proved game-changing for Hollywood, as they work to rewrite the film and TV universe to match its model. For anyone who cares about film and its future, that may be a scary thought, or sound potentially threatening.
But is it really?
Today, most studio greenlight conversations are at their most reductive: “Can we sell this in China?” By contrast, Netflix doesn’t care what “plays” in China, given its utter lack of presence in the country, and seeming lack of desire to gain a presence in the countries that comprise east Asia.
For now, the Netflix model injects a deep-pocketed force in the indie mix, their massive, near global reach casting a wide net, placing Netflix at the forefront of the wave of alternate narrative forms —&#32allowing producers to successfully argue for niche-audience titles that might struggle within the theatrical model —&#32while challenging the conventional distribution model.
As we write above, the early year annual Sundance, SXSW (South-by-Southwest), Tribeca and Cannes film festivals remain primary sources for the discovery of new directors and the first-rate indie films they take on the festival circuit, films that tend to garner critical and awards recognition at the end of each calendar year and, increasingly, films that are produced and screened only on Netflix. But not always. Cinema is not dead, yet.
Next month, VanRamblings will write about all the indie films that you can screen within a darkened, air-conditioned movie theatre, in this sure-to-be-sweltering upcoming summer season. In the meantime, look for …

Bisbee ’17. A Canadian première at next month’s 17th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival, screening only once (so you’ll want to get your tickets now!), on Sunday, May 13th, 6pm at SFU Goldcorp Cinema, filmmaker and writer Robert Greene will be in attendance to present his latest film, and participate in a post-screening Q&A, responding to audience questions about a film that has variously been described as the “most talked-about documentary film of the year, an audacious, arresting dream-like mosaic”, Greene’s film focused on a traumatic 1917 immigrant deportation, when an Arizona sheriff —&#32backed by union-busting thugs hired by the mining companies —&#32rounded up striking workers, exiling them to the New Mexico desert … never to be heard from again. Greene’s film, while confronting an ugly truth, discovers a measure of healing and solidarity. See Bisbee ’17 next month at DOXA, or miss out on it forever.

C’mon back next Wednesday for more DOXA Documentary Film Festival coverage, which will fit nicely into our ongoing Vancouver Votes 2018 coverage. We’ll look forward to seeing you back here next Friday for feature coverage of DOXA 2018, and an interview with the tough, the brilliant, the wonderful, our friend, Selina Crammond, who this year succeeds the near irreplaceable Dorothy Woodend, as the festival’s new Programme Director.