2016 DOXA Documentary Film Festival Program Book

#DOXA2016

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CONTENTS Tickets and General Festival Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Documentary Media Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Greetings from our Funders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Welcome from DOXA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Thank You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Spotlight: Borders and Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Special Program: Justice Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Special Program: Rated Y for Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Awards and Juries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Industry Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Curated Program: Arab Spring/Arab Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Curated Program: Black Life Is, Ain’t and Still Rises . . . . . . . . . . 21 Special Program: French French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 ESSAY: Claire Simon – The (French) Woman with a Movie Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 ESSAY: Arab Spring/Arab Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 ESSAY: Black Life Is, Ain’t and Still Rises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Festival Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

SCREENINGS Left on Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

800 kilomètres de différence / Romance (800 kilometers of difference / Romance) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 88:88 (w/ Holland, Man.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Looking for Exits: Conversations with a Wingsuit Artist . . . . . . . 83 Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and her disturbing black & white

A Good American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

drawings (w/ Beyond the Veyo, and Perfection is Forever) . . . 41

A Matter of Time (w/ NIMBI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Lucha Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

The Act of Becoming (w/ Barbarian Press) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Maya Angelou and Still I Rise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Act Out: Shorts Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Migrant Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Aim For The Roses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Mimi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Alisa in Warland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Mr. Gaga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Atlantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

My Love Affair with the Brain: The Life and Science

The Babushkas of Chernobyl (w/ The Meadow) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

of Dr. Marian Diamond (w/ Maratus: A Documystery,

The Ballad of Oppenheimer Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

and The Honeys and Bears) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Black Is...Black Ain’t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Never Turn Your Back on Sparks (w/ pepsi, cola, water?) . . . . . . 67

Le Bois dont les rêves sont faits

No Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

(The Woods Dreams Are Made Of) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Nuts! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Brothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Of Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Les Bureaux de Dieu (God’s Offices) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Les Patients (The Patients) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Cameraperson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

The Peacemaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Common Notions: Handbook Not Required

Pistol Shrimps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

(w/ Raising the Words) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

The Prison in Twelve Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Coûte que coûte (At All Costs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Récréations (Playtime) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

The Crossing (w/ 50 Feet From Syria) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Roshmia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Dance Dance Revolution! Shorts Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

SEED: The Untold Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Do Not Resist (w/ I, Destini) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Seven Songs for a Long Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

The Final Passage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Skin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Flow Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Standby for Tape Back-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

How to Build a Time Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Sud Eau Nord Déplacer (South to North) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

In Pursuit of Silence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

This Is The Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

INAATE/SE/

This Land is Your Land: Shorts Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

[it shines a certain way. to a certain place./it flies. falls./] . . . . . 81

Trapped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

The Infinite Happiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Under the Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Jonas and the Backyard Circus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Undersung (w/ We Regret to Inform You…) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Kivalina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

We Call Them Intruders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

La Laguna (w/ What Remains is Mermanat) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Wizard Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Lampedusa in Winter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Yallah! Underground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

League of Exotique Dancers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 COVER: LOOKING FOR EXITS: CONVERSATIONS WITH A WINGSUIT ARTIST

TICKETS & GENERAL FESTIVAL INFORMATION MEMBERSHIP

TICKETS AT THE VENUES

DOXA presents films that have not been seen by Consumer Protection B.C. Under B.C. law, anyone wishing to see these unclassified films must be a member of The Documentary Media Society and at least 18 years of age, unless otherwise stated. When you purchase your $2 membership, you are entitled to attend screenings, provided you show your membership card and your ticket.

VIFF’s Vancity Theatre and The Cinematheque (May 6-15) Tickets are available for all festival screenings. Box office opens 30 minutes prior to the first screening of the day at the venue.

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS: $13

SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (May 7) Tickets are available only for the screenings and events at that venue, on that day. Box office opens 30 minutes prior to the first ticketed event at the venue.

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS: $15

RUSH TICKETS

TICKETS

Weekday evenings and weekends.

All screenings at the Vancouver Playhouse and Museum of Vancouver.

STUDENTS (with Valid ID) / SENIOR (65+)

$2 discount from regular prices for any film screening except matinees, and screenings at the Museum of Vancouver, and the opening and closing night films at the Vancouver Playhouse.

Rush tickets may be available at the door when all advance tickets have been sold. A generous allotment of seats are reserved for passholders. Any unclaimed seats will be released starting 10 minutes prior to the screening on a first come, first served basis.

WEEKDAY MATINEE TICKETS: $11

WILL CALL

MEMBERSHIP: $2

Will Call opens 60 minutes prior to screenings at the Vancouver Playhouse, and 30 minutes prior, for all other screenings. Please arrive in advance to allow time to pick up your order. You must present your ID for pick up.

Weekday films starting at 5:30pm or earlier.

FESTIVAL PASS: $175

Includes membership; valid for all film screenings except the opening and closing night films at the Vancouver Playhouse.

FESTIVAL TICKET PACKAGES (online only): $

60 (5 Tickets); $110 (10 Tickets)

* Festival 5 and 10 Ticket Packs are only available online, and are valid for one ticket each for 5 or 10 films. All films must be chosen at time of purchase. Ticket Packs are NOT valid for screenings at the Vancouver Playhouse and the Museum of Vancouver, and does not include the $2 membership.

INDUSTRY PANELS (each): $15 General / $8 DOC BC Members INDUSTRY DAY PASS: $60 General / $35 DOC BC Members

* The Industry Day Pass provides access to all Industry programming on Saturday, May 7 at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, including the panels and film screenings.

REFUND POLICY

All sales are final. DOXA only offers refunds in cases of technical failure or cancellation of screening.

EXCHANGE POLICY

Tickets may be exchanged for a $3 service fee for each ticket exchanged. This must be done in person at a DOXA Box Office at least one hour before screening time. Exchanges can only be issued to the original purchaser with a valid picture ID. Complimentary and contest tickets cannot be exchanged.

ADVANCE TICKETS

Online tickets are available for purchase up to two hours in advance of the screening at www.doxafestival.ca. If the screening takes place within two hours, tickets must be purchased at the venue box office.

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Vancouver Playhouse (May 5, 11, 12, 14) Tickets are available only for the screening at that venue, on that day.

Box office opens 60 minutes prior to the screening.

THEATRE PROCEDURES FOR FESTIVAL PASSHOLDERS

Bring your festival pass and membership and arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the screening you wish to attend. Festival passholders are not guaranteed seating to sold-out shows. Your festival pass gives you access to all film screenings except the opening and closing night films at the Vancouver Playhouse. All passes are strictly nontransferable and passholders are required to show ID. VENUES

VIFF’s Vancity Theatre • 1181 Seymour Street (@ Davie St) The Cinematheque • 1131 Howe Street (@ Helmcken St) Vancouver Playhouse • 600 Hamilton Street (@ Dunsmuir St) SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts • 149 W Hastings Street (@ Abbott St) Museum of Vancouver • 1100 Chestnut Street ACCESSIBILITY

All theatres are wheelchair accessible with limited spots available.

Please email boxoffice@doxafestival.ca or call the DOXA office to make note of space requirements for advance ticket purchases.

Attendants accompanying people with disabilities will be admitted at no cost.

FESTIVAL INFORMATION

DOXA Office #110 – 750 Hamilton St | Vancouver, B.C. | Canada V6B 2R5 604.646.3200 | www.doxafestival.ca

THE DOCUMENTARY MEDIA SOCIETY DOXA is presented by The Documentary Media Society, a Vancouver based non-profit, charitable society (incorporated in 1998) devoted to presenting independent and innovative documentaries to Vancouver audiences.

Board of Directors Jill Anholt, Chris Dafoe, Sonia Fraser (chair), Andrea Gin, Kathryn Hayashi (treasurer), Roger Holdstock, Yves J. Ma, Nilesh Patel, Debra Pentecost (secretary)

The society exists to educate the public about documentary film as an art form through DOXA’s Motion Pictures Film Series and the DOXA Documentary Film Festival, a curated and juried festival comprised of public screenings, panel discussions, public forums, and educational programs.

Programming Committee Selina Crammond, Nike Hatzidimou, Paloma Pacheco, Carson Pfahl, Anant Prabhakar, Dorothy Woodend

DOXA STAFF, BOARD & COMMITTEES

Executive Director Kenji Maeda Director of Programming Dorothy Woodend Programming and Communications Coordinator Selina Crammond Operations and Volunteer Manager Gina Garenkooper Development Coordinator Tara Flynn Hospitality Manager Kaen Séguin Industry Programs and Program Book Coordinator Justin Mah Communications Assistant Vanessa Yip Finance Coordinator Nancy Loh

Screening Committee Luanne Armstrong, Michelle Bjornson, Jurgen Beerwald, Layla Cameron, Joe Gin Clark, Bernarda Cornejo, Alex de Boer, Mary Fowles, Brent Holmes, Jessica Johnson, Brie Koniczek, Christina Larabie, Anna Lumberjack, Mike Lyndon, Debra Pentecost, Kris Rothstein, Milena Salazar Fundraising Committee Tara Flynn, Sonia Fraser, Andrea Gin, Tariq Jamil, Kenji Maeda, Kaen Séguin Advisory Committee Nova Ami, Kris Anderson, Colin Browne, Szu Burgess, Peg Campbell, Mel D’Souza, Ann Marie Fleming, Cari Green, Colin Low, Duncan Low, Alex Mackenzie, Wendy Oberlander, Carmen Rodriguez, Lauren Weisler, Aerlyn Weissman Guest Curators Rebecca Carroll (Black Life Is, Ain’t and Still Rises) Zeina Zahreddine (Arab Spring/Arab Fall) Writers Michelle Bjornson, Selina Crammond, Thierry Garrel, Joe Gin Clark, Nike Hatzidimou, Brent Holmes, Paloma Pacheco, Carson Pfahl, Anant Prabhakar, Kris Rothstein, Avril Woodend, Dorothy Woodend, Vanessa Yip

STAFF KENJI MAEDA, DOROTHY WOODEND, SELINA CRAMMOND, GINA GARENKOOPER, TARA FLYNN

Print Traffic Coordinator Kathy Evans Box Office Michael Battley, Jessica Brudner Venue Managers Martin Alldred, Donna Soares, Teresa Weir Media Relations Marnie Wilson / The Artsbiz Public Relations Graphic Design steve chow / chowdesign.ca Web Development Left Right Minds / leftrightminds.com

KAEN SEGUIN, JUSTIN MAH, VANESSA YIP, NANCY LOH, KATHY EVANS, MICHAEL BATTLEY

JESSICA BRUDNER, DONNA SOARES, MARNIE WILSON, STEVE CHOW

BOARD JILL ANHOLT, CHRIS DAFOE, SONIA FRASER, ANDREA GIN, KATHRYN HAYASHI

ROGER HOLDSTOCK, YVES J. MA, NILESH PATEL, DEBRA PENTECOST

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PRESENTING PARTNER

FUNDERS

The Employment Program of British Columbia is funded by the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia. We acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia.

MAJOR PARTNERS

PREMIERE MEDIA PARTNERS

PREMIERE HOSPITALITY PARTNER

CONSULATE AND CULTURAL PARTNERS

Consulat général de France à Vancouver

INDUSTRY PROGRAM | MAJOR PARTNERS

INDUSTRY PROGRAM PARTNER

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INDUSTRY PROGRAM | AUDIENCE PARTNER

HOSPITALITY PARTNERS

MEDIA PARTNERS

AWARD PARTNER

PRINT PARTNER

DISTRIBUTION PARTNER

TRANSPORTATION PARTNER

TECHNICAL PARTNER

SCREENING PARTNERS

AUDIENCE PARTNERS

ACFC WEST, LOCAL 2020 UNIFOR

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GREETINGS FROM OUR FUNDERS A MESSAGE FROM THE MINISTER OF CANADIAN HERITAGE

A MESSAGE FROM THE MAYOR OF VANCOUVER

Welcome to the 15th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival!

The Government of Canada places great value on culture and the arts, and we are committed to supporting our artists and creators as they bring our culture to life and tell our stories. Documentary filmmaking offers an outstanding means of sharing these stories, and our country has long been known for excellence in this field. DOXA celebrates this reputation and highlights our place as a leader in this sector of the film industry. We are proud to support this festival, which brings information, insight and inspiration to Vancouver audiences through presentations of the best current documentaries.

As Minister of Canadian Heritage, I would like to thank the Documentary Media Society and all the organizers, filmmakers and volunteers for their work to promote the development and the popularity of this important art form. Congratulations on the Festival’s 15th anniversary.

On behalf of the citizens of Vancouver and my colleagues on Vancouver City Council, I want to extend my warmest greetings to all those attending the 15th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival.

We are proud of our thriving arts community in Vancouver and this festival showcases the talent and innovation that is prominent in this sector of our city.

Film plays an indispensable role in bringing new issues, concerns and human experiences to the public’s attention. By viewing our issues on screen, we open the door to education and dialogue and like those in previous years, the DOXA Documentary Film Festival of 2016 brings a remarkable new series of films before viewers. It is a tribute to the organizers and volunteers that this festival has become so popular.

Best wishes for a successful and enjoyable festival!

Gregor Robertson

MAYOR, CITY OF VANCOUVER

The Honourable Mélanie Joly

MINISTER OF CANADIAN HERITAGE

A MESSAGE FROM TELEFILM CANADA

Telefilm Canada joins with the 2016 DOXA Documentary Film Festival to celebrate our films and gather together the industry, creative talents and the public around stories — funny, sad or deeply moving — that shape our culture and mark our collective imagination.

A MESSAGE FROM THE BC ARTS COUNCIL

On behalf of the BC Arts Council, I am pleased to welcome you to the 15th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival.

Documentary filmmaking is an important artistic practice that educates, entertains and inspires. Over the past 15 years, DOXA has developed an exceptional and accessible platform for audiences to explore this innovative genre. Once again, this 11-day showcase promises to engage and enrich audiences through public screenings, panel discussions and educational programming. DOXA has received national acclaim and is one of the genre’s key screening events, providing a vital forum for national and international filmmakers.

The BC Arts Council, with funding from the Province of British Columbia, is pleased to support this outstanding festival. We would like to extend our gratitude to the festival staff and volunteers for their hard work to develop and maintain this celebration of the artistic accomplishments of documentary filmmakers.

Sincere regards, Merla Beckerman

CHAIR, BC ARTS COUNCIL

Placing the promotion of Canadian film firmly at the centre of its mission, and seeking to get more and more film lovers to experience our movies, Telefilm supports original initiatives that foster the discovery of emerging creative talents and the rediscovery of more seasoned filmmakers. Our organization works closely with the industry and with numerous partners to spur our cinema to ever-greater heights, at home and on the international scene.

Although our movies begin their careers at home in Canada, they are increasingly sought after by the world’s most prestigious film festivals, winning awards as well as praise from international critics.

While this success is built primarily on talent, the international renown of our productions, for its part, is the result of the initiatives put forward by you and our supportive industry.

On behalf of Telefilm, thank you for sharing our passion and for contributing in such a wonderful way to the promotion of our film industry.

Enjoy the festival!

Michel Roy

CHAIR OF THE BOARD, TELEFILM CANADA

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WELCOME FROM DOXA WELCOME FROM THE CHAIR OF THE BOARD

Welcome to the 2016 DOXA Documentary Film Festival, proudly brought to you by The Documentary Media Society. We are so excited to share with you a phenomenal lineup of documentaries that are bound to make you think, wonder, warm your heart, or even make you reach a boiling point. You may even find one film that expresses all of the above. We hope, though, that you find the time to see several films at the festival, meet filmmakers, and participate in our forums. Bring family, friends, and help spread the word about DOXA. We stand by our commitment to bring you the best documentary film festival we can.

It is a significant community that makes DOXA a reality. Kudos to our extraordinarily talented and hard-working staff led by Executive Director, Kenji Maeda, and Director of Programming, Dorothy Woodend. Their teams have been tirelessly assembling the programming, special events, and discussions surrounding the festival. We are also appreciative of the many volunteers who offer their time and talent, whether it is now or as part of the ongoing preparation of the festival. This group includes our Board of Directors, of whom I am grateful for their support and vision.

As well, we are incredibly fortunate to have many partners, funders, and donors who continue to provide us with the much-needed resources to showcase this festival. A special thanks to you, our audience, for coming to DOXA.

Sonia Fraser

BOARD CHAIR

WELCOME FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Welcome to the 15th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival — a festival which has had a profound impact on my life. I joined the organization eight years ago as a board member, not knowing what I was really getting into. A friend asked me if I was interested in getting involved and, with an abundance of naiveté, I said yes.

I was introduced to a new world of film — documentaries from around the world that used different styles of storytelling. Some films were heartbreaking, some were thought-provoking. Some made me angry, while others made me laugh hysterically. I was hooked. But DOXA’s programming was only a part of it. Everyone involved with the organization valued the power of bringing our community together through the medium of film. This has remained true during my entire tenure with the Festival.

This year will be my last as Executive Director. I will always be a part of DOXA, but my role will be as a patron and friend of the festival that has given me so much. Much like how I was introduced to documentaries and DOXA, I would encourage you to do the same — to bring a new person to the festival. Whether they’re interested in films about social justice, architecture, food sustainability, neuroscience, dance or basketball, there is something here for everyone.

One thing I’ve learned over the years, is that DOXA is loved; by the filmmakers, audience, sponsors, and funders. And that would not be possible without our passionate and dedicated team of volunteers, board, and staff. It’s truly a privilege to work alongside such an amazing group of people who share the common goal of celebrating documentary film.

At the core of DOXA is programming excellence. The past eight years would not have been as fun or as deeply meaningful without my colleague

and friend, Dorothy Woodend by my side who puts so much of her heart into the work and the people around her.

Join me as we take the time to appreciate the films and festival this year, and the many more to come.

Kenji Maeda

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

WELCOME FROM THE DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMING

In the process of looking at hundreds of submissions, writing reams of grants, and going to plenty of meetings, it’s easy to forget why we’re doing all this. But it only takes one film to come right off of the screen and into your heart to remind you that cinema is magic, folks! I had one of those wakeup calls with Claire Simon’s film Mimi. Ms. Simon is the subject of our first ever retrospective at DOXA and we are very happy to present seven of her films, as part of our second edition of French French.

Surprise is a glorious thing. Nothing made this clearer to me than the story of Ken Carter and his rocket-car. It is one of those stranger-thanfiction tales that reminds you Canada is a weird and wonderful place.

Director John Bolton has been labouring away for a few years to create this behemoth, but he did it! We are very proud to open the 2016 Festival with Aim For The Roses, a truly original work.

Our spotlight program is Borders and Boundaries. There wasn’t a more crucial or timely issue than borders this year, as the number of films that dealt with the refugee crisis indicated. I don’t anticipate that this issue will change anytime soon, which calls to mind the whole idea of boundaries, of how we conceive of what is right or wrong.

We have two very fun films as our midweek special presentations: Brent Hodge’s Pistol Shrimps and Rama Rau’s The League of Exotique Dancers.

Both films look at the way women are fighting for strength and identity, whether that is on the basketball court or the burlesque stage.

Our two curated programs, from Rebecca Carroll and Zeina Zahreddine, both spring from a very personal place. Whether it is growing up black in America or living through a revolution, the depth of feeling behind the selection of these films is fueled by desire for change and, ultimately, the hope that things can be different. Really, you cannot separate film from emotion. This idea is hammered home by our closing film, Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson. Composed of more than 20 years of clips, setups, and outtakes from some very famous films, it is a reminder that it is a hard-fought, tough slog to do the work and get it right.

That’s what we try to do at DOXA. No one has taught me more about this than my friend Kenji Maeda. We’ve worked together since 2008 and this will be Kenji’s last Festival. I know we’ll see each other again, but I won’t be able to hit him with a ruler anymore, make terrible jokes at his expense or sit across from him and get the job done. This makes me very sad. But there is no time for tears — we have a festival to run. Thank you to our hardworking Board of Directors, our ridiculously dedicated staff, the filmmakers, panelists and guests who make up the festival, and finally, the audience, who close the loop, in this great circle of cinematic humanity that we are all part of.

Dorothy Woodend

DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMING

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THANK YOU Thank you to our contributors, supporters, and volunteers: MaryAnn Alteen Kris Anderson Norman Armour Luanne Armstrong David Beers Mike Bernardo Brian Berry Shane Birley Adrian Bisek Marilyn Blanchette Livia Bloom Michael Boucher Véronique Bourlon Colin Browne Anthony Casey Greg Chambers Barbara Chirinos Ann Coombs Tee Crane Bruce Dale Meeru Dhalwala Felipe Diaz John Dippong Erica Dolman Heather Doucette Fanny Dufour Barbara Fairbrother Thierry Garrel Patty Gibson Alan Goldman Viviane Gosselin Katie Gravestock Jeff Grayston Brenda Grunau Steven Hawkins Linda Hay Aude Hesbert Carolyn Hicks Rob Hillstead Tiffany Hoff Cathy Hunt Shaun Inouye Julia Ivanova Kathleen Jayme Liesl Jauk LOOKING FOR EXITS

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Sheryl Jones Nicholas Kendall Peter Kendall Mina Khatam Phil Klapwyk Alan Kollins Lisemari Kordoski Denise Kostash Erika Kumar Adrienne Labelle Kate Ladyshewsky Phoenix Lam-Phipps Marsha Lederman Jeanne LeSage Jennifer Lipishan-Gorr Anne-Catherine Louvet Alie Lynch Lukas McCormick Allyson McGrane Joanne MacKinnon Martin Marquet Michelle Mason Cherryl Masters Kelly Maxwell Carrie MacGregor AnnMarie MacKinnon Jennifer Merin Tamara Messacar Robin Mirsky-Daniels Laura & Rex Moore Kelly Morris Rosie Nathani Kaleim Nathani Jesse Neate Brian Paterson David Pay Rafaël Pont Hélène Pont Mathias Posch Giulio Recchioni Al Reid Marnie Rice Klodyne Rodney Candice Rogerson Siobhan Rowe

Fanny Saintenoy Milena Salazar Jacob Saltzberg Guinevere Sanderson Minna Schendlinger Daniel Sebal Liz Shorten Christian Sida-Valenzuela Claire Simon Jim Sinclair Robin Smith Shelley Sluggett Teri Snelgrove Pierre Stolt Karen Truscott Daniel Tseghay Janice Ungaro Vikram Vij Darcy Vermeulen Mauro Vescera Brittany Vesterback Hal Wake Andrea Warner Alisha Weng Marnie Wilson Jeffrey Winter Robert Wong Gillian Wood Avril Woodend Nickolai Zarchukoff

PHOTOS © ERIK IVERSEN

DOXA’S ANNUAL FUNDRAISER | THANK YOU In November 2015, DOXA transformed CBC’s Studio 700 to host our fall fundraiser, POP. We celebrated underground anarchism in a shape-shifting collision of film, music, and performance. The evening was hosted by CBC Radio’s Lisa Christiansen and featured electrifying performances by Supermoon and Hunting, delectable canapés by Truffles Fine Foods, delicious beverages from Revelry Import Company and Granville Island Brewing, and silent and online auctions featuring 145 different items, generously donated by: Air North Ancora Waterfront Dining and Patio Andrew Peller Imports Arts Club Arts Umbrella Authentic Wine & Spirits Merchants Ballet BC Banyen Books Bard on the Beach bed Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars Bone Rattle Music Burrowing Owl Estate Winery Cactus Club Café Ético Campagnolo Roma CBC Vancouver Chris Dafoe Cibo Trattoria Cinematheque Coastal Jazz & Blues Society Connexion Photography Crazy8s The Cultch Dance House Dunbar Cycles Earls Restaurant Easy Park Electronic Arts Eterna Studios Ethical Bean EXP Restaurant + Bar Float House Forbidden Vancouver Gateway Theatre Georgia Straight

Golden Horn Vancouver Turkish Film Festival Grandview Lanes Gravity Pope H.R. MacMillan Space Centre Harbour Dance Centre Havana Herschel Supply Co. International Cellars Jean Duguay John Fluevog Shoes Kay Meek Centre La Mezcaleria Line 21 Media Live Nation Magnet Hardware (Home Hardware) Marriott SpringHill Suites Milano (includes Turks) Milltown Bar & Grill Mint Records National Film Board of Canada Off the Rail OPEN DOOR YOGA Our Community Bikes Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) Pacific Theatre Paranada Prado Cafe PuSh International Performing Arts Festival Raku Therapeutic Japanese Head Massage Rebus Creative Red Cat Records Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth Revelry Import Company Revolver Coffee Richer Health

River Rock Casino Science World British Columbia Seattle International Film Festival Shelter Point Distillery Shiatsu and CranioSacral Therapy

by Francesca Show One Productions Sons of Vancouver Distillery Sorella St. Geneve fine bed linens Steamworks Brewery Steve Robertson Swallow Tail Ten Thousand Villages The Green Moustache Top Table — CinCin Ristorante Unity Yoga Van Dusen Botanical Gardens Vancouver Craft Beer Week Vancouver Farmers Markets Vancouver Folk Music Festival Vancouver Fringe Festival Vancouver International Film Festival Vancouver International Wine Festival Vancouver Latin American Film Festival Vancouver Opera Vancouver Queer Film Festival / Out on Screen Vancouver Whitecaps FC Victor J Harris Wagner Family of Wines We would also like to thank the DOXA Board of Directors & Fundraising Committee, David Sikula, Erik Iversen, Mickey Brazeau, our wonderful volunteers, and all our supporters for making the night so special.

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THANK YOU TO OUR DONORS DOXA is honoured and grateful for every donation received throughout the year, whether it be a few dollars or thousands. We thank each and every donor for supporting our efforts in presenting the best in documentary. Through individual donations, DOXA will continue to build a film culture that informs, inspires, and educates. For more information about our individual giving program, contact Tara Flynn at tara@doxafestival.ca or 604.646.3200 ext 105.

PRODUCER ($1,000+)

SUPPORTER ($20-$149)

Jeanne Pentecost

Sonia Fraser~

Simone Artaud

Nicolas Pocard

Roger Holdstock

Peter Ball

Ana Policzer~

Fiona T. Lam

Manjit Bedi

Peter Quin-Conroy

Laura & Rex Moore

John Bell

Steve Robertson~

Michelle Bjornson

Mo Simpson • In Memory of Haida Paul

Karen Ruddy

Russel Black Susan Boutwood

ADVOCATE ($500-$999)

Peter Cameron*

Michael Choy

Betsy Carson

Janice Chutter*

Marian Collins

Joe Clark & Andrea Gin~

Melanie Covey Blair Cresswell*

MOTIVATOR ($150-$499)

Juergen Dankwort

Kris Anderson & Sheena Campbell*

Denim & Steel Interactive

Dale Aucoin~

Pat Feindel

Douglas Beaton

Tara Flynn

Nick Brandestini

Lynda Griffiths

Colin Browne~

Brent Holmes

Patrick Carroll

Bill Hubbard

Chris Dafoe

Lucy Hyslop~

Elise Drake

Liesl Jauk

Zoë Druick

Carol Jerde

Kathy Evans • In Memory of Sumit Guha

David Jones

David Frank

Kellie Lawson

Diane Johnson Neil Jones-Rodway Alpha Lam Stacy LeBlanc~ Stephen Lock~ Kenji Maeda~

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Susan Kirkpatrick Jeanne LeSage Melody Ma Jocelyn Macdougall Sara MacFayden Mel McElree

Moshe Mastai*

John Mendoza • In Honour of Manuel & Pilar Mendoza

Karie McKinley & Lauren Weisler*

Joanne Miller

Dolina McLay

Anne-Mary Mullen

S. Ti Muntarbhorn

Kevin Murawsky

Marlie Oden*

Wendy Oberlander

Jane Shatsky

Janice Pass

Robyn Smith

David Pay & Brian Laberge

Teri Snelgrove~

Debra Pentecost

Veronica Singer James Smith Michele Smolkin Sandra Sundhu Colleen Taylor Leslie Thompson* Colleen Tsoukalas Thomas E. Vadney Carmen Wiseman Robyn Young ...and all of our anonymous donors * DONORS OF TEN YEARS ~ DONORS OF FIVE TO NINE YEARS

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR LONG-TIME DONORS A very special thanks to our long-time donors who have consistently supported DOXA through regular contributions for ten years. Our deepest appreciation goes out to each of you for continuing to support the value of documentary film and the DOXA Documentary Film Festival.

Kris Anderson Peter Cameron Janice Chutter Blair Cresswell Marlie Oden Moshe Mastai Karie McKinley Leslie Thompson Lauren Weisler

SPOTLIGHT

BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES

AIM FOR THE ROSES

There was no issue more pressing or topical this year than that of borders. But as the refugee crisis continues to expand, these barriers are failing. We are witnessing the largest human migration in history. And this is only the beginning.

Lampedusa in Winter (page 51)

Jakob Brossmann, Austria/Italy/Switzerland, 2015 SAT MAY 7 | 6:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

As thousands of people try to escape war and oppression by fleeing across the Mediterranean, the result is an epidemic of death by drowning. The Island of Lampedusa is the first port of entry for many refugees.

Coupled with the ideas of physical borders, is the more difficult to establish notion of boundaries. The places we draw off in our mind. What is right or appropriate? Is it a good idea to jump off a cliff, build a time machine, or consign our fellow humans to epic suffering?

Whether we choose to transgress established concepts (time and space), or trespass on forbidden territory (the Chernobyl exclusion zone), it is an ongoing process of negotiation.

Jay Cheel’s remarkable new film explores what is perhaps the ultimate boundary, the 4th dimension, time itself.

Films featured in Borders and Boundaries include:

The Babushkas of Chernobyl (page 63)

How to Build a Time Machine (page 55)

Jay Cheel, Canada, 2016 SAT MAY 7 | 9:00PM | VANCITY THEATRE MON MAY 9 | 2:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

(w/ The Meadow)

Aim For The Roses (page 33) John Bolton, Canada, 2016

THURS MAY 5 | 7:00PM | PLAYHOUSE SUN MAY 15 | 3:00PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Every artist has his great white whale. For Canadian daredevil Ken Carter, it was jumping the St. Lawrence River in a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental.

Migrant Dreams (page 47) Min Sook Lee, Canada, 2016

SAT MAY 7 | 2:00PM | CINEMATHEQUE

In Leamington, Ontario, greenhouse food production is a billion dollar industry. It is also an industry that is highly dependent on thousands of migrant workers from Mexico, Jamaica, and Southeast Asia.

Holly Morris and Anne Bogart, USA/Ukraine, 2015 SUN MAY 8 | 8:45PM | CINEMATHEQUE

After the Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986, more than 90,000 people were forcibly evacuated and told they could never go home again. But some residents were determined to return, and slowly a small population trickled back into the region.

Roshmia (page 78)

Salim Abu Jabal, Palestine, 2015 WED MAY 11 | 9:00PM | VANCITY THEATRE

An elderly Palestinian couple’s rundown home in the Roshmia Valley, close to the Israeli city of Haifa, is the scene for a slowly unfolding tragedy.

Flow Mechanics (page 82) Nathalie Loubeyre, France, 2015

FRI MAY 13 | 5:00PM | VANCITY THEATRE

From its deliberately technocratic title to scenes of grainy security footage, Nathalie Loubeyre’s film speaks to the many ways in which debates over immigration render the experiences of those seeking refuge in Europe (and elsewhere) invisible.

The Ballad of Oppenheimer Park (page 85)

Juan Manuel Sepúlveda, Mexico, 2015 SAT MAY 14 | 4:30PM | CINEMATHEQUE

When director Juan Manuel Sepúlveda first began to hang out in Oppenheimer Park in Vancouver, he was planning to make a film about Latino gangs. But over the course of two years, the idea began to shift.

Kivalina (page 86)

Gina Abatemarco, USA, 2016 SAT MAY 14 | 5:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Once a nomadic people, the Inupiaq were relocated to Kivalina, Alaska, by the US government more than a century ago. Today, the community struggles to maintain itself in the face of forces largely beyond its control.

The Crossing (page 86)

(w/ 50 Feet From Syria)

George Kurian, Norway, 2015 SAT MAY 14 | 6:30PM | CINEMATHEQUE

The lives of a group of Syrian refugees are thrown into turmoil as they attempt to flee across the sea from Egypt to Europe.

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JUSTICE FORUM

UNDERSUNG

The intent of the Justice Forum is to facilitate active and critical engagement, create space for dialogue, and sow the seeds for social change. Each Justice Forum film is paired with a panel of speakers including filmmakers, experts in the field, academics, and community activists.

The seventh annual Justice Forum films encompass a broad range of social justice issues, from reproductive rights to food security.

Migrant Dreams (page 47) Min Sook Lee, Canada, 2016

SAT MAY 7 | 2:00PM | CINEMATHEQUE

In Leamington, Ontario, greenhouse food production is a billion dollar industry. It is also an industry that is highly dependent on thousands of migrant workers from Mexico, Jamaica, and Southeast Asia.

No Limits (page 49)

John Zaritsky, Canada, 2016 SAT MAY 7 | 4:00PM | VANCITY THEATRE

“The worst drug disaster in history would spread through 46 countries and produce up to 20,000 badly deformed babies.” So begins John Zaritsky’s new film that follows a group of people who were among the first to be affected by Thalidomide.

Lampedusa in Winter (page 51)

Jakob Brossmann, Austria/Italy/Switzerland, 2015 SAT MAY 7 | 6:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

As thousands of people try to escape war and oppression by fleeing across the Mediterranean, the result is an epidemic of death by drowning. The Island of Lampedusa is the entry port for many refugees from Africa.

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Undersung (page 57)

(w/ We Regret to Inform You...)

Adam Larsen, USA, 2015 SUN MAY 8 | 3:00 PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Adam Larsen’s film follows four different families who are caring for a child with disabilities and in the process questions what we really value as a society.

Left on Purpose (page 65)

Justin Schein and David Mehlman, USA, 2015 MON MAY 9 | 6:45PM | VANCITY THEATRE

The ethical and emotional complexities of choosing to end your own life are given cogent and thorough examination in Justin Schein’s remarkable film portrait of activist Mayer Vishner.

SEED: The Untold Story (page 82) Jon Betz and Taggart Siegel, USA, 2016 FRI MAY 13 | 6:30PM | CINEMATHEQUE

Seed stock diversity is profoundly threatened by the mechanisms of unfettered capitalism.

Monetized, hybridized, and most critically, trademarked and patented by large corporations, the genetic variance of our most common food crops is critically threatened.

A Good American (page 84)

Friedrich Moser, Austria, 2015

SAT MAY 14 | 1:30PM | CINEMATHEQUE

William Binney, an ex-NSA intelligence official turned whistleblower, offers us a unique window into the shadowy world of government security systems.

Trapped (page 71)

The Crossing (page 86)

TUES MAY 10 | 6:00PM | CINEMATHEQUE

George Kurian, Norway, 2015

Dawn Porter, USA, 2015

In Texas, the doctors and nurses who provide family planning services face a daily fight, not only from anti-choice protestors who harass staff and abuse patients, but more critically, from their own government.

Do Not Resist (page 77) (w/ I, Destini)

Craig Atkinson, USA, 2016 WED MAY 11 | 6:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Ferguson was a watershed moment for both race and class relations in America. The most troubling images of the protests in the city revealed police officers equipped like soldiers — complete with assault vehicles — facing down the local residents.

(w/ 50 Feet From Syria)

SAT MAY 14 | 6:30PM | CINEMATHEQUE

The lives of a group of Syrian refugees are thrown into turmoil as they attempt to flee across the sea from Egypt to Europe.

RATED Y FOR YOUTH

WIZARD MODE

DOXA uses documentary films to incite open discussion, affect social change and facilitate the development of an engaged and cinemaliterate audience interested in ideas, social and cultural developments.

Rated Y for Youth, now in its eighth year, was founded upon the idea of facilitating media literacy. DOXA selects programming specifically for high school students, giving youth an opportunity to attend the festival, view thought-provoking documentaries and participate in lively post-film discussions with filmmakers and community members. This year’s selection includes films about First Nations Treaty rights, youth activism from around the globe, and a little bit of pinball wizardry!

SCHOOL BOOKINGS

For information about the Rated Y program or to book your school group tickets, contact Selina Crammond at selina@doxafestival.ca or 604.646.3200 ext. 104.

The 2016 Rated Y for Youth films with discussions include:

WE CALL THEM INTRUDERS

SOS FRIENDSHIP

We Call Them Intruders (page 51)

Tamara Herman and Susi Porter-Bopp, Canada, 2015 MON MAY 9 | 12:30 PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Mining is big business in Canada. Almost 75% of the world’s mining companies call Canada home. Most resource extraction happens beyond Canadian borders, where a lack of regulation and a rapacious profit-seeking agenda has permitted horrific environmental and social impact.

Act Out: Shorts Program (page 68) Various, 2015

Wizard Mode (page 78)

Jeff Petry and Nathan Drillot, Canada, 2016 THURS MAY 12 | 12:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Wizard Mode is the story of Robert Gagno, a pinball champion who has overcome a few extra obstacles; Gagno is autistic, and did not speak until he was almost 10 years old.

INAATE/SE/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place./it flies. falls./] (page 81) Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil, Canada/USA, 2016 FRI MAY 13 | 12:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

TUES MAY 10 | 12:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

This program of short films explores the multiple forms that activism can take, whether that’s postering, skateboards, or friendship.

These kids find a way to take back their own power and help others in the process.

The Seven Fires Prophecy is an ancient Anishinaabeg story that predates and even predicted the arrival of European settlers. The prophecy acts as the bedrock of Zack and Adam Khalil’s debut feature, a palimpsest of animation, candid interviews, and hallucinatory performances.

This Land is Your Land: Shorts Program (page 75) Various, 2015

WED MAY 11 | 12:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE

From renaming a sacred mountain near Victoria, B.C., to fighting to have Treaties recognized in Saskatchewan, First Nations people across Canada are reclaiming land and identity.

RED PATH

INAATE/SE/

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AWARDS AND JURIES The DOXA award winners are selected on the basis of three major criteria: success and innovation in the realization of the project’s concept; originality and relevance of subject matter and approach; and overall artistic and technical proficiency.

DOXA is very happy to welcome an outstanding group of filmmakers, film critics, and journalists to the Awards Juries this year.

Jury members meet during the course of the festival to choose the winning films, as well as award honourable mentions.

DOXA FEATURE DOCUMENTARY AWARD JURORS

David Beers David Beers founded The Tyee, was senior editor at Mother Jones and two large newspapers, and won National Magazine Awards in the US and Canada for his writing.

Blue Sky Dream, his acclaimed Silicon Valley memoir, is widely assigned in universities. He is an adjunct professor at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism and coorganizer of the Urbanarium City Debates.

Barbara Chirinos Originally from New York City, Barbara Chirinos currently serves as the Executive Director of the Granville Island Cultural Society. Barbara created and continues to cocurate the VIFF/Vancity Black History Month film series. She also enjoyed her work as VIFF’s Gala Producer.

Andrea Warner Andrea Warner is a writer, critic, and co-host of the podcast, Pop This!. She is an associate producer at CBC Music, and other bylines include Exclaim!, The Georgia Straight, Pitchfork, Charleston City Paper, and The Globe and Mail.

Pop culture, art, and feminism make her happy. Conveniently, all three fit in pretty well with her debut book, We Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled the ‘90s and Changed Canadian Music, which was published by Eternal Cavalier Press, Spring 2015, and is currently in its third printing. Hang out with her on Twitter @_AndreaWarner.

Janice Ungaro Vancouver favourite Janice Ungaro has spent the past 14 years working in Los Angeles writing and producing the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40, The Phil Hendrie Show, and The Bill Handel Show. She continues to tour with and produce the Jillian Michaels Show. Janice is the Co-Host of the Janice & Cory Show, heard daily 3pm-6pm on Roundhouse Radio.

DOXA SHORT DOCUMENTARY AWARD JURORS

Daniel Tseghay Daniel Tseghay is a Vancouver-based organizer and freelance writer who’s written for RankandFile.ca, The Georgia Straight, and the Toronto Star, among others.

Shaun Inouye Shaun Inouye works at The Cinematheque, a non-profit film institute in Vancouver. He holds a Masters in Film Studies from the University of British Columbia, for which he wrote a thesis on André Bazin. He has published articles on Jean-Luc Godard and Harmony Korine. In 2015, he curated the screening series and art exhibition, Traces That Resemble Us, at The Cinematheque and Monte Clark Gallery.

COLIN LOW AWARD FOR CANADIAN DOCUMENTARY JURORS, PRESENTED

BY WILLIAM F. WHITE

Kathleen Jayme Kathleen Jayme is a Canadian filmmaker based in Vancouver, B.C.. She is a graduate of UBC’s Film Production Program, where she won a Leo for Best Student Production. Her latest documentary, Paradise Island, was featured at the 2015 Cannes Short Film Corner. Kathleen works at the National Film Board of Canada as a Production Coordinator where she brings what she learns from experienced directors, editors, and producers to her own films.

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Hal Wake Hal Wake has been engaged with the literary community in Canada for more than 30 years. In the mid 1980s he was the book producer for CBC Radio’s Morningside with Peter Gzowski. He has hosted or moderated hundreds of literary events at festivals in Vancouver, Victoria, New York, Whitehorse, Melbourne, and Sydney Australia. His reviews have appeared in The Georgia Straight, The Globe and Mail, and The Vancouver Sun. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival.

Marsha Lederman Marsha Lederman is the Western Arts Correspondent for The Globe and Mail, based in Vancouver. She covers film, television, visual art, literature, music, theatre, dance, cultural policy, and related issues. Before joining The Globe, Marsha worked for CBC Radio, mostly in Toronto, where she held a variety of positions, including National Arts Reporter. Marsha was born in Toronto and has lived in Vancouver since 2007.

NIGEL MOORE AWARD FOR YOUTH PROGRAMMING

DOXA is extremely proud to announce the fourth edition of the Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming. Named in memory of Nigel Moore, a young man whose passion for knowledge, exploration, and advocacy found a home in his love for documentary film. For younger audiences, documentary has particular relevance. The world in which they’re growing up is an increasingly complex place.

Documentary not only captures this complexity, but also has the capacity to act as a catalyst for social change, and fundamentally alter people’s behaviour.

The award will be adjudicated by a youth jury, who will choose the film that best exemplifies the qualities of compassion, social engagement, and spirit in which Nigel lived.

JURORS:

Steven Hawkins • Jacob Saltzberg • Teagan Dobson

THE ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS EDA AWARD FOR BEST FEMALE-DIRECTED FILM

DOXA and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ) is proud to present the EDA Award to recognize and honour excellent work by a woman film director. In addition to presenting year end awards during the annual movie awards season, AWFJ partners with select film festivals throughout the year to present EDA Awards for best female directed films in the documentary, narrative feature and short categories. EDA Awards presented at festivals are often a film’s first award, and boosts industry and public awareness of the winner, often leading to sales, other festival appearances and funding for the filmmaker’s future projects. EDA Awards are also presented in conjunction with special events, most notably with the Museum of Modern Art’s 25th Anniversary Retrospective of the POV Documentary Program on Public Television in the US. The EDA Awards were named in honour of Eda Reiss Merin, an actress, founder of AFTRA, member of AMPAS and the mother of AWFJ founder and president, Jennifer Merin.

AWFJ juries are drawn exclusively from AWFJ membership, a collective of leading professional film journalists based in the US, Canada, and the UK. To learn more about the EDA Awards and other AWFJ activities, visit www.awfj.org.

Audience Survey

Thoughts?

Fill out DOXA’s 2016 Audience Survey and receive *$50 worth of FREE drive time courtesy of Modo.

You’ll also be entered to win a Prize Pack featuring:

• A 2017 DOXA Festival Pass • A Herschel backpack • $50 Modo gift certificate Surveys are available at the venues during the festival. *valid for new Modo members only 17

D OX A I N D U S T R Y DAY S AT U R DAY M AY 7 SFU’S GOLDCORP CENTRE FOR THE ARTS LE BOIS DONT LES RÊVES SONT FAITS

DOXA Documentary Film Festival is proud to present a day of panels and events to address the interests and needs of the documentary community. As documentary and nonfiction cinema enters into the mainstream, filmmakers are increasingly required to not only make their films, but to understand promotion, proliferating platforms, and new means of accessing audience. It is a brave new world for filmmakers, but if you would like some guidance, DOXA is here to help, with a series of panels that will address issues and areas of particular concern to those working in nonfiction cinema.

4:00PM – 5:00PM | SPECIAL PRESENTATION

Special Presentation: National Film Board of Canada’s Making Movie History project FREE ADMISSION

9:30AM – 11:00AM | PANEL

Distribution and Beyond As distribution models continue to evolve at an exponential rate, the traditional gatekeepers (i.e., broadcasters, distributors, and festivals) are forced to contend with additional challenges, including VOD releases. What does this mean to individual filmmakers who are looking for an audience? Does the proliferation of platforms (Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes) supplant or support traditional theatrical release? Attendees will have the opportunity to put questions to Industry pioneers. Robin Smith (Kinosmith), Jeffrey Winter (The Film Collaborative), and Michelle Van Beusekom (National Film Board) will provide expert perspective on the changing playing field.

In celebration of the NFB’s 77th anniversary, join us for a special presentation by Michelle Van Beusekom, Executive Director of English Programming at the National Film Board.

Making Movie History is a project featuring exclusive interviews with the creators and innovators who shaped Canadian cinema throughout the 20th century. Watch 61 portraits of iconic figures in Canadian cinema, from Grant Munro to Norman McLaren, to the pioneers of Studio D — the world’s first studio creating films for, by, and about women.

An iPad installation of the Making Movie History project will be available during DOXA at the Vancity Theatre from May 7-15. nfb.ca/makingmoviehistory

11:30AM – 1:00PM | PANEL

The Personal and the Political As part of our special curated programs, this panel will address the complex and occasionally intractable nature of politics and nonfiction cinema. Activists and artists do not always share the same agenda, but often they find themselves working in close proximity. Navigating the demands of social issue films and the need for creative filmmaking can be a challenge. How to create a balanced relationship between art and issues will be the focus of this extended discussion.

2:00PM – 3:30PM | PANEL

Editing for Documentary PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CANADIAN CINEMA EDITORS

Building on DOXA’s highly successful panel on editing for documentary from the 2015 Festival, this year we offer an extended and in-depth panel focusing on creating a skill set for filmmakers and editors alike. The panel will include attending international guests, including filmmakers, editors, and experts.

INDUSTRY PROGRAM MAJOR PARTNERS

6:45PM-8:00PM | FILM SCREENING

Les Patients (The Patients)

8:30PM-11:00PM | FILM SCREENING

Le Bois dont les rêves sont faits

(The Woods Dreams Are Made Of) Join us for two of Claire Simon’s films. Les Patients (The Patients) and Le Bois dont les rêves sont faits (The Woods Dreams Are Made Of).

Claire Simon, the subject of a retrospective at the Festival this year, will be present to speak to her body of work and participate in Q&As. INDUSTRY PANELS (each): $15 General / $8 DOC BC Members INDUSTRY DAY PASS: $60 General / $35 DOC BC Members

The Industry Day Pass provides access to all Industry programming on Saturday, May 7 at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, including the panels and film screenings.

INDUSTRY PROGRAM PARTNERS

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Three different types of financing.

Three different funds.

All from one source.

The Rogers Group of Funds offers support to Canadian independent producers with three different types of funding: Rogers Telefund offers loans to Canadian independent producers; Rogers Documentary Fund, Canada’s premier source of funding for documentary films and Rogers Cable Network Fund, an equity investor in Canadian programs with a first play on a Canadian cable channel. Three different types of financing. Three different funds. All from one source – Rogers.

For more information contact Robin Mirsky, Executive Director, at (416) 935-2526.

Application deadlines for the Rogers Documentary Fund are Wednesday, April 13 and Wednesday, August 17, 2016.

Application deadlines for the Rogers Cable Network Fund are Wednesday, June 22 and Wednesday, October 5, 2016.

www.rogersgroupoffunds.com

ARAB SPRING

/ ARAB FALL

SKIN

CURATED BY ZEINA ZAHREDDINE

A burgeoning new Arab cinema — bold, inventive, political and unafraid — is emerging out of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. This group of films is from a new generation of artists and filmmakers who are making work in the midst of profound cultural and social change.

The films in Arab Spring/Arab Fall include:

Roshmia (page 78)

Salim Abu Jabal, Palestine, 2015 WED MAY 11 | 9:00PM | VANCITY THEATRE

An elderly Palestinian couple’s rundown home in the Roshmia Valley, close to the Israeli city of Haifa, is the scene for a slowly unfolding tragedy.

Yallah! Underground

Skin (page 73)

(page 80)

Farid Eslam, UK/USA/Germany/Canada/Egypt/Czech Republic, 2015

Afraa Batous, Lebanon/Syria/Turkey, 2015

THURS MAY 12 | 8:45 PM | CINEMATHEQUE

TUES MAY 10 | 8:30PM | CINEMATHEQUE

In the face of the bitter horror of the Syrian situation, three young artists (Sobhi, Hussein, and Afraa) attempt to find some meaning in their lives through art and theatre.

The revolutionary power of music is the subject of Farid Eslam’s rollicking documentary, buoyed along by performances from some of the Arab world’s most exciting new performers.

Read Zeina’s essay on page 26.

BLACK LIFE IS, AIN’T AND STILL RISES THIS IS THE LIFE

CURATED BY REBECCA CARROLL

This selection of films examines ideas, perceptions, and construction of race. From Marlon Riggs’s seminal, and final film (Black Is…Black Ain’t), to a new film biography of Maya Angelou, these films are fearless, angry, proud, and powerful.

The films in Black Life Is, Ain’t and Still Rises include:

Maya Angelou and Still I Rise

(page 59)

Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack, USA, 2016 SUN MAY 8 | 5:30PM | VANCITY THEATRE SUN MAY 15 | 3:30PM | CINEMATHEQUE

The life and times, and most importantly the art, of Maya Angelou is given expansive coverage in Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack’s film biography.

Black Is…Black Ain’t

(page 63)

Marlon Riggs and Christiane Badgley, USA, 1995 MON MAY 9 | 4:45PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Filmmaker/activist/poet Marlon Riggs’s final film is packed with ideas and images, song and dance, performance and conversation — all of it in search of what it means to be black.

This Is The Life

(page 81)

Ava DuVernay, USA, 2008 FRI MAY 13 | 2:45PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Director Ava DuVernay’s debut film documents the life and times of The Good Life Café and the early days of L.A. hip hop.

Read Rebecca’s essay on page 30.

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SUD EAU NORD DÉPLACER

800 KILOMÈTRES DE DIFFÉRENCE / ROMANCE

DOXA is very proud to offer a second edition of French French, which includes a retrospective of the work of Claire Simon. Ms. Simon was part of DOXA last year with our first selection of French films, curated by Thierry Garrel. In addition to presenting Géographie humaine (Human Geography), Claire also gave a masterclass and presented a selection of clips from some of her earlier films. This brief glimpse of her extraordinary body of work was enough to launch the idea of a retrospective.

We are extremely happy to welcome Claire Simon back to Vancouver with seven of her most celebrated films.

In addition to the retrospective, we have a selection of three new and exciting films. The Final Passage is a 3-D animated portrait of the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Caves.

The screening will be accompanied by a talk from Dr. Jean-Michel Geneste and Patricia Marquet Geneste.

Antoine Boutet’s South to North, a look at the largest water transfer project in China, is documentary on an epic scale. Nathalie Loubeyre’s film Flow Mechanics examines the refugee crisis through grainy surveillance footage and infrared cameras.

SUD EAU NORD DÉPLACER LE BOIS DONT LES RÊVES SONT FAITS Consulat général de France à Vancouver

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CLAIRE SIMON RETROSPECTIVE

Les Patients (The Patients)

(page 53)

Claire Simon, France, 1990

SAT MAY 7 | 6:45PM | SFU-GCA

Dr. Jean-Marie Bouvier could be a character from a novel. With his thick rimmed glasses, dark suit, and undeniable charm, he is a study in competence and no-nonsense compassion, but also a lesson in how to be a good human being.

Le Bois dont les rêves sont faits (The Woods Dreams Are Made Of)

ADDITIONAL FRENCH FILMS

(page 53)

Claire Simon, France, 2015

SAT MAY 7 | 8:30PM | SFU-GCA

The Bois de Vincennes park, in Paris, spans some 995 hectares and contains multitudes. Whether it’s gay men cruising for sex in the rain, or a hermit who makes a home deep in a remote section of the woods, everywhere humans are busily going about their business.

Mimi

(page 61)

Claire Simon, France, 2002 SUN MAY 8 | 8:15PM | VANCITY THEATRE

On a warm sunny day in the seaside town of Nice, France, Mimi and her friend Claire walk and talk about her memories of the town. A naturalborn raconteur, Mimi’s métier is memory.

Les Bureaux de Dieu (God’s Offices)

(page 68)

Claire Simon, France, 2008

TUES MAY 10 | 3:00PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Life inside a family planning clinic is the basis for Claire Simon’s seamless mixture of documentary and performance. The doctors and counselors are played by some of France’s most acclaimed actresses while the patients are all non-professional actors.

Récréations (Playtime)

(page 69)

Claire Simon, France, 1992

Sud Eau Nord Déplacer (South to North)

(page 57)

Antoine Boutet, France, 2015

SUN MAY 8 | 2:00PM | CINEMATHEQUE

The subject of Antoine Boutet’s extraordinary film is made clear from the opening scene. It is scale. Boutet follows the construction of the Nan Shui Bei Diao – North South Water Transfer Project – the largest water transfer project in the world.

The Final Passage

(page 73)

Pascal Magontier, France, 2016 TUES MAY 10 | 7:15PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Made entirely using 3-D models, The Final Passage is an uninterrupted journey through the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave, whose steady development approaches the experience of the first men who spent time in the cave 36,000 years ago.

Flow Mechanics

(page 82)

Nathalie Loubeyre, France, 2015 FRI MAY 13 | 5:00PM | VANCITY THEATRE

By combining stark footage with poignant testimonies, director Nathalie Loubeyre paints a bleak picture of the migrant crisis in Europe and the precarious lives of those living at the continent’s literal and figurative margins.

TUES MAY 10 | 5:45PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Shot entirely in the courtyard of a French kindergarten, Récréations is a marvel of protean shape-shifting action, not unlike watching the play of molecules in the universe, or macaque monkeys on the loose.

Coûte que coûte (At All Costs)

(page 75)

Claire Simon, France, 1995

WED MAY 11 | 2:45PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Capitalism, red in tooth and claw, is the basis of Claire Simon’s comic tragedy of business heartbreak. The scene is a small catering company in the seaside city of Nice. The business is barely a year old, but is already in major trouble.

800 kilomètres de différence / Romance (800 kilometers of difference / Romance)

(page 79)

Claire Simon, France, 2001

THURS MAY 12 | 3:15PM | VANCITY THEATRE

Manon and Greg are in love. In a small village in Provence, Greg works with his father, the village baker at night. Manon, on summer holidays from her school in Paris, is director Claire Simon’s only daughter.

Thierry Garrel, a French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, joined the Research Department of French Television (ORTF) at the age of twenty and went on to Head of the Documentary and Junior Authors Division at the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA). From 1987 until 2008, he was the Head of the Documentary Film Department of La Sept and ARTE France, European cultural channels. While in this position, he developed many highly regarded programs and the renowned “GRAND FORMAT” collection which has coproduced and aired over 200 international award-winning feature length documentaries. Since 2009, he has worked as a consultant and is devoted to “experience feedback”, by tutoring international seminars and workshops focusing on young documentary creators and professionals.

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LES PATIENTS

FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM

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CLAIRE SIMON The (French) Woman with a Movie Camera

BY THIERRY GARREL

“Un documentaire est la plupart du temps la recherche effrénée, passionnelle, d’une histoire qu’on ne connaît pas et qui menace de ne pas apparaître tout au long du film. Tout film documentaire se situe par rapport à ce manque, l’histoire y est l’objet du désir, du cinéaste comme du spectateur.”

How people ‘play’ themselves is part of Simon’s insatiable curiosity.

Candid, but never intrusive or voyeuristic, provocative by its very presence, Simon’s approach engages empathy in the suffering, hope, and dignity of real people. Or, as she says, “To build the truth one has to understand what is really going on, because the spectator will see what I understand.”

“Most of the time, a documentary is the unbridled, passionate quest of an unknown story that throughout the film threatens not to Whether she is filming her friend in the streets and parks of Nice, appear. Every documentary film has to cope with this gap, the story France, to evoke intimate recollections (Mimi), or engaging in is the object of desire of the filmmaker and of the viewer as well.” conversation with the eclectic and multiracial population that -CLAIRE SIMON constitutes daily life in Vincennes Park (Le Bois dont les rêves sont faits/The Woods Dreams Are Made Of) — her work collects stories Last year during DOXA 2015, Vancouver cinephiles discovered and characters so vivid and unforgettable that fiction could never Claire Simon’s Géographie humaine (Human Geography), a film compete. Moments both large and small are given resonance and composed of people and experiences taking place in Paris’s Gare room to breathe. The gentle phone conversation between a doctor du Nord, the biggest train station in Europe. In her astonishing, and and his patient who is threatening to kill herself with a revolver, invigorating masterclass, Ms. Simon also screened clips from some the ‘kidnapping’ of a little girl by a gang of boys on a kindergarten of her previous films. This year at DOXA, Vancouver audiences playground, or the tears of a young woman seeking an abortion. will have the opportunity to see seven of these documentaries in a Simon devoted one of her most moving films to a 15-year-old girl retrospective of Claire Simon’s work. (her own daughter!) falling in love with the baker’s son in a small It started 30 years ago, when Simon began making short fiction village in Provence, in 800 kilomètres de différence / Romance (800 films. By chance, she attended one of the famous Varan Workshops, kilometers of difference / Romance). a movement inspired by master/précurseur Jean Rouch, ethnologist, cinéaste, and inventor of Cinéma Direct (a name he preferred to the Although Simon’s work often broaches major themes like ‘Goodness’ ambiguous Cinéma Vérité). This hands-on approach to making films (Le Bois…), or ‘Money’ (Coûte que coûte / At All Costs), a film that coincided with the advent of smaller cameras that allowed filmmakers follows the thrilling ups and downs of a small catering business, she to establish intimate contact with their subjects, to invite them to never theorizes abstractly about issues. Instead, she embodies and participate in a kind of game where real life becomes the flesh of a reveals complexity by exploring territories where characters are in the grip of life, uncovering truth, but at the same time preserving film. something of their transparent opacity.

In her debut feature documentary, Les Patients (The Patients), Simon followed a family doctor — her father’s best friend — visiting his Film after film, Claire Simon has built a consistent œuvre and become patients for the last time before his retirement. Through the lens an influential and consummate auteur. She has always been interested of her tiny V8 video camera, Simon catches precious, and at times in abolishing the line between documentary and fiction, crossing this hilarious glimpses of these elderly people, as well as the tenderness border with intelligence and a profound dedication to the human and care of a therapeutic relationship. Two years later, Simon made spirit. In Les Bureaux de Dieu (God’s Offices), famous French actresses Récréations (Playtime). It was 1991 and the first Hi8 video broadcast play écoutantes (“listeners”) in partnership with non-professionals, cameras were coming into use. Simon spent days in the courtyard who take on the role of visiting patients in an abortion clinic — the of a kindergarten with her small camera, capturing the raw, brutal, result is an astonishing blend of fiction and reality. and occasionally tender games of children. Free of any adult control, these kids fashion epic stories of love and struggle. The result was a Whether it is teenagers, little children, old folks, or sex workers, Simon is able to establish her documentary pact with people of a different portrait of human socialization in its formative (molten) state. age, sexual orientation, religion, and race. In so doing, she dives deep Tenderness is at the core of Simon’s work. She takes aim at people into the human soul to reveal the universality of experience — be it with a respectful and benevolent camera that is fully inhabited by shame, pride, desire, sorrow, or joy. What ultimately emerges is the the spirit of amicalité (“friendliness”). It is the approach that the thrilling experience of being human. Or, as the French documentarist philosopher Kostas Axelos urged people to take up as the new mode Dominique Dubosc so perfectly stated: “Of rediscovering that there for globalized mankind: “Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent?” is but one human species and I belong to it.”

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YALLAH! UNDERGROUND

YALLAH! UNDERGROUND

SKIN

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ROSHMIA

YALLAH! UNDERGROUND

YALLAH! UNDERGROUND

I can still recall the crowds, the faces, the chants, the tears of joy, and mostly the cries of “The people want to bring down the regime!” The events we witnessed were unprecedented, unplanned, and almost surreal. The images pouring from little-known city squares were overwhelming. “Is this actually happening right now? By the hour?

No, by the minute!”

WE WERE WITNESSING HISTORY UNFOLDING IN FRONT OF OUR OWN EYES; WE WERE MAKING HISTORY.

BY ZEINA ZAHREDDINE

The spark started in Tunisia with a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi.

The idea moved swiftly to Egypt, and then blazed a trail across Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The hibernating masses thought to be dead, awoke — first in the hundreds, then swiftly to the thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and finally millions of people, until we lost count of their numbers. A giant has awakened but it was a gentle behemoth with flowers in its hands, chanting improvised lyrics on human dignity and democracy, and the end of terror and bloodshed. We, who had lived in this Arab world our entire lives, were meeting for the first time. The God-like figures of power and control that we had engraved in our minds and souls as eternal were dissolving, disappearing. Unbelievably and against all odds, we were actually winning.

THE ARAB SPRING EMERGED…

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YALLAH! UNDERGROUND

YALLAH! UNDERGROUND

SKIN

YALLAH! UNDERGROUND

YALLAH! UNDERGROUND

ROSHMIA

The question of what would come next was implicit. We had not expected to win this struggle. We had always been the generation of defeat, of wasted dreams, from Jerusalem to Beirut to Baghdad.

Which nation would be the next to catch fire? We waited, but there was only a resounding deafening silence. When it did start, it came almost unexpectedly, with Deraa’s kids drawing the famous slogan: “The People Want to Bring Down the Regime!” on their school wall.

Then the doors of hell opened. For the first time we saw mutilated corpses of children in a display of unremitting horror. But still, the flowers and the candles resolutely faced steel and power for six long months, while the international community seemingly tried to catch up to the pace of change.

As the entire world watched the Arab Spring, you could almost hear the thoughts from the international powers. “How long do you think they can stand it?” “I don’t know, but it looks exciting, let’s wait and see!” As strategists, diplomats, and politicians offered analysis and debate on talk shows and television programs, our lack of expertise and naïve wishful thinking became clearer as time passed. Measures were undertaken to stem the rising tide in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Soon the questions began to shift. Was this Arab Spring too much to handle? For how long could crowds be defenseless? How long would they stand united in the face of violence and horror? As the democratic uprising slid into devastating civil wars or was cut short by formidable military campaigns, violence reemerged and the Arab Fall unfolded. The sudden and still largely incomprehensible images of pacifist action and democratic change coming from the heart of the Arab world were once again normalized. The familiar images of frail kids that could be saved by donating ten dollars a day or a warm blanket were back, and the world was again comprehensible to Western eyes.

But did we all as human beings miss our chance to uplift an entire region from the black hole of oppression and violence. Did we discard the cries for freedom and democracy just because they were voiced in Arabic? Did we miss the momentum that the Spring brought to us? Maybe… But as a generation, we gained one thing, namely, the priceless gift of lucidity.

cannot be undone. New untold stories are coming to the surface; sincere and simple yet propelled by a universality and humanity that cannot be denied or ignored.

It is with this approach that I selected the films in the Arab Spring/ Arab Fall program. This program is not intended as a panorama of films made about and around the Arab Spring, rather it is a trial, an attempt to illustrate the lab-like questioning and longing for cinematic experimentation from the same generation that fueled the Arab Spring. This program is intended to offer Vancouver audiences a special pass into a world in the midst of profound change with films that not only capture extraordinary stories but that also honour the people at the heart of these stories.

Roshmia, a debut documentary feature by Salim Abu Jabal, depicts the life of an elderly Palestinian couple living in a shack and facing demolition by Israeli authorities. As the ‘Palestinian Superhero’ idea is replaced by the reality of an elderly frustrated couple, the film becomes a rare piece of authenticity where merciless action is undertaken by those in power as easily as washing one’s hands.

Another first-time filmmaker, Afraa Batous’s film Skin is a tale of friendship, theatre, and displacement set against the backdrop of the Syrian tragedy. The narrative travels along with the three young displaced friends between Alepo, Beirut, and Istanbul as they contend with the reality of their homeland. Farid Eslam’s Yallah!

Underground uses music as a uniting force for radical change, as the emerging underground progressive music scene that rattles cages and demands dancing.

For the first time in a very long time, no one is waiting for a savior who promises victories for the price of freedom. People are open to exploring, experimenting, and making mistakes. The seeds for a new beginning are now buried deep in the earth. Will they flourish?

Will the Arab Spring generation carry its people into the future, into modernity, into a new Lumières era? Who will play the decisive roles of belief-shakers, new idea-whisperers? Who will be the next philosopher-innovators? Are they activists, artists, or filmmakers?

Or maybe all three at once.

I can’t believe this all began only five years ago. It feels like a lifetime.

Just as autumn strips the trees bare, the Arab Fall revealed the naked structure and dynamics of power and ideology. The dictator-saviour paradigm was overthrown, and slogans like, “fight for Palestine,” were revealed to be thin and worn out. Ideals and belief systems are actively questioned and forced to endure the rigorous test of the intellect.

This is the ideal time to make documentaries and that is exactly what is happening. In and around the Arab World, filmmakers and artists are creating timeless films that capture and document a decisive crossroad. This is not only a political or philosophical crossroad, but a conceptual one as well. Suddenly new ideas are being introduced, examined, and tested. Dialogues and roundtable discussions are bubbling away, and individuality and artistic expression is flowering.

Even language itself is transforming. Change has happened and it

Zeina Zahreddine has worked in the independent film industry in Lebanon and the Arab World since 2005. She was the Executive Director of Beirut DC, organized Arab Film Weeks in Edinburgh and Manchester (UK), and was the project manager of Crossroads. Residing now in Vancouver, she is contributing to projects and events for film organizations like Women in Film and Television Vancouver and Crazy8s. She is producing the new creative documentary of Syrian filmmaker Hazem Alhamwi (From My Syrian Room) and working with many Arab filmmakers on promoting independent Arab films in North America.

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BY REBECCA CARROLL

Early on in the documentary Maya Angelou and Still I Rise, Angelou talks about the painful memory of when she and her brother Bailey were abandoned as children by their parents. Her mother and father were very much in love with each other and had “agreed to disagree,” and not to concern themselves with the responsibility that came with having two toddlers. Angelou recalls: “They put us on a train and sent us from Los Angeles to Arkansas with tags on our arms. “No adult supervision.” While Angelou describes the experience as devastating — “I declared my mother dead so that I wouldn’t have to long for her” — of her brother, she says, “He never recovered.”

This is not the single most resonant passage from the film — indeed, there are many, and ones that are far more harrowing, but for me, none were so viscerally unnerving, poignant, and immediately identifiable.

I was also abandoned by my birthmother, but I did not declare her dead. Worse than the rejection I felt from my birthmother, who is 30

white, was the profound sense of cultural severance from blackness — from which, like Bailey, I have never truly recovered. Before I even understood what it meant to be black, I knew what it meant to miss black kindred — the way in which blackness will cradle you, and know you. In essence, for young Maya and her brother Bailey, this is what they also lost when their parents sent them to Stamps, Arkansas.

And it informed Maya’s entire life.

In her own words: “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated… in fact it may be necessary to encounter defeat so we can know who the hell we are, what we can overcome, what makes us stumble and fall and somehow miraculously rise and go on.” So begins the documentary, a foreshadowing of the life we are about to witness — the abandonment by her parents, the geographical upheaval, the rape by her mother’s boyfriend and subsequent five years of muteness, the poetry, Caged Bird, the fight, the struggle, the politics,

falling in love, having a son, Malcolm and Martin and Patrice, Africa… and always, still, the extraordinary, resilient, magnificent levels of blackness. An almost vigilant repose, as Angelou later captures in her 1971 poem, “The Mothering Blackness”: “She came home running/ back to the mothering blackness/deep in the smothering blackness” — a sinewy torso of testimony that white America can ultimately never contuse.

Maya Angelou was an enormously important and influential figure in my life. After her death in 2014, I wrote: I had no idea how desperate I was for this figure until I started reading Maya Angelou. I absolutely devoured her books. I read Caged Bird, then Gather Together in My Name, and one of my all-time favorites, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas. Yes, I loved her poetry: Still I Rise; Phenomenal Woman — how can you not?

same, walk the same, think the same — we don’t all talk the same. As Angela Davis tells us in the film, regarding her sense of self: “I mean, I know the way I act and the way I talk and the way I think, reflects all the places that I’ve been and I’ve been a lot of places.” The simple yet authoritative power of this reasoning is essentially the equivalent of what the young folks today would call “getting your life.”

Arguably, there are few folks who get their lives with more clarity and vigour than “The Good Life” emcees featured in the 2008 documentary, This is The Life — and the black woman who made the film, Ava DuVernay. The film serves as an ensemble profile and presentation of the alternative Los Angeles-based music scene created during the early 90s that pushed boundaries, elevated young black and brown voices, and upcycled the very fabric of hip hop.

It is both gritty and elegant, while also wholly expressive of Maya Angelou’s Rise Up and Marlon Riggs’ paean to black individuality and variance.

But what I loved more, and saw, felt and gained access to through her writing across genres was not merely a story of black girlhood, but a paradigm of emotional vigour, intellectual clarity and a full-on black woman-ness that I hungrily internalized and cherished throughout my childhood and into my adult years.

I imagined her young self alternately as my sister and myself; her young adult self as my mentor; her grown self as my mother, my grandmother, and my great grandmother — an ancestor supreme.

This documentary is an embodiment of all that I loved and love about Angelou, and serves as an emotional anatomy of a fearless and unapologetic black woman whose radical accessibility, intellect, and self-awareness touched everyone from James Baldwin to Oprah Winfrey. My early admiration of her, though, came with significant challenges. There was nothing and no one in my immediate environment to reflect my discovery and yearning for all of what she represented to me. Enter Marlon Riggs’ stunningly declarative documentary, Black Is...Black Ain’t, which came out the same year I met my birthfather, who is black, for the first time.

What resonated with me from the film then is different from what resonates now. Then it was a beautiful, complicated refuge as I continued to grapple with my still evolving racial identity. In my birthfather I saw the defeat that Maya Angelou spoke of, but not the buoyancy. He had been homeless for most of his adult life after I was “taken away by white people, just like during slavery,” and although visibly, painstakingly grateful to lay claim to my existence, my successes, such as they were at the time, he was also clearly at the end of a life over which he had never fully been able to wrest power. He died some years later in his early 60s from general poor health, and as the black man America expected him to only be: disenfranchised, resentful, oversexualized, underpaid, and feared. I needed more ways to be black. I found them in Black Is...Black Ain’t.

Today, as our first black President comes to the end of his second term, and at a time when deconstructing the myth of a black monolith can be seen throughout popular culture, politics, education and media, it has been never more important to revisit Riggs’ message that we as black people are not all one thing. We don’t all dress the

At a health food store in South Central Los Angeles called The Good Life Café (which closed in 1995), DJs and rap artists and emcees, young and established, gathered weekly to cultivate strength and vernacular and joy. What started as a way to keep youth off the streets and in direct opposition to the pervasive and violent culture of gangsta rap, The Good Life transformed into both a cipher and a movement, of which DuVernay was an integral part. Then known as MC Eve of Figures of Speech, DuVernay, who would go on to direct the critically acclaimed and award -winning feature film Selma (2014), ostensibly made a documentary about counter-culture hiphop artists, but actually delivered a blueprint for open-mic attitude and freestyle mastery.

Together, these three films create a lifeline, a narrative fluency that exists to rise and be and express — a black girl raised in the South morphs into a meditation on the many ways to be black, reimagined and spit into lyrical genius, captured by a woman who would become known for reaching back into history to remind us of a man, who Maya Angelou later memorializes as “the great soul” — all for the love of blackness.

Rebecca Carroll is a producer of special projects focusing on race at WNYC/New York Public Radio. She is a regular Opinion Writer at The Guardian US and the author of five nonfiction books, including Sugar in the Raw and Saving the Race. Her columns, profiles, film and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, Ebony, and Gawker, among others.

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Andrew Chang & Johanna Wagstaffe with

Weeknights at 6 pm cbc.ca/bc 32

Vancouver CBC

@cbcnewsbc @andrewchangcbc @jwagstaffe

THURSDAY MAY 5

OPENING NIGHT FILM

7:00 PM PLAYHOUSE

Aim For The Roses John Bolton, Canada, 2016, 102 mins

Every artist has his great white whale. For Melville, it was an actual whale. For Canadian daredevil Ken Carter, it was jumping the St. Lawrence River in a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental. Vancouver composer Mark Haney’s quixotic quest was writing a concept album for solo double bass inspired by Carter’s legendary stunt, and for filmmaker John Bolton, it was combining all of these things into a musical docudrama called Aim For The Roses.

The film is more than a portrait of three different (magnificent) obsessions. Beneath the gonzo jumpsuits, the merkin-like beards and flying rocket cars, there is something else — namely, a deep and abiding pathos. Homeric you might call it. Carter’s determination to lift his car into the air and soar came out of some very humble beginnings.

In the NFB documentary, the The Devil at Your Heels (a cult hit in Australia, naturally), he talks about growing up poor in a workingclass neighbourhood in Montreal. Mark Haney, an Archie Comics obsessive whose early musical influences included Roger Waters’ solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, also had something to prove. Georgia Straight critic Adrian Mack acts as a one-man Greek chorus, explaining between fits of giggles the inexplicable appeal of Haney’s album. Meanwhile, back in Ontario, two devotees to Carter’s career maintain a museum/shrine called the “Ken Carter Preservation Society” near the site of the legendary jump.

Orchestral in its heft, Bolton’s glorious collision of documentary cinema, automotive carnage, and song and dance numbers combines elements of Greek tragedy, Kubrickian lushness, and the archetypal Hero’s Journey to reveal the true cost of following one’s muse. Like Haney’s album that traverses the “space between highbrow art and complete trash,” Aim For The Roses is itself imbued with the very thing it examines — ambition, glory, and finally, the desire for greatness.

Or as Ken Carter called it: “The ultimate statement.”

We are very proud to open the 2016 DOXA Documentary Film Festival with this singular film. -DW PLAYHOUSE SCREENING:

Preceded by DOXA’s festival opening remarks and will include a post-film Q&A with the filmmaker.

ADDITIONAL SCREENING:

SUNDAY MAY 15 | 3:00PM | VANCITY NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING.

#DOXA2016

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@

WEDNESDAY MAY 11

SPECIAL PRESENTATION

7:00 PM PLAYHOUSE

Pistol Shrimps

Brent Hodge, USA/Canada, 2016, 75 mins

For anyone who ever dreamed of glory on the b-ball court. Well, film that nevertheless packs a serious wallop. Not unlike an elbow perhaps not glory, but just basic competence, here come the Pistol to the gut, by a particularly motivated Shrimp, driving for the hoop.

With women’s sports relegated to the sidelines, the members of the Shrimps!

Pistol Shrimps are the vanguard (point guard?) of a new wave in A moribund women’s intramural basketball league in Los Angeles is women’s amateur sports. -DW the unlikely setting for a Hoosiers-style sports story, but stranger things have happened in the City of Angels. As actress and Shrimps MAY 11 SCREENING: team member Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation) explains in an Followed by filmmaker Q&A. interview with Jimmy Fallon: “We’re a really serious basketball team.

We love to ball and we ball hard. No Hatrz allowed!” The rest of her team members aren’t quite so certain. For some, it’s a chance to do ADDITIONAL SCREENING: something they never got to do in high school, meaning play team SUNDAY MAY 15 | 5:30PM | VANCITY sports. This is not your mama’s Hoop Dreams, or maybe it actually NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18. is. Women with jobs, kids, and careers drop everything and pick up VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING. a rock (that’s basketball lingo, y’all.) Soon enough, other teams get in on the action and immortal franchises like The Kimmy Dribblers, The She-Cago Bulls, The Space Glam, and The LA Nail Clippers are born.

An untimely injury to Ms. Platz, the team’s superstar player, puts their championship run in serious danger. But the Shrimps battle back! Do they win the big gold trophy and sporting glory? Buy yourself a ticket and find out. DOXA is very happy to welcome back hometown hero Brent Hodge (A Brony Tale) with a light-hearted

#DOXA2016

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Movies, Movies, Series, Series, Documentaries Documentaries

Complete Complete workflow workflow at at one one facility facility

THURSDAY MAY 12

SPECIAL PRESENTATION

7:00 PM PLAYHOUSE

League of Exotique Dancers Rama Rau, Canada, 2015, 90 mins

Who says sex stops at a certain age? Certainly not the women in Rama Rau’s riotous romp through the life and times of the pioneering women of burlesque. Their names read like a veritable star-studded universe of raunchiness. Every one of the women featured in The League of Exotique Dancers has a story, and what stories they are!

From Kitten Natividad, who inspired Russ Meyer’s boob empire, to Holiday O’Hara, who shed her thick glasses and frizzy hair and became an alpha female of sex to Judith Stein (The Grand Beaver of Canadian Burlesque) who found a new identity onstage and went on to lead a life of wild adventure.

Increased competition from pole dancers and clubs that called for more nudity and less artfulness put a strain on the industry. But even in its period of decline, the performers maintained their spirit and creativity. The League of Exotique Dancers sounds like it could give the Justice League a run for its money, or at least a little bump and grind action. But make no mistake, these legendary women are every bit superheroes, although they fought their way to fame and fortune in little more than heels, a feather boa, and a big old sassy grin. -DW PLAYHOUSE SCREENING:

The film kicks off in Las Vegas, Nevada, with the new inductees into Will include a live burlesque performance. the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Smart, ferociously independent, and insanely funny, these ladies pull no punches in detailing the nature of the business. Despite the glitter and the glamour, the early days ADDITIONAL SCREENING: of burlesque were no joke. Performers not only had to endure public FRIDAY MAY 13 | 8:30PM | VANCITY censure, but sexual violence was also a common occurrence. Judith NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. Stein remembers a performance at a frat house party that got ugly VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING. and dangerous very quickly. Although she escaped unharmed, she brought charges against the men who threatened to rape her; they were sentenced to three years of women’s study classes. Stein’s story is not unusual, but it’s also indicative of the survival instincts and rapier sharp wit of the women at the heart of burlesque.

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SATURDAY MAY 14

CLOSING NIGHT FILM

7:00 PM PLAYHOUSE

Cameraperson

Kirsten Johnson, USA, 2016, 100 mins

Cameraperson could function as a masterclass in documentary filmmaking, as Johnson discusses shot setups with directors like Moore or Poitras. But more importantly, Johnson reveals through her own eyes the very nature of perception, of what it means to be alive and seeing the world. DOXA is very proud to close the 2016 Kirsten Johnson has been the eyes and mind behind some of the festival with this celebration of documentary cinema in all its beauty most iconic documentary films ever made. Her work with Laura and fragile humanity. -DW Poitras (Citizenfour), Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11) among many others has arguably moved documentary cinema into the public eye PLAYHOUSE SCREENING: in an entirely new way. At the heart of Johnson’s approach is humility, Preceded by DOXA Festival’s closing remarks and awards presentation curiosity, and a certain brand of American humanism. Whether (25 mins). she is shooting nurse midwives in an obstetrics clinic in Nigeria or a boxing match in New York City, Johnson brings a virtuosity of technique and an easy open manner — people address her camera ADDITIONAL SCREENING: like they were having a conversation with a friend. But the cost of SUNDAY MAY 15 | 8:00PM | VANCITY documenting human suffering and tragedy comes at a price, as NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18. scenes on both a grand scale (genocide) and a much smaller level VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING. make clear. In a sequence that captures a newborn baby’s struggle for breath, you hear Johnson’s agonized comments off-camera.

Episodes drawn from Johnson’s family life, her twins, and her elderly mother who is suffering from dementia add another dimension, as her camera becomes a means of fixing time and keeping people alive in some ineffable way.

“For the past 25 years I’ve worked as a documentary cinematographer.

I originally shot the following footage for other films, but here I ask you to see it as my memoir. These are the images that have marked me and leave me wondering still.”

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FRIDAY MAY 6

6:45 PM VANCITY

Under the Sun

Vitaly Mansky, Russia, 2015, 90 mins

Vitaly Mansky’s Under the Sun offers an insightful look into the everyday life of people in North Korea. The documentary portrays a traditional family in their routine of work, school, and daily meals, punctuated by events such as being initiated into the Children’s Union, and partaking in national celebrations such as the Day of the Shining Star (Kim-Jong Il’s birthday). From the beginning there is something deeply awry; more than just the perceivable stiffness of the reality being presented on screen. The film peels away the surface of things to expose the inner workings of North Korea’s indoctrination machine. All the cogs and gears clanking along to manufacture propaganda and create the conditions under which all citizens are required to operate. Still, there is a slyness and sense of mischief to Mansky’s approach, as he lets his camera run just long enough to capture moments of humour and honesty — whether it’s a public service announcement on the benefits of kimchi, or school children being bored to tears by the lengthy reminiscing of a retired war veteran.

Mansky plays easily with notions of representation and the medium of documentary itself. The film is gorgeously crafted, framed and shot with masterful vision. But more importantly, it is able to slip underneath the surface of images presented and winnow out the hidden truth of a country and its people. The film manages to portray the virtues North Korea wants to embody while simultaneously underscoring the human cost that must be paid to uphold such rapacious ideology. -AP

FRIDAY MAY 6

7:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and her disturbing black & white drawings James Scott, UK, 2016, 34 mins

Over five decades, Laurie Lipton has turned a childhood obsession with doodling into a devoted and detailed practice. Her glorious, grotesque, and increasingly gargantuan pencil drawings show a commitment to figurative art that’s been largely ignored by the contemporary art world. Staying true to her vision, Lipton’s work embodies a gothic sensibility that offers a ferocious cultural critique. The collapse of the American dream, looming environmental catastrophe, and other near-death motifs are just some of themes that permeate her work. James Scott (editor of How to Change the World) employs sophisticated camerawork and masterful editing to sketch a portrait of one of the most prolific, and under-appreciated draughtswomen working today. -SC

Beyond the Veyo

Jacob Chamberlain, USA, 2015, 13 mins

Larry is an eccentric artist living in the desert outside of Veyo, Utah. When he’s not entertaining friends and neighbours with his lavishly bedecked masks, he is practicing his own peculiar version of spirituality at The Church of the Holy Goat. -SC

Perfection is Forever Mara Trifu, Romania/UK, 2015, 18 mins

With a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, a Superman impersonator wrestles with his own ego in an acid-etched portrait of life in contemporary L.A. -SC

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FRIDAY MAY 6

8:45 PM CINEMATHEQUE

FRIDAY MAY 6

9:00 PM VANCITY

Lucha Mexico

Mr. Gaga

In his essay “The World of Wrestling,” Roland Barthes writes, “Wrestling is a sum of spectacles and the function of the wrestler is not to win: it is to go exactly through the motions that are expected of him.”

Anyone who has ever witnessed the choreographic work of Ohad Naharin is unlikely to forget the experience. The Israeli choreographer has been the mastermind behind the dance company Batsheva since 1990. Ohad Naharin came late to dance, at age 22, but he made up for lost time, working with legendary choreographers Martha Graham and Maurice Béjart. A superb physical specimen, Naharin is quick to admit he has used his own physical beauty throughout his career, but the dancer/ choreographer also possesses an almost uncanny ability to make the human body seem new.

Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz, USA, 2015, 105 mins

Welcome to the spectacular world of Lucha Mexico. Co-directors Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz take the audience deep inside the world of professional wrestling and, in particular, the impassioned subculture of lucha libre. This is a society all its own, with rules of behaviour, codes of honour, and a rich legacy of tradition and culture. Not to mention some nifty masks! With astonishing access, the film explores what drives the wrestlers to perform feats of strength and agility, often putting their bodies through incredible violence just to earn a living. At the heart of the film is the self-proclaimed “1000% Guapo” superstar known as Shocker. With an established history of wrestling in his family, Shocker is instantly one of the most recognizable faces in the industry. However, when he suffers an injury that has him sidelined for months, he’s left to confront the harsh realities of his livelihood.

Lucha Mexico isn’t just for wrestling fans, although the bouts themselves are almost overwhelming in their brutal pageantry.

(Anyone who still thinks wrestling is fake, just listen to how hard these men and women hit.) Whether it’s the food and festivities or the adoration that their superstar personas receive from fans, the luchadores themselves form a vibrant and surprisingly loving community. -AP

Tomer Heymann, Israel, 2015, 100 mins

Director Tomer Heymann makes terrific use of archival footage of Ohad’s early days as a performer, as well as thrilling excerpts from his later works with Batsheva. But it is Ohad’s belief that dance should be accessible to everyone that leads to one of the film’s most cathartic moments, as the choreographer leads a room of ordinary people of all ages, shapes, and sizes through one of his Gaga-movement workshops. Like many great artists, Ohad is not always an easy character, as his relationships with the women in his life attest. He has been equally outspoken about Israel’s treatment of Palestinian people, calling the Israeli administration “a bunch of bullies,” in an interview with the New York Times. When the Orthodox Jewish community objected to one of his most famous works, that featured dancers stripping down to their underwear to the strains of the Passover anthem, Echad Mi Yodea, Ohad refused to censor the work even when Netanyahu demanded he do so. Despite the political difficulties the company has faced in recent years, the dance is everything, and there is too much pleasure in watching the performances to bog this quicksilver thing down. -DW

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SATURDAY MAY 7 THURSDAY MAY 12

12:00 PM VANCITY 9:15 PM VANCITY

SATURDAY MAY 7 WEDNESDAY MAY 11

12:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE 6:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

The Act of Becoming

In Pursuit of Silence

We all have our favourite books — the ones that hold a place of honour on our bookshelves, pages well-worn and oft-quoted.

And many of us have lived through the disappointing experience of seeing our most beloved books committed to the big screen, confirming the popular refrain that films often don’t do justice to books. But what if the film didn’t attempt to recreate the story, but instead set out to capture the singular, intimate relationship a reader can have with a literary work?

In 1952, artist and composer John Cage challenged the world with his seminal silent composition “4’33”, proclaiming that silence could, and should, be considered music. “Find the silence and you will find God,” he declared. In Pursuit of Silence extrapolates along similar philosophical and spiritual lines to offer a quietly nuanced portrait of our relationship with silence.

Vernon Lott and Jennifer Anderson, USA, 2015, 61 mins

In 1965, a man named John Williams published a book called Stoner. It sold 2,000 copies, had a short shelf life, and eventually faded into the dusty archives of the publishing world. What happened afterwards is one of those rare stories that seems almost too good to be true. Almost 50 years after its initial publication, Stoner enjoyed a genuine literary rebirth. In the early 2000s, the book was re-released in several editions and critics and readers alike heralded it as one of the Great American Novels of our time. The Act of Becoming is a film about literature and, more importantly, the love that literature can inspire. Critics, writers, publishers, and translators whose encounter with Stoner profoundly changed their lives share their relationship to the novel, and ultimately we are left with the feeling that a film finally got the book right. -PP PRECEDED BY

Patrick Shen, USA, 2015, 82 mins

In the 21st century, cities are designed to have visual impact, and are far less concerned with the sonic ecology. Experts talk about how increased noise levels in hospitals leads to confusion and mistakes. Sonic stress has even been known to cause heart attacks. (Local folk might know that Vancouver is home to the World Soundscape Project, a seminal project initiated in the 1960s to study noise pollution.) George Prochnik, author of In Pursuit of Silence, says the etymological root of the word “silence” boils down to an interruption of our own egos in the world. To be silent is to look into oneself, so it’s little wonder in the age of noise and distraction, that our relationship with silence has become more critical than ever.

Patrick Shen’s meditative cinematography allows for a rich exploration of aural space — from the natural to the man-made — while a minimal piano score complements interviews with scholars, physicians, inventors, and monks as they discuss how silence is an integral and necessary part of being fully human. -SC

Barbarian Press

Sarah (Emmett) Race, Canada, 2016, 17 mins

MEDIA PARTNER

Devoted bibliophiles Jan and Crispin Elsted have lovingly cared for their printing press for over 30 years. In the unlikely location of Mission, B.C., they make rare limited editions of beautifully engraved texts including everything from Shakespearean plays to contemporary West Coast poetry. -PP SCREENING PARTNER

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SATURDAY MAY 7

2:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

SATURDAY MAY 7

2:15 PM VANCITY

Migrant Dreams

Alisa in Warland

In Leamington, Ontario, greenhouse food production is a billion dollar industry. It is also an industry that is highly dependent on thousands of migrant workers from Mexico, Jamaica, and Southeast Asia. For many farm workers, the dream of a well-paying job becomes a nightmare when they are deceived into paying outrageous fees to brokers and recruiters.

Alisa Kovalenko is a film student in Kiev when the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution kicks off. She grabs her camera and her boyfriend Stephane, a French journalist and lecturer, and heads into the streets to capture the heady intoxication of toppling President Viktor Yanukovych. But when the situation escalates and the battles with Russia begin in earnest, documentation is no longer enough for Kovalenko. She is compelled to travel to the front and take on a much more active role. Here is where serious questions arise. At what point does documentary end and life begin? Objectivity and emotional distance are no longer possible when you become the subject of your own film.

Min Sook Lee, Canada, 2016, 90 mins

Often, migrant workers come to Canada to make money that they can then send to family back home, but after paying upwards of $10,000 to get and hold onto a minimum wage job, they end up heavily indebted to their employer. Horror stories are numerous as workers describe employers imposing curfews, confiscating passports, and charging exorbitant rental fees for cockroach-infested apartments. Award-winning filmmaker Min Sook Lee’s new investigative exposé documents the struggle of a group of women from Indonesia who are living in Leamington as part of Canada’s controversial Temporary Foreign Worker Program (a program that was drastically expanded, under Stephen Harper’s watch). Since 2006, the number of migrant workers with temporary status who enter Canada each year exceeds the number of immigrants who are granted permanent resident status. Without a path to citizenship, migrant workers are at risk of falling victim to extortion and threats. With the help of Evelyn and Cathy, two tireless community activists, some of the women take a stand and confront their employer. As one worker reflects: “We’ve been given empty promises, but now we’re fighting back.” -SC THIS FILM IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POSTFILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

Alisa Kovalenko and Liubov Durakova, Poland, 2015, 74 mins

Kovalenko embeds with the Ukrainian soldiers of the Right Sector and takes up arms, along with her trusty camera. To her, these young soldiers are sweethearts, but to the outside world they are a far-right paramilitary group. Alisa can’t reconcile their reputation with her experience of these dedicated men fighting for Ukraine, so she doesn’t even try. She joins the soldiers on their missions, endures artillery bombardments, and is captured and suspected of being a spy. She visits the few townspeople who remain in battle sectors because they have nowhere to go. Meanwhile, Stephane has returned to France and via Skype calls and phone messages, begs her to stay safe and to try to remain objective. But Alisa has become one of the boys and their protection will give her a very particular perspective on this war. She is quickly seduced by ideas of nationalist glory and militarism, and laughs as the soldiers teach her how to use an automatic weapon. Alisa in Warland is a breathtakingly honest look at the Ukrainian struggle, through the eyes of a young woman looking for meaning and identity in the midst of a brutal conflict. -KR

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PRESENTS

Come help us celebrate the 15th Annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival with a dinner curated by Meeru Dhalwala, co-founder of Vij’s!

Wednesday, April 20th, 2016 Each ticket includes dinner, drinks, and a ticket to the festival!

A complimentary shuttle service will be provided by Modo.

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit:

www.doxafestival.ca/vijs

SATURDAY MAY 7

4:00 PM VANCITY

SATURDAY MAY 7

4:45 PM CINEMATHEQUE

No Limits

Atlantic

“The worst drug disaster in history would spread through 46 countries and produce up to 20,000 badly deformed babies.” So begins John Zaritsky’s new film that follows a group of people who were among the first to be affected by Thalidomide.

With the TPP and CETA about to be ratified, this compelling exploration of the fate of the fishing and oil industries in three Atlantic nations (Ireland, Norway, and Canada) is a timely and cautionary tale about the downside of global trade agreements.

The film starts with the collapse of Canada’s cod fishery in the early 1990s when the government maddeningly closed it to Newfoundland fishers while allowing European industrial trawlers to stay on — all so Canada could sell wheat abroad. It then moves to Ireland, where small fishers were completely abandoned by their government after joining the European Common Market.

Prudent Norway did not join, choosing instead to protect its sovereignty and fishers — both of which thrived. When Norway discovers offshore oil, a judicious decision to invest control of the industry into government hands again ensures Norwegians are the beneficiaries. Poor Ireland, alas, is given short shrift again by government (and a corrupt politician) when oil is discovered offshore, but Newfoundland fares much better thanks to pitbull premier Danny Williams whose government takes semi-control of the resource (much to the annoyance of the feds). When the film shifts to how Norway ended big oil’s use of sonar shooting in Arctic waters (an ocean floor mapping technique that endangers marine life), we’re able to see how outdated the political views are that pit economic growth against sustainability. The recent return of stock to Newfoundland reassures that it’s possible for communities and oceans alike to survive if we balance economic needs with the imperative of nature. Director Ó Domhnaill smartly chooses to tell this story through three articulate characters (one fisher from each country) rather than a barrage of voices. Supported by thorough archival research, great cinematography, evocative music, and spare narration balefully delivered by Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, Atlantic hits both an emotional and intellectual mark. -MB

John Zaritsky, Canada, 2016, 78 mins

When the German pharmaceutical giant Grünenthal aggressively marketed a new wonder drug for expectant mothers suffering from morning sickness, sales boomed. Germany was also the first country to experience the first wave of Thalidomide birth defects. Even while German families were demanding answers and compensation, the drug was being actively marketed in the UK and Canada. The result was a similar surge in birth defects.

The US, however, was largely spared, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Frances O’Kelsey, a Canadian doctor who almost single-handedly stopped the drug from being approved for market in the US. Niko von Glasow (familiar to long-time DOXA fans from the film NoBody’s Perfect) is a charming, irascible presence, hilarious and profane, and deeply angry about the fact that Grünenthal has never made reparations to the victims of Thalidomide, nor even really apologized. The fact that a number of Nazi war criminals were employed by Grünenthal, including the chairman of the board who was convicted of mass murder, may help explain this.

As the struggle for compensation from the pharmaceutical companies, who have made billions of dollars in profit from the drug continue, Thalidomide has staged something of a comeback and is now marketed as a treatment for multiple myeloma and leprosy. In Latin America, a new generation of Thalidomide babies are being born. -DW THIS FILM IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POSTFILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

Risteard Ó Domhnaill, Ireland, 2015, 75 mins

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Women’s Health Child Care Affordable Housing Co-ops Groups Finding Solutions Livable Wages Worker Co-ops Whole Foods Queer Arts Environmental Stewardship Social Safety Net Jobs Emergency Loans Refugees Alienated Youth Sharing Economy Housing Co-ops Anti-Poverty Coalitions Community Arts Economic Democracy Alternative Cannabis Media Inclusion New Immigrants Women’s Equality Social Enterprise Models Legalization New Economy Dissent Cyberspace Freedom LGBTQ Equality The Unbanked Social Housing Aboriginal Rights Community Development Worker Rights Renewables Free Personal Privacy Low Carbon Social Justice Non-traditional Households Expression Basic Banking Self-Help Community Impact New Currencies Sustainable Agriculture Smart Growth Minority Rights Indie Music Collaborative Economics Financial Literacy Self-Employed Social Justice Co-Housing Citizen Empowerment Green Future Worker Rights Banking Activism

SATURDAY MAY 7

6:30 PM VANCITY

SATURDAY MAY 7 MONDAY MAY 9

6:45 PM CINEMATHEQUE 12:30 PM VANCITY

Lampedusa in Winter

We Call Them Intruders

A broken down ferry, an isolated island, a group of angry fishermen, and an influx of trapped refugees... This might sound like the beginnings of a thriller, but the situation is real. This is the challenging predicament for the Italian island of Lampedusa.

As thousands of people try to escape war and oppression by fleeing across the Mediterranean, the result is an epidemic of death by drowning. Lampedusa is strategically close to Europe, and therefore the entry port for many refugees from Africa. This small island community is put to the test with the continuous arrival of new refugees. But when the only ferry that services the island breaks down, things get exponentially grimmer. The town’s mayor, Giusi Nicolini, is faced with the difficult job of attempting to solve everyone’s problems.

Mining is big business in Canada. Almost 75% of the world’s mining companies call Canada home according to Vancouverbased filmmakers Tamara Herman and Susi Porter-Bopp’s new film. Most resource extraction happens beyond Canadian borders, where a lack of regulation and a rapacious profit-seeking agenda has permitted horrific environmental and social impact.

Digging beneath the glossy marketing materials on company websites that tout shiny new schools and medical centres, the filmmakers travel to rural parts of Eastern and Southern Africa to talk to local residents, government officials, and community activists. The result is a far darker portrait. What the filmmakers uncover isn’t surprising: a lack of clean drinking water, few wellpaying jobs, as well as an increase in cost of living, has forced many villagers to work in unsafe and desperate conditions. The word ‘intruder’ is what the local villagers call the displaced mine workers, who scavenge through discarded waste rock looking for trace minerals.

Jakob Brossmann, Austria/Italy/Switzerland, 2015, 93 mins

When the other camera crews reporting on the refugee crisis leave, Austrian director Jakob Brossmann decides to stay and observe people over the winter. By sticking around he is able to create an intimate, fully-rounded portrait of the residents. With great skill the film captures everyday life on the Island including a local boys soccer team, a radio DJ, and a Coast Guard rescue crew. An important work that provides analysis on the refugee crisis, Lampedusa in Winter also explores the remarkable level of compassion that can be engendered in the midst of a desperate struggle for survival. -NH THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POST-FILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

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Tamara Herman and Susi Porter-Bopp, Canada, 2015, 55 mins

Bold and confrontational, the filmmakers employ a follow-themoney approach that effectively traces how everyday Canadians are implicated. The film explains in cogent language and animated graphics exactly how taxes, Canada Pension Plan contributions, RRSPs, and other investments are funneled into supporting the mining sector. Joan Kuyek, founding member of MiningWatch Canada, makes the salient point that, “the market is not going to regulate justice.” With this in mind, it’s obvious that it’s up to everyday folk to force governments and corporations to be held accountable. We Call Them Intruders is a call for action, offering tangible solutions for change. This is activist filmmaking at its most raw and urgent. -SC THE MAY 9 SCREENING IS PART OF THE RATED Y SERIES. MORE ON PAGE 15.

BOTH SCREENINGS WILL BE FOLLOWED BY A FILMMAKER Q&A. NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING.

SCREENING PARTNER

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theatrefilm.ubc.ca

UBC Theatre & Film

Theatre BA Theatre BFA Acting BFA Design & Production MA Theatre MFA Design MFA Directing PhD Film Production BFA Diploma MFA MFA Film/Creative Writing Film Studies BA Major BA Minor MA Film Studies

DOXA (ver. 3) Feb. 23, 2016 3.5” x 4.75” Ernest von Rosen: ernest@amgmedia.com 3.5x4.75.indd 1

2016-02-23 10:06:01 AM

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www.maxguide.org

SATURDAY MAY 7

6:45 PM SFU

SATURDAY MAY 7

8:30 PM SFU

Les Patients

Le Bois dont les rêves sont faits

Claire Simon, France, 1990, 75 mins

Claire Simon, France, 2015, 144 mins

Dr. Jean-Marie Bouvier could be a character from a novel. With his thick rimmed glasses, dark suit, and undeniable charm, he is a study in competence and no-nonsense compassion, but also a lesson in how to be a good human being. Claire Simon’s first documentary came about when she began to follow Dr. Bouvier (her father’s best friend) in the last few months of his practice before retirement. Conversations between filmmaker and physician often take place in his car, as he drives to appointments.

(This was the era when doctors still made house-calls.) Whether he is affectionately rapping a long-time drinker on the head, “If you keep drinking, I will throw you out and never see you again,” or flirting with elderly ladies, the relationships between the doctor and his patients are steeped in affection, humour, and a deep abiding civility. Nothing makes this clearer than an exchange over the phone with a patient who is threatening to buy a revolver and commit suicide. Dr. Bouvier carries on like they are discussing the weather or what to have for dinner, and the conversation turns to what kind of present she will buy him. This staggering exchange is so lightly offered that it is easy to read as simply comic, but there is something deeper at work. Earlier in the film, Dr. Bouvier explains his approach to his profession, stating that you must reject any preconceptions or prejudice about a person, but always be open to what they are telling you. This approach extends to Claire Simon’s filmmaking, which employs the same curiosity, kindness, and above all, openness to the intricate wonders of humanity. -DW

The Bois de Vincennes park in Paris, spans some 995 hectares and contains multitudes. In the same spirit as her previous work Géographie humaine (featured last year in DOXA’s inaugural French French program), The Woods is a deep investigation of both people and place. Whether it’s gay men cruising for sex in the rain, or a hermit who makes a home deep in a remote section of the park, everywhere humans are busily going about their business.

THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

(The Patients)

(The Woods Dreams Are Made Of)

The brainchild of Paris architect Georges-Eugène Haussman, the park came into being under the auspices of Emperor Louis Napoleon. From the beginning, it was conceived not only as a garden, but as a work of art. In each of its sections, a different story is unfolding — whether it’s cyclists chatting as they train, sex workers discussing their trade, single mothers and their kids, or lecherous voyeurs spying on other people’s romantic picnics.

Whatever the situation, Claire Simon functions as our guide, engaging people in conversation with openness and curiosity that prompts almost an unbidden and often highly voluble response. People talk without any apparent self-consciousness and the stories spill forth. Scientists looking for salamanders, a man obsessed with pigeons, botanists caring for the arboretum, Cambodian expats — Simon listens to them all, and pays that most gracious of gifts: attention. There is something deeply humble about this approach. It allows a look inside this vast space, like a cross-section of society, where all the wonderful eclectic detail and strange human foibles are amassed like a bed of flowers. -DW

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COMBAT MISERABLISM Subscribe to Geist

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Go to geist.com/festival or call 1-888-GEIST-EH

SATURDAY MAY 7 THURSDAY MAY 12

8:45 PM CINEMATHEQUE 5:00 PM VANCITY

SATURDAY MAY 7 MONDAY MAY 9

9:00 PM VANCITY 2:30 PM VANCITY

Of Shadows

How to Build a Time Machine

A shadow play is a performance made possible by light. Through illuminated paper screens, puppets reenact epic tales of battles, doomed love affairs, and legendary feats. Behind the scenes, a cast of master puppeteers and musicians are busily creating the illusion of life. Yi Cui’s exquisite film Of Shadows offers a multiplicity of perspectives on this ancient art form. First there is the play itself, then there are the artists at work, and finally there is the audience, comprised of ancient grannies, little kids and teenagers whose rapt faces, caught in the warm light, complete the story.

Part of our Spotlight on Borders and Boundaries this year, Jay Cheel’s remarkable new film explores what is perhaps the ultimate boundary, the 4th dimension, time itself. Since humans first walked the planet, they’ve been searching for a way to conquer time. Thus far, the only means of doing this existed in the realm of science fiction novels, comic books and, of course, movies. But as Cheel discovers, scientists are drawing ever closer to this fabled quest.

Yi Cui, Canada/China, 2016, 80 mins

For decades, shadow theatre troupes have brought villages and communities together across China. But in the face of other newer forms of entertainment, shadow theatre is struggling to survive. Cui captures the labour of love required by this traditional art form as she follows one of China’s surviving shadow play troupes. The puppeteers describe their passion for shadow theatre, as well as the difficulties of generating enough money to keep the show going. But their struggle is somewhat lost during an ironic celebration by the city of Huan Xian, as they prepare to celebrate the cultural importance of shadow theatre, even as it is under dire threat. From observing the actors and puppets, to the breathtaking shots of the Loess Plateau, Of Shadows explores the existence of one of China’s modern jongleur equivalents. Cui’s film not only offers an intimate perspective into a rich cultural tradition, but also sheds light on the artists that are quietly fighting to maintain its heritage and presence. After the screen is taken down, the instruments packed up, and the fragile puppets stored away, we’re left to ponder the eventual fate of shadow theatre. -VY

Jay Cheel, Canada, 2016, 82 mins

The film focuses on two different men, each uniquely obsessed with time travel. When animator Rob Niosi was seven years old, he and his brother were promised an outing to see the 1960 adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. During an afternoon playing by the creek, the brothers lost track of time, and the chance to go to the movies. In desperation, Rob blamed it on the fact that he didn’t have a watch. Their parents relented, the kids got to see the movie, and as Rob recounts, later that week they also received their first time machines — wristwatches. This early experience became the seed for Niosi’s decade-long quest to build a scale model of Wells’s time machine, right down to the last exquisite detail. Physicist Ronald Mallet’s obsession with time travel was also rooted deeply in childhood. When Mallet lost his father at an early age, he embarked on a lifelong quest to conquer both time and death. Mallet’s discovery of Einstein’s theory that time could be altered, started him on his ultimate ambition to build a real live working time machine. He is getting very close to bringing this idea to reality. -DW HOSPITALITY PARTNER

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SUNDAY MAY 8

2:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Sud Eau Nord Déplacer (South to North)

Antoine Boutet, France, 2015, 110 mins

The subject of Antoine Boutet’s extraordinary film is made clear from the opening scene. It is scale. China’s rapid urbanization, unfettered development, and human displacement have been the subject of many recent documentaries. Boutet follows the construction of the Nan Shui Bei Diao — North South Water Transfer Project — the largest water transfer project in the world.

As engineers build gargantuan concrete waterways, flooding areas that were traditionally desert, turning grassland into forest, remaking entire ecosystems — a massive sign helpfully indicates, “The people from grasslands love the communist party.” Scenes of tiny humans trotting across the landscape, busily reconfiguring it into something almost unrecognizable are captured in long panning shots. “Change the face of the world,” is how one environmental activist, who travels about on his bike, describes it. He goes on to explain that the root cause of these projects is not always about profit, as much as personal ego: “The Three Gorges Dam is Li Peng. It’s not really a State project but a Li Peng project.” Political power comes about through the control of such mega-projects.

It is hard not to be weirdly in awe of such enormity. There is an almost surrealist aspect to some of the images captured here. A sad bear mascot, his chest emblazoned with the word ‘ love’ waves disconsolately at the camera. New cities are constructed in which no people live, while Party functionaries explain the glorious rationale behind it all. At a certain point an Ozymandias-type of horror sets in as the scale of destruction becomes apparent. But there is a burgeoning environmental movement in China that is growing into something equally massive. -DW THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

SUNDAY MAY 8

3:00 PM VANCITY

Undersung

Adam Larsen, USA, 2015, 58 mins

Adam Larsen’s film follows four different families who are caring for a child with disabilities: Craig and Hannah; Claire and Sophie; Ramona, Harry, and Melvin; Marina and Gregory. As Ramona states at the beginning of the film, “I see it as a disability myself now, that inability to accept disability.” Larsen’s film is intelligent and clear about the struggles these parents face. Marriages crumble under the demands of being a caregiver. The uncertainty of the future as parents grow older is another huge concern. But even worse is the economic pressures of caring for a child “who will never make money, but only cost money,” as Claire explains. The larger question of what we value as a society is implicit. Still, even in the midst of this level of challenge, love — stubborn, persistent, and surprisingly tough — endures. It is most clearly seen in the daily routines of parents and children, during bedtime kisses, preparing meals, and getting ready for school. It is a privilege to witness these gentle moments of grace and tenderness. Asked if they would do it again, the caregivers’ answers are surprising. “I might,” says Claire. “It is a blending of souls that is completely inexplicable... It’s worth it for that.” -DW PRECEDED BY

We Regret to Inform You...

Eva Colmers and Heidi Janz, Canada, 2015, 11 mins

Dr. Heidi Janz is a writer, an academic, and a feisty independent woman. Her daily routine of getting dressed, eating breakfast, and getting to work on time is not that much different from other people’s working mornings, with the exception of her wheelchair and care aids. But the arrival of a letter from the Government of Canada throws into light the perceptions of ability. -DW THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POST-FILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING.

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SUNDAY MAY 8

4:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

SUNDAY MAY 8 SUNDAY MAY 15

5:30 PM VANCITY 3:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Seven Songs for a Long Life

Maya Angelou and Still I Rise

Everyone has their favourite songs — they can be a surprisingly poignant pop song or a classic Sinatra tune. When you see people sing the songs that matter to them, the experience can be cathartic. The patients at Strathcarron Hospice, in Scotland, use music and song as therapy to cope with some of life’s most challenging moments. The idea was first introduced by Mandy Malcomson, a nurse at the hospice, who encouraged her patients to open up through music. Made over three years in Strathcarron, director Amy Hardie’s extraordinary work finds a delicate balance between intimacy and access as patients and their caregivers deal with the physical realities of long-term illness and palliative care.

Death is present, but it certainly isn’t the only thing here. Family, love, and humour are abundantly, gloriously present. -BH

The life and times, and most importantly the art, of Maya Angelou is given expansive coverage in Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack’s film biography. The film is also a very special part of DOXA guest curator Rebecca Carroll’s program this year. Rebecca writes: “This documentary is an exquisite embodiment of all that I loved and love about Angelou, and serves as an emotional anatomy of a fearless and unapologetic black woman whose radical accessibility, intellect, and self-awareness touched everyone from James Baldwin to Oprah Winfrey.”

Amy Hardie, Scotland, 2015, 82 mins

This incredibly moving documentary is all the more affecting because of the unsentimental way it’s told. An assortment of patients and staff at Strathcarron are profiled as they face down the end. Encouraged by nurse Mandy Malcomson, an emotionally gifted care-giver, patients and staff use singing as therapy and the musical moments become the way in for lightly sketched portraits about each of their lives. Some rage, some cry and others quietly prepare memory boxes and plan for their children’s future care, but all are treated with honesty, dignity and affection. Hardie has a particularly good eye for the evocative, quiet moments when the terminally ill and their loved ones are shown striving to live life as normally as possible, by cooking sausages, rollerskating or just watching a shopping channel.

-THE GUARDIAN

Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack, USA, 2016, 112 mins

Made over the course of four years, before her death in 2014, Still I Rise traces the writer-performer’s life from the time she and her brother Bailey were sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandparents. From early stints as a singer, dancer, and actress, Angelou found her true calling through a chance meeting with Random House publishers Jules and Judy Feiffer, who convinced her to put her stories down on paper. The result was I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, a book that vaulted her into the first rank of American writers.

Ms. Angelou’s work in the civil rights movement and ties to Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and fellow writer James Baldwin, made her work and politics inseparable. But throughout her remarkable life, whether she was on Sesame Street or delivering a poem during a presidential inauguration, she remained defiantly herself, a strong, proud artist with a voice that would not be silenced. -DW THIS FILM IS PART OF BLACK LIFE IS, AIN’T AND STILL RISES, CURATED BY REBECCA CARROLL. READ MORE ON PAGE 21.

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Nov. 10 – 20, 2016

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SUNDAY MAY 8

6:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

My Love Affair with the Brain: The Life and Science of Dr. Marian Diamond Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg, USA, 2015, 65 mins

How can you not fall in love with a woman who carries around a preserved human brain inside a giant flowery hat box? Meet Dr. Marian Diamond, renowned academic and research scientist, and prepare to be smitten. Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg’s film follows this remarkable woman over a 5-year period and introduces the viewer to both her many scientific accomplishments and the warm, funny, and thoroughly charming woman herself, who describes her 60-year career researching the human brain as “pure joy.” As one of the founders of modern neuroscience, it’s no exaggeration to say that Dr. Diamond changed science, and society at large in dramatic ways over the course of her career.

Her groundbreaking work is all the more remarkable because it began during an era when so few women entered science at all.

Shouted at from the back of the conference hall by noteworthy male academics as she presented her research, and disparaged in the scientific journals of a more conservative era, Dr. Diamond simply did the work and followed where her curiosity led her, bringing about a paradigm shift (or two) in the process. As she points out, in order to get to the answers that matter, you have to start by asking the right questions. -AW PRECEDED BY

Maratus: A Documystery Simon Cunich, Australia, 2016, 30 mins

When an Australian man accidentally discovers a new species of spider, the quest to scientifically verify it takes on a Homeric cast.

SUNDAY MAY 8

8:15 PM VANCITY

Mimi

Claire Simon, France, 2002, 107 mins

Sometimes it is easy to forget what documentary cinema is truly capable of. More than issue-driven films, or talking head interviews, documentary can contain life, fix a sense of place, and in the case of Claire Simon’s film memoir Mimi, stop time. For Mimi Chiola, story is also a means of starting time all over again.

On a warm sunny day in the seaside town of Nice, France, Mimi and her friend Claire walk and talk about her memories of the town. The sky is white and blue. You can virtually feel the heat, and smell the sea in the air. A natural-born raconteur, Mimi’s métier is memory. As she recounts how her father and mother first met (“Love at first sight, at age 42!”) or remembers her father’s death, or talks about her first encounter with her own sexuality, we listen and we see (and feel) the stories come to life. There is so much beauty in random details, whether it is a piece of white bread, or the kindness of a Catholic monk. Along the way, there are chance meetings, songs, and the occasional bit of dancing.

An audience member at a screening of the film once explained to Simon, there are three films present here. There are the things captured by the camera — people playing tennis or jogging, a man obsessed with trains. Then there are the things you see in your mind’s eye, as Mimi’s stories of love affairs, sexual desire, or an ancient French farmer named Etienne, her friend, neighbour, and sometimes gardening mentor, come to vivid life. But there is a third thing, namely the experience of your own life that becomes intermingled with that of the film, until you don’t know where you start, and it ends. This is the true magic of cinema. -DW THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

-DW

The Honeys and Bears Veena Rao, USA, 2015, 4 mins

A seniors’ synchronized swimming team discovers their deep love for the water in this sunny ode to personal passion. -DW #DOXA2016

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SUNDAY MAY 8

8:45 PM CINEMATHEQUE

MONDAY MAY 9

4:45 PM VANCITY

The Babushkas of Chernobyl

Black Is…Black Ain’t

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone looks like a bucolic paradise. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and the fish are biting. As Valentyna Ivanivna states at the outset, there is probably more pollution in Kiev than in the place she calls home. “I won’t go anywhere even at gunpoint,” she states. After the Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986, more than 90,000 people were forcibly evacuated and told they could never go home again. But some residents were determined to return, and slowly, a small population trickled back into the region. The Babushkas of Chernobyl follows Hanna Zavorotnya and her sister Sonia, plus Maria Shovkuta and the truly adorable Valentyna Ivanivna. These ladies live in one of the most radioactive places on the planet, but seem little bothered by the terror the place inspires in other folk. With their colourful headscarves and wrinkled-apple granny faces, they cheerfully go about their daily business, planting potatoes, going fishing, and celebrating holidays with generous glasses of vodka. But everything is not as simple or easy as it appears. Visitors to the zone are issued grave instructions about not touching anything, and even young daredevils who visit the place are terrified to drink the water. An even more deadly threat may be at hand, as the women grow older and more isolated. Loneliness becomes almost as dangerous as radiation. -DW

Filmmaker/activist/poet Marlon Riggs died in 1995 at the age of 37 before he could complete his final work Black Is…Black Ain’t.

The film was finished by his friend and co-director Christiane Badgley. The film is packed with ideas and images, song and dance, performance and conversation — all of it in search of what it means to be black. Younger versions of Cornell West, bell hooks, Bill T. Jones, and Angela Davis talk about their experiences growing up black in America. The result is not unlike a spicy gumbo: full of every possible ingredient and bursting with intelligence, humour, and pathos. The film travels across the US from Louisiana to California, referencing, along the way, how the black population has historically found different ways to separate and divide, whether based on gender, sexuality, language, or skin colour. As Angela Davis recounts, “You didn’t call anyone a ‘Black African’ unless you were ready to fight.” But the diversity of black identity continues to defy simple essentialism. Writer/activist bell hooks suggests communion is a better goal than unity. “So often when black folks evoke unity,” says hooks, “it’s a flattening out of differences — sweeping certain things under the rug so we can appear to be alike.” Archival footage, and performance pieces from Riggs and choreographer Bill T. Jones add humour and power. But ultimately, the film is a plea for compassion and inclusivity. “There is a cure for what ails us as a people,” says Riggs.

“That is for us to talk to each other... about the ways in which we hurt each other.” -DW

Holly Morris and Anne Bogart, USA/Ukraine, 2015, 72 mins

PRECEDED BY

The Meadow

Jela Hasler, Switzerland, 2015, 9 mins

The contested territory between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel has been the site of conflict for ages. The cows that peacefully graze in the Golan Heights appear little interested in the turf wars of humans. They refuse to acknowledge any borders and go wherever their four stomachs take them. Everything is peaceful, until the cops show up and try to force the inhabitants to vacate the land. But cows are not so easily moved. -DW

Marlon Riggs and Christiane Badgley, USA, 1995, 86 mins

THIS FILM IS PART OF BLACK LIFE IS, AIN’T AND STILL RISES, CURATED BY REBECCA CARROLL. READ MORE ON PAGE 21.

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MONDAY MAY 9

6:45 PM VANCITY

Left on Purpose

Justin Schein and David Mehlman, USA, 2015, 85 mins

In the 1960s, Mayer Vishner was part of the counterculture movement and was actively involved with Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies, legendary pranksters who levitated the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War, disrupted the Democratic National Convention in 1968, and employed absurdity as a tool for revolution and change.

As director Justin Schein explains at the film’s outset, “I’ve been making documentaries for 20 years and I’ve never been so captivated or troubled by a film subject as much as Mayer Vishner.” A fixture of Greenwich Village, Mayer hung out with Jimmy Hendrix and John Lennon and worked as a journalist, as well as a stand-up comedian. His apartment is a treasure trove of counterculture mementos including bootleg recordings of Joan Baez, a signed copy of Ginsberg’s Howl, and a lock of John Lennon’s hair. Justin’s decision to make a film about Mayer’s life, leads both men in a very unexpected direction. As Justin gets more involved with Mayer, he comes to understand that things are going precipitously downhill. Drinking heavily, and living in squalor, Mayer is also suffering from OCD, severe depression, and is preparing to end his own life. He petitions Justin for his help in creating his final political act, a document of his death. The ethical and emotional complexities of choosing to end your own life are given cogent and thorough examination. But at the end of the film, very troubling questions linger. This is not a film that you will easily forget. And maybe that is precisely what Mayer Vishner wanted. -DW WINNER OF AUDIENCE AWARDS AT THE WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL AND DOC NYC. THIS FILM IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POSTFILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

MONDAY MAY 9

7:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Dance Dance Revolution!

Shorts Program Whether it’s teargas in your eyes or genuine tears, sometimes you just gotta dance it out! This collection of short films from three different countries celebrates the cathartic power of the most fundamental of human art forms.

Dancing for You

Erlend E. Mo, Norway, 2015, 25 mins

Halling is a traditional Norwegian folk dance that is usually performed by men as a means of demonstrating power and strength. Twelve-year-old Vilde wants to become the first female Halling champion in Norway. But more importantly, she wants to inspire her beloved grandfather to continue his battle with cancer.

-DW

Time Dead Time Alive

Guston Sondin-Kung, Denmark, 2015, 36 mins

Elfriede Mahler was one of the founders of Cuba’s modern dance school. She sought asylum in Cuba following the revolution in 1959, then went on to create her own company, Danza Libre.

Guston Sondin-King’s exquisite film revives her presence through the memories of her students, as well as her unique choreographic language. -DW

One Million Steps

Eva Stotz, Germany, 2015, 20 mins

A girl in a polka dot dress tap-dances her way through the streets of Istanbul. Along the way, she interacts with kids, a few older gents, and a variety of city dwellers. But things take a revolutionary turn when she finds herself in the middle of one of the biggest protests in Turkish history to save a public park from demolition. -DW

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MONDAY MAY 9

9:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

MONDAY MAY 9

9:15 PM VANCITY

Never Turn Your Back on Sparks

Standby For Tape Back-up

The hardcore devotees of Ron and Russell Mael, the indomitable duo who make up the American rock band Sparks, are the focus of this kooky, sweet music-travelogue.

Back in the age of the VCR, we all had that one special tape.

Whether it contained your favourite Saturday morning cartoons, your child’s first steps, or a movie you looked forward to watching on a rainy day, it meant something special. For Ross Sutherland, such a tape belonged to his grandfather. A curious assemblage of British game shows, scenes from Ghostbusters and old soccer matches, the tape means something far greater to Sutherland, who sets out to discover why this random combination of images is so profound to him. An accomplished spoken word artist, Sutherland finds poetry in the banal as he unravels the mysteries of his own life hidden inside his grandfather’s recordings. From one scratchy scene to the next, the truth is uncovered, as the story loops, fast-forwards and then rewinds in rhythmic cadence.

A powerful ode to life and an argument for analogue preservation, Sutherland’s film perfectly captures the bittersweet nostalgia we get when reminiscing about love, loss, and Ghostbusters. -CP

Pini Schatz, Israel, 2014, 56 mins

Dubbed the kings of social satire for more than four decades, Sparks’ eclectic sound is defined by Freddie Mercury-esque operatics that are the backbone of their epic, occasionally absurd, ballads that range from glam rock to disco to cabaret. Music critics dubbed their 1974 single “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Most of Us” as one of the best pop songs ever written. Despite the critical love, the band never really captured mainstream attention. Instead, they gained a loyal cult following. A roster of modern rock gods including producer Tony Visconti, punk rock legend Jello Biafra, and Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott praise the brilliance that is Sparks.

But it’s the lesser-known die-hards who give this film its quixotic charm. Director Pini Schatz (who may be the biggest Sparks fan of all) does a superb job of capturing the beauty of obsession, while paying homage to one of the most adventurous bands of our time. Even those who are new to the club will leave this film on fire with Sparks love! -SC PRECEDED BY

pepsi, cola, water?

Tom Bogaert, Switzerland/Egypt, 2015, 9 mins

Jazz pioneer and philosopher Sun Ra had a deep fascination with outer space and ancient Egypt. Computer animation, archival footage, and music from Sun Ra are interwoven to create a recreation/celebration of his legendary visit to Egypt in 1971. The result is a film as far out as Sun Ra himself. -SC

Ross Sutherland, UK, 2015, 73 mins

I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to suggest that poet and performer Ross Sutherland’s Standby For Tape Back-up probably features the most profound use of the opening credits of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in theatre history. Toss in some extracts from Ghostbusters, The Crystal Maze, Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and a horrendous 1991 advert for NatWest cash machines that I’d hitherto suppressed the memory of, and you’ve got the recipe for a bums-on-seats Gen Y nostalgia fest. -TIME OUT SCREENING PARTNER

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TUESDAY MAY 10

12:30 PM VANCITY

Act Out: Shorts Program From Palestine to Italy, civil war and other humanitarian crises have forced kids around the world to discover different ways to preserve their sense of agency and dignity. This program of short films explores the multiple forms that activism can take, whether that’s postering, skateboards, or friendship. These kids find a way to take back their own power and help others in the process.

Epicly Palestine’d: The Birth of Skateboarding in the West Bank Theo Krish, UK, 2015, 26 mins

Skateboarding rules! In the face of military occupation, a group of Palestinian teens take to the streets with their boards. Life in the West Bank isn’t easy. Bombs and bullets are an everyday threat, and there’s nowhere to buy a new skateboard. -SC

I Am Not Afraid of the Soldiers Rinske Bosch, The Netherlands, 2015, 21 mins

Cement walls and guard towers are just part of daily life for young Yazan. Living in a Palestinian refugee camp, he refuses to surrender his autonomy. Through art and action, he and his friends confront Israeli soldiers. -SC

SOS Friendship

Els van Driel, The Netherlands, 2015, 18 mins

In Catania, Italy, the arrival of boatloads of refugees is almost a daily occurrence. Twelve-year-old Leitizia wants to help. Her father works at a refugee centre, where she spends a lot of her time befriending newcomers. Her philosophy is simple: “They’re not a burden to us. They’re people with a heart and a soul and they all have their talents.” -SC NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING .

THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE RATED Y SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POSTFILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 15.

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TUESDAY MAY 10

3:00 PM VANCITY

Les Bureaux de Dieu (God’s Offices)

Claire Simon, France, 2008, 122 mins

Life inside a family planning clinic is the basis for Claire Simon’s seamless mixture of documentary and performance. The doctors and counselors are played by some of France’s most acclaimed actresses including Beatrice Dalle and Nathalie Baye, while the patients are all non-professional actors. This is largely a female society. The occasional man makes an appearance, holding a baby like one might hold a ticking bomb, but for the most part women’s stories are the heart of the matter. The film was constructed from more than seven years of real dialogue collected by Claire Simon who repurposed these interviews to fit her dramatic structure. Each episode provides a lens through which to better see and understand social mores, the roles of women, and the complexities of sexuality and love. Some women visit the clinic for birth control, others for pregnancy tests, or to schedule terminations. The doctors and counselors offer a full range of services — everything from the most basic sex education — a lecture on how to use a condom is delivered to a group of teenage girls who giggle and cover their eyes — to women already balancing marriage, children, and a career.

Les Bureaux de Dieu (God’s Offices) hearkens back to Claire Simon’s first documentary Les Patients (page 53), in its fascination with the relationship between doctors and patients. These interactions possess a semi-religious quality of confession and absolution.

There is great gentleness here, but also mystery. This delicate combination is perfectly embodied in a conversation between a 40-year-old sex worker and one of the clinic’s counselors. The woman has become pregnant on three separate occasions, each time with the same man. The counselor wonders at this, but the woman only arches one delicate brow and says, “That’s how it is,” even as a universe of emotion moves across her face. -DW THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

FINAL

TUESDAY MAY 10

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Récréations

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(Playtime)

Claire Simon, France, 1992, 54 mins

If you’ve ever wondered about the origin of the species and our simian roots, I give you Claire Simon’s seminal film Récréations (Playtime). Shot entirely in the courtyard of a French kindergarten, the film is a marvel of protean shape-shifting action, not unlike watching the play of molecules in the universe, or macaque monkeys on the loose. As the kids pour forth for recess, play takes on epic proportions. In every corner, some miniature drama is unfolding. Violence, love, jealousy, treachery are all here! This is human society in the making. It is raw, molten stuff, primal in its intensity, but also completely hilarious and sweet. A little boy, determined to collect sticks, must ward off the predations of roaming gangs, as well as the affections of a little girl, who has an interest in playing house. On the other side of the courtyard, a screaming match erupts when one ambitious boy attempts to kidnap all the girls. For his upstart behaviour he is suitably abused by his fellow boys, while the girls (masterminds behind the scenes) look on with secret smiles. In still another corner, a tiny child faced with the terrifying task of jumping over a bench, must finally face her fears and take a leap of courage.

As packs of small bodies in bright clothing swirl apart and then regroup, the game shifts. If you watch closely, you can almost see cosmic forces, like those that govern ocean waves, or the movement of the stars, at work. At the end of recess, everyone wipes snot on their sleeves, and troops back to class and the watchful eyes of their teachers. Peace is restored in the universe. -DW THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

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FILM FOR THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT Choose from four unique certificate programs: • Documentary Production • Digital Film Production • Art of DSLR Video and Lighting • Production Design for Film and TV Part-time Digital Film Production courses also offered.

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Annat Kennet 604.323.5561 | akennet@langara.ca www.langara.ca/cs

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TUESDAY MAY 10

6:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

TUESDAY MAY 10

7:00 PM MOV

Trapped

The Infinite Happiness

When State Senator Wendy Davis took to the floor of the Texas legislature and filibustered for 11 hours straight, the moment grabbed media attention around the globe. Davis’s impassioned stand on the right of women to safe and legal healthcare was part of a much larger struggle. In Texas, the doctors and nurses who provide family planning services, everything from pregnancy tests to STI information and access to abortion, face a daily fight, not only from anti-choice protestors who harass staff and abuse patients, but more critically, from their own government. Texas is not the only US state to systematically make it impossible for clinics to operate, but it’s certainly the most infamous. The socalled TRAP laws, which give the film its title, refer to “targeted regulations of abortion providers.” What that really means is that clinics are required under law to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and also require abortions to be performed at specialized surgical centres. The end result is that many clinics are unable to comply and are forced to shut down. Dawn Porter’s incendiary film is in the trenches with the men and women fighting for women’s reproductive rights. Trapped could not be more relevant, as the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt on March 2nd of this year. Not since Roe v. Wade has there been a more critical moment in the fight for freedom of choice. A decision that may well affect the rights of women to a safe and legal abortion is expected in June. -DW

One sure-fire way to begin a conversation in Vancouver is to start talking about real estate. In collaboration with the Museum of Vancouver’s exhibition Your Future Home: Creating the New Vancouver, DOXA is proud to offer this special presentation of The Infinite Happiness. Superstar architect Bjarks Ingel’s designs have set a new standard for innovation, invention, as well as a little bit of eccentricity. But at the heart of one of his most iconic design projects is a very simple idea — community. Copenhagen’s 8 House was designed to resemble a mountain village, with residents able to see, talk to, and belong to their community. (8 House was awarded the Housing Building of the Year at the 2011 World Architecture Festival.)

Dawn Porter, USA, 2015, 83 mins

In a film full of heartbreaking moments, the most devastating comes when a clinic worker is forced to turn away a 13-year-old rape victim, who made a four-hour trip to the facility, due to TRAP law complications. As a result, the girl’s been “sentenced to motherhood.”

-THE GUARDIAN

Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, France/Denmark, 2015, 85 mins

Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine’s series of films on cities and buildings (other projects include London’s Barbican Centre) have a breezy whimsical way that belies the cool intelligence and well-structured nature of their narratives. The Infinite Happiness unfolds a little like a novel in architectural form, with chapters devoted to kids’ parties, a hike up the building’s grass-covered roof, as well as time to check out the neighbours, which include a group of sheep grazing on the marshland below. Contain your housing lust if you are able. But with cozy apartments, a stunning view of the sea and a bike path that winds its way around all nine floors, it is difficult not to drop everything and move to Denmark.

I’m already looking at apartments. -DW NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING.

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THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POST-FILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

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TUESDAY MAY 10

7:15 PM VANCITY

TUESDAY MAY 10

8:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

The Final Passage

Skin

Made entirely using 3-D models, The Final Passage is an uninterrupted journey through the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave that approaches the experience of the first humans who spent time in the cave 36,000 years ago. An uncut sequence-shot filmed with a subjective camera allows us to discover in an immersive manner one of the greatest sites of human history. Lions, mammoths, rhinos, bears, and half-human, half-animal figures come to life in this never-before-seen, hyper-realistic digital reproduction.

Discovered in 1994, the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave has proven to be extraordinary, enormous, and sumptuously beautiful. Today it is one of the oldest underground sanctuaries recognized in the world.

In the face of the bitter horror of the Syrian situation, three young artists (Sobhi, Hussein, and Afraa) attempt to find some meaning in their lives through art and theatre. These might seem like paltry weapons against Scud missiles, but they are the only things these young artists/activists have. Fragmented and intimate, the narrative moves between the shattered Syrian city of Aleppo to Turkey and Beirut. In cramped messy apartments, noisy karaoke bars, and city streets, the three friends talk about their experiences, write dialogue, and make puppets for theatrical productions. But you get the sense that their attempts to winnow in on small things, to make art that can be fashioned by hand, is a means to regain some sense of control. Skin is very much a young filmmaker’s work. This is both its charm and, occasionally, its frustration. Sobhi, Hussein, and Afra are like young people anywhere, uncertain about the future, their ambition spiked with weary cynicism and a protective irony. But the bleak reality of their homeland is unshakeable. Through endless cigarettes and drunken late night discussions, they circle back to Syria, and to the revolution.

Pascal Magontier, France, 2016, 26 mins

Afraa Batous, Lebanon/Syria/Turkey, 2015, 85 mins

Slinking through rock gaps, down passageways, hovering past stalactites, over fossilized remains, the camera, at roughly eye level, progressively reveals the centerpiece of the Cave: dozens of paintings, some of the earliest ever discovered, of horse heads, mammoths, bears, cave lions, panthers, hyenas, two rhinoceroses butting horns, red ochre hand prints and dots, a partial Venus figure. -VARIETY THIS SCREENING WILL BE PRESENTED IN 3-D AND WILL BE FOLLOWED BY AN EXTENDED TALK FROM DR. JEAN-MICHEL GENESTE AND PATRICIA MARQUET GENESTE. THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

SCREENING PARTNER

AUDIENCE PARTNER

Part of our curated series on new Arab cinema (please see Zeina Zahreddine’s terrific essay on page 27), Skin is very much a film that is attempting something new. In a world blown apart by seemingly endless violence and horror, what does art even mean?

In this way, director Afraa Batous is following in a long line of cultural tradition that dates back to Goya’s Black Paintings or Picasso’s Guernica. -DW THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE ARAB SPRING/ARAB FALL SERIES, CURATED

BY ZEINA ZAHREDDINE. READ MORE ON PAGE 21.

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TUESDAY MAY 10 SUNDAY MAY 15

9:00 PM VANCITY 1:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Brothers

Aslaug Holm, Norway, 2015, 102 mins

When she began filming her two young sons with a handheld camcorder, Aslaug Holm knew she wasn’t interested in making just another home movie. Lukas and Markus have been the subject of a film-in-process from the day they entered the world, their mother lovingly — and at times obsessively — documenting their everyday existence, from first days of school to first crushes and everything in between. We watch the two boys as they grow and confront the challenges and triumphs that the world presents them, bolstered by their parents’ support and the closeness of their connection to each other.

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More than a documentarian’s version of Boyhood (2014), Brothers is a finely wrought, delicate yet firm exploration of life and all of its complex pieces: family, friendship, parenthood, and love.

It is also a moving meditation on childhood and the bittersweet process of growing up, captured through the eyes of a parent both nostalgic and also filled with hope and anticipation for her children’s future. Finally, it is a reflection on the small events that constitute a life, the process of memory collection as art, and preservation as an act of love. As Holm observes: “I used to travel the world capturing important events on film. Then I discovered that it was more interesting to film what was right before my eyes — that the small moments contain everything. And now I can see that the whole world lies within this tiny universe: a river, a school, a kiosk, a football field, a backyard — small spaces that contain an entire childhood.” -PP

WEDNESDAY MAY 11

12:30 PM VANCITY

This Land is Your Land: Shorts Program From renaming a sacred mountain near Victoria, B.C., to fighting to have treaties recognized in Saskatchewan, First Nations people across Canada are reclaiming land and identity.

The Re-naming of PKOLS Steven Davies, Canada, 2015, 4 mins

In May 2013, the WSÁNEĆ and Lekwungen Nations led a march to rename a sacred mountain in their territory, honouring their ancestors and history. -SC

Nowhere Land

Bonnie Ammaaq, Canada, 2015, 15 mins

During the 1950s and ’60s, the Canadian government coerced thousands of Baffin Island Inuit into leaving their traditional territories. Filmmaker Bonnie Ammaaq’s family was among those relocated to Iglulik, Nunavut. -SC

Red Path

Thérèse Ottawa, Canada, 2015, 15 mins

On the verge of fatherhood, Tony Chachai, a thoughtful 21-yearold man from Atikamekw Nation, in Northern Quebec, discovers the power of a Pow Wow. Dancing alongside his cousin, Chachai reconnects to his culture. -SC

Reserve 107

Brad Leitch, Canada, 2015, 32 mins

WEDNESDAY MAY 11

2:45 PM VANCITY

Coûte que coûte (At All Costs)

Claire Simon, France, 1995, 95 mins

Capitalism, red in tooth and claw, is the basis of Claire Simon’s comic tragedy of business heartbreak. The scene is a small catering company in the seaside city of Nice. The brainchild of a former diplomat turned entrepreneur, Navigation Systèmes makes ready-to-eat meals for supermarkets. The business is barely a year old, but is already in major trouble. The employees haven’t been paid for months, and the phones have been cut off.

Jihad, the company’s founder, smoking, sweating, and lying to his creditors, is a portrait of agonized stress. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the cooks joke around and flirt with the adorable giggler that is Gisèle, the company’s secretary. But tension is building to some final awful conclusion. Watching the place come apart piece by piece is a little like witnessing a car accident in slow motion. But the staff hang in there, in hope that they might see some of their back pay, or that things will turn around. When the bailiffs show up to repossess the equipment, things don’t look so good. In making the film, Claire Simon would visit the company at the end of the month, just as the bills were due and the decision to give up or carry on hung in this balance.

Like in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, market capitalism is a blunt brute force that eats dreams and ambition. But somehow, almost miraculously, in Coûte que coûte the human spirit endures. Life goes on, and sometimes it even heads to the beach. -DW THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

The Young Chippewayan Band 107, located in Treaty 6 territory near Laird, Saskatchewan, is still fighting to have their treaties honoured.

Young Chippewayan Hereditary Chief George Kingfisher finds unlikely allies in local Mennonite and Lutheran communities. -SC THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE RATED Y SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POSTFILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 15.

NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING .

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The Members of IATSE Local 891 are proud supporters of 2016 DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Professional Crews

Professional Results

WEDNESDAY MAY 11

5:00 PM VANCITY

Common Notions: Handbook Not Required

Carla Bergman, Corin Browne and John Collins, Canada, 2015, 39 mins

For almost 15 years, the youth-run arts and activism space, the Purple Thistle, has been home for a variety of activities, from guerilla gardening to DIY publishing and screen-printing. Common Notions: Handbook Not Required is not only a celebration of the Thistle’s achievements, it’s a manifesto for the youth liberation movement. An array of alternative education advocates and scholars including Astra Taylor, Gustavo Esteva, and Madhu Suri Prakash, as well as local organizer Khelsilem, make a compelling case for democratizing knowledge and re-imagining our current systems of education. They argue that institutionalized schools, as we currently know and understand them, offer an extremely narrow and commodified definition of what it means to teach and to learn. Consensus decision-making, inclusivity, and a strict “noassholism” policy are just some of the Thistle’s guiding principles.

Last year, the Thistle officially closed its doors. But this isn’t necessarily all bad news. Youth members and staff facilitators say the spirit of the collective will carry on in different permutations.

After all, the Thistle was never meant to be an institution, but a path to a different way of experiencing the world. -SC PRECEDED BY

Raising the Words

Chloë Ellingson, Canada, 2016, 14 mins

The legacy of residential schools and other government-initiated assimilation efforts have left many Indigenous languages across Canada in an endangered state. Raising the Words is a lyrical portrait of six stalwart Mohawk speakers in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, approximately 200 km east of Toronto, who are empowering a new generation to revitalize and reclaim their traditional language. -SC NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING.

WEDNESDAY MAY 11

6:30 PM VANCITY

Do Not Resist

Craig Atkinson, USA, 2016, 70 mins

Ferguson was a watershed moment for both race and class relations in America. The most troubling images of the protests, following the death of Michael Brown, showed police officers equipped like soldiers — complete with assault vehicles — standing face-to-face with an increasingly alienated populace. It was easy to mistake footage of Ferguson for that of a war zone.

An interesting companion to The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (page 87), which documents the impact of the US prison system, Craig Atkinson’s Do Not Resist exposes the political machinations that led police forces across the United States to resemble paramilitary organizations. Expertly chosen court and news footage show us the cause-and-effect relationship between bureaucratic policing decisions and the use of military-grade equipment against protesters. When the film takes a streetlevel view though, the stark reality of the decaying relationship between police officer and citizen is rendered clear. Interviews with officers, protesters, and community members reveal just how wide the gulf between police and communities has become — in Ferguson and elsewhere. Witnessing police forces launch devastating strikes on the very people that they are trying to protect, one can’t help but feel that something has gone terribly wrong in the home of the free. -CP PRECEDED BY

I, Destini

Nicholas Pilarski and Destini Riley, USA, 2016, 14 mins

I, Destini is an autobiographical account of 14-year-old Destini Riley’s struggle to grapple with the societal forces that led to her brother being incarcerated in Durham, North Carolina — a city notorious for racial profiling. Riley’s self-penned narration, coupled with inspired animation, tells a powerful story about the barriers that media, class, race, and the law can place between people. -CP THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POST-FILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

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WEDNESDAY MAY 11 THURSDAY MAY 12

8:45 PM CINEMATHEQUE 12:30 PM VANCITY

9:00 PM VANCITY

Wizard Mode

Roshmia

Wizard Mode is the story of Robert Gagno, a pinball champion who has overcome a few extra obstacles; Gagno is autistic and did not speak until he was almost 10 years old. Through home movies, tape recordings, and interviews with his parents, we see Gagno’s childhood, where milestones such as walking and communicating proved challenging. Even in his twenties, Gagno seems more like a friendly, funny teenager who just happens to be a little on the awkward side. At his annual pinball birthday party, which includes a dozen or so pinball machines, cake, and laughter, Gagno holds court. He isn’t simply an aficionado of the game, he is one of Canada’s top pinball players and among the very best in the world.

As Robert and his dad travel to pinball competitions across North America, his little tics become more noticeable, and the additional challenges he faces become evident. But Gagno’s determination, as well as the love and support of both family and friends, are his secret weapon. He’s learned how to give hugs, but he’s also begun to figure out what kind of hug is appropriate. (Best not to hug your boss in a work situation.) Next to such complexities, his ability to stay cool and focused in a room full of noisy pinball games is a snap.

An elderly Palestinian couple’s rundown home in the Roshmia Valley, close to the Israeli city of Haifa, is the scene for a slowly unfolding tragedy. Yousef and Amna have lived in their tumbledown place, constructed of corrugated iron and canvas sheets, for more than 50 years. It is a humble existence with no running water or electricity. As the city of Haifa expands, eating the surrounding countryside, two new major projects are planned including the construction of a nearby road. Change is on its way, and it is well nigh unstoppable. Yousef and Amna vow that they won’t be moved. “Even if the entire government of Israel comes, I’m not going to leave my home,” he states. The evacuation of the valley extends not only to the physical, but also to the erasure of the original Aramaic name of the place. (It is renamed in honour of the Battalion 22 of the Haganah, responsible for ethnic cleansing in April, 1948.)

Jeff Petry and Nathan Drillot, Canada, 2016, 102 mins

Gagno knows his pinball skills are unparalleled, but outside of the competitive tournament world he must struggle for genuine independence. After years of being taken care of by his nurturing and patient family, Gagno is ready to face the rest of the world. -KR

Salim Abu Jabal, Palestine, 2015, 70 mins

Made over six years, the conflict between occupation and displacement is embodied in the struggle between this aged couple and the full weight of the City administration. DOXA’ s guest curator Zeina Zahreddine writes about the film in her essay (page 26): “As the ‘Palestinian Superhero’ idea is replaced by the reality of an elderly frustrated couple, the film becomes a rare piece of authenticity where merciless action is undertaken by those in power as easily as washing ones’ hands.” The final confrontation is brutal, fast, and heartbreaking. But what comes afterwards is almost worse. -DW

THE MAY 12 SCREENING IS PART OF THE RATED Y SERIES. MORE ON PAGE 15.

BOTH SCREENINGS WILL BE FOLLOWED BY A FILMMAKER Q&A.

WINNER OF THE JURY PRIZE AT THE 2014 DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL.

NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING .

THIS SCREENING IS PART OF ARAB SPRING / ARAB FALL, CURATED BY ZEINA ZAHREDDINE. READ MORE ON PAGE 21.

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WEDNESDAY MAY 11

#DOXA2016

THURSDAY MAY 12

3:15 PM VANCITY

800 kilomètres de différence / Romance (800 kilometers of difference / Romance) Claire Simon, France, 2001, 78 mins

Manon and Greg are in love. In a small village in Provence, the smell of the olive and the almond trees perfumes the warm summer air. Greg works with his father, the village baker, at night.

During the day, he hangs out with his friends, messing about on motorbikes, passing the hours with casual conversation and dumb jokes. Manon, on summer holidays from her school in Paris, is also director Claire Simon’s only daughter. These downy-cheeked teenagers, as soft as baby chicks, are nonetheless convinced that their love is permanent and irrefutable. Class, education, and cultural differences pale in the face of their budding sexuality.

While Manon plans for her future as a baker’s wife with babies, Greg appears less certain. Throughout the action is Claire Simon herself, behind the camera, watching with a respectful and caring eye. “It freaks me out to think that’s it!” says Manon. To her great credit, Claire Simon doesn’t laugh at this statement. Belief in the dream is too bittersweet and too beautiful.

As the weeks unfold, the novelistic quality of the film becomes entangled with one’s own memories of summers and that first obliterating love. A powerful physicality comes through in beads of sweat, and hazy skies. If there is one thing that 800 kilomètres makes clear, it is the powerful connection between the events on screen and the hearts and minds of an audience. Documentary cinema, rooted in real experience, gives an almost palpable sense of immediacy, a direct line so strong that when Greg promises to visit Manon in Paris (800 kms distant), or at least says he’ll try, you will feel a catch in your own throat. -DW

THURSDAY MAY 12

6:45 PM VANCITY

A Matter of Time Casey Cohen, Canada, 2016, 85 mins

Kathryn Calder, a singer and keyboard player in the indie supergroup The New Pornographers, was at the peak of her career when she received the news of her mother’s ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) diagnosis. Calder’s decision to take time off from the road — to write and record her first solo record at home with her mother in the next room — was the beginning of an entirely new chapter in her life and her music. A Matter of Time is a sincere invitation inside a family in the midst of coping with a devastating tragedy. During the period of her mother’s illness, Kathryn was also contending with the discovery that her mother was adopted.

As she delves more deeply into her family’s history, the quest to find her own biological roots takes on a life of its own. It was the discovery of a previously unknown family that actually led Kathryn to Carl Newman (leader of The New Pornographers and her newly-discovered uncle). Finally, the film documents Kathryn’s cathartic fundraising and awareness-raising concert at the Royal BC Museum, in Victoria. A testament to the redemptive power of music and the love of family, A Matter of Time shines through the many stages of grief and joy. -KR PRECEDED BY

NIMBI

Colin Garcia, USA, 2016, 14 mins

The Vancouver avant-rock instrumental band Fond of Tigers returns to the studio to record after a break of ten years. Guitarist Stephen Lyons discusses the essential role of music in his life and the alchemy of group dynamics. -KR

THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

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THURSDAY MAY 12

6:45 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Jonas and the Backyard Circus Paula Gomes, Brazil, 2015, 80 mins

Honey-coloured sunshine and the playful spirit of the young would-be impresario at its centre fill this beautiful film from director Paula Gomes with particular joyfulness. Thirteen-yearold Jonas has a great passion for the circus — it’s an obsession that thrills his grandmother and drives his mother slightly insane.

In the backyard of his house, Jonas builds sets, makes costumes, rehearses with his circle of friends, and puts on one heck of a show.

Acrobatic acts and musical performances (keep your eyes peeled for a particularly thrilling rendition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller) enthrall the neighbourhood kids. Keeping the circus going, along with schoolwork and family, is proving a bit of a strain for Jonas, as director Paula Gomes discovers when she is hauled on the carpet by the school principal for proving to be a disruptive force in Jonas’s life. Jonas himself also calls into question the purpose behind the film in a series of frank discussions with Gomes. Even as the triangle of strong women in his life debate his future, you get the sense that Jonas will ultimately have the final say in his destiny. There is a glint of hard steel in his eyes that indicates the depth of his ambition as a born showman. Despite the tensions, there is so much warmth and affection in this film that it is hard not to be lulled into the gentle rhythms of life in Brazil. Especially on long sunny afternoons, dappled with leafy light, while Jonas whiles away the hours daydreaming about a future filled with magnificent feats of skills, high wire acts and derring-do. -DW

THURSDAY MAY 12

8:45 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Yallah! Underground

Farid Eslam, USA/UK/Germany/Canada/Egypt/Czech Republic, 2015, 85 mins

The revolutionary power of music is the subject of Farid Eslam’s rollicking documentary, buoyed along by performances from some of the Arab world’s most exciting new performers. As part of guest curator Zeina Zahreddine’s program on new Arab cinema (read her essay on page 26), Yallah! Underground provides an expansive look at musicians working actively to make change.

Zeid Hamdan, “The Godfather of Lebanese alternative music,” and founding member of Soapkills, as well as the music label Lebanese Underground, explains that writing and performing music in the midst of a country in tremendous upheaval provides a unique environment for making art. As if to hammer this point home, footage of concerts and musicians at work in the studio are set against images of bombardment and violent street protests.

The intersection of art and politics gets personal when Hamdan is jailed for writing a song about General Suleiman. As the society tests its limits, artists and musicians push against the boundaries of tradition, culture, and religion, creating a call for freedom and peace that you can dance to. -DW German-born documentarist Farid Eslam examines the ongoing Middle East revolutions and their aftermath through the eyes of young musicians — rockers, rappers, rebels and alternatives — in Yallah! Underground. Their refreshingly cool point of view bridges the gap with Western sensibilities and offers young audiences, in particular, a behind-the-scenes look at the sea changes taking place in social attitudes should send a drumbeat to the young Arab audiences it primarily targets.... -THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER THIS SCREENING IS PART OF ARAB SPRING/ARAB FALL, CURATED BY ZEINA ZAHREDDINE. READ MORE ON PAGE 21.

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FRIDAY MAY 13 SATURDAY MAY 14

12:30 PM VANCITY 7:15 PM VANCITY

INAATE/SE/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place./it flies. falls./] Zack Khalil and Adam Khalil, Canada/USA, 2016, 75 mins

The Seven Fires Prophecy is an ancient Anishinaabeg story that predates, and even predicted the arrival of European settlers.

The prophecy acts as the bedrock of Zack and Adam Khalil’s debut feature, a palimpsest of animation, candid interviews, and hallucinatory performances. Set in their ancestral territory of Sault Ste. Marie (that straddles the border between Michigan and Ontario), the film transgresses mainstream convention and linear history to fashion a subversive look at the devastating impact of colonialism. The Ojibwe brothers are masterful video artists at heart, employing a sharp trickster wit when interviewing local museum workers about stolen artifacts. But underneath the jump cuts and buzzy electronic score, there is genuine pain, as evidenced by the stories people tell. A woman remembers being punished for speaking her language while walking on the grounds of a former residential school. A First Nations man talks about losing his brother to a white adoptive family. In a time of government-sponsored truth and reconciliation efforts, it’s important to think long and hard about what decolonization actually looks like. The Khalil brothers’ brazen film offers an entirely new vision. INAATE/SE/ is a playful and wildly intelligent experiment that unsettles colonial narratives, challenges notions of conventional non-fiction cinema, and begins to carve space for contemporary Indigenous identity. -SC Confident in its antagonism without ever lapsing into smug selfregard; formally adventurous but never esoteric, INAATE/SE/ is an inimitable model for what radical documentary in the 21st century might be. -SCREEN SLATE

FRIDAY MAY 13

2:45 PM VANCITY

This Is The Life

Ava DuVernay, USA, 2008, 97 mins

Before she went on to make epics like Selma and the upcoming adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s beloved novel A Wrinkle in Time, director Ava DuVernay cut her directorial teeth in documentary.

Her debut film This Is The Life documents the life and times of The Good Life Café. Part of our curated program from writer Rebecca Carroll (read her excellent essay on pg. 30), This Is The Life is a vibrant portrait of the early days of L.A. hip hop. At the time of the film’s making, Ava (then called Eve) was working as an MC at the café. Performers as varied as Snoop Dog, Ice Cube, Lenny Kravitz, and will.i.am made pilgrimage to the Café’s legendary open-mic nights. In addition to a strict no cursing policy, artists and poets were allowed to perform one song apiece before passing the mic on to the next performer. -DW The Good Life Café was a health-food store in South Central L.A. that held open-mic hip-hop nights once a week from 198995, a period that just happened to coincide with hip-hop’s sudden maturation into a culturally and commercially significant medium.

As such, the café became ground zero for the burgeoning L.A. scene and an eclectic melting pot of black youth culture, with college students, gang members, hippies, Five Percenters and churchgoers alike all meeting to trade rhymes. The scene was especially fruitful for the subgenre that would later be tagged “conscious” or “alternative” hip-hop, with groups Jurassic 5, Freestyle Fellowship and the Project Blowed collective among its best-known alumni. -VARIETY THIS FILM IS PART OF BLACK LIFE IS, AIN’T AND STILL RISES CURATED BY REBECCA CARROLL. READ MORE ON PAGE 21.

THE MAY 13 SCREENING IS PART OF THE RATED Y SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POST-FILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 15.

NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED. OPEN TO YOUTH UNDER 18.

VISIT WWW.DOXAFESTIVAL.CA FOR CLASSIFICATION RATING.

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FRIDAY MAY 13

5:00 PM VANCITY

FRIDAY MAY 13

6:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Flow Mechanics

SEED: The Untold Story

From its deliberately technocratic title to scenes of grainy security footage, Flow Mechanics speaks to the many ways in which debates over immigration render the experiences of those seeking refuge in Europe (and elsewhere) invisible. By combining stark footage with poignant testimonies, director Nathalie Loubeyre paints a bleak picture of the migrant crisis in Europe and the precarious lives of those living at the continent’s literal and figurative margins. The effect is mesmerizing. Starting with the ghostly images of faceless refugees appearing on a Croatian border patrol’s TV screen, the film makes it its job to take these people out of the shadows. Rather than choosing a single perspective to link her story, Loubeyre follows border guards, aid workers, morticians, and the migrants themselves to piece together the current conditions on the borders of Europe.

At each stop, Loubeyre’s camera forces us to come to terms with our own dehumanizing gaze. In one particularly harrowing scene we hear from Africans living in a Tunisian port town and their efforts to reach Europe while the camera shows young men desperately climbing underneath moving trucks in an effort to smuggle themselves aboard a ferry to Italy.

If you’ve ever planted a bean or tomato seed and hovered over the small green life forms as they emerge from the soil, then you already know, as Jane Goodall remarks in the film, “That seeds are magic.” Living embryos, tiny time capsules, messages from our ancestors; seeds are pure life force. This lovingly crafted film, directed by Jon Betz and Taggart Siegel, is filled with a reverence for the commonplace magic of seeds in all their glorious genetic range. The film also explores how this diversity, like many other aspects of life on planet earth, is profoundly threatened by the mechanisms of unfettered capitalism. Monetized, hybridized, and, most critically, trademarked and patented by large corporations, the genetic variance of our most common food crops is critically threatened. By one estimate, North America lost 94% of common vegetable seed varieties within the 20th century alone. Whereas we once had hundreds of different varieties, commercially produced food-crops now number in the single digits. This has terrifying implications for life, and food, in a rapidly changing climate. From the Green Revolution of modern industrialized agriculture in the mid-20th century, to the Indian farmers of recent years trapped into buying trademarked seeds every year and driven to suicide, we’ve collectively lost an enormous amount in a very short period of time. But all is not lost! Arrayed against the seemingly unstoppable forces of Monsanto and Dow Chemicals is an army of dedicated seedsavers, independent farmers, community seed-bank organizers, food activists, academics, and a wide range of all-round really good humans who are dedicating enormous amounts of time, energy, and passion to fighting the good food fight. -AW

Nathalie Loubeyre, France, 2015, 85 mins

There is little hope in this film, but even if you thought you knew the stories of Afghan, Syrian, and other refugees, this film will open your eyes... and force you to see them differently. -JC THIS FILM IS PART OF THE FRENCH FRENCH PROGRAM. MORE ON PAGE 22.

Jon Betz and Taggart Siegel, USA, 2016, 91 mins

THIS FILM IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POSTFILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

HOSPITALITY PARTNER

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SCREENING PARTNER

FRIDAY MAY 13 SUNDAY MAY 15

7:00 PM VANCITY 6:15 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Looking for Exits: Conversations with a Wingsuit Artist Kristoffer Hegnsvad, Denmark, 2015, 60 mins

Ellen Brennan is one of the most preeminent wingsuit BASE jumpers in the world. On an average day she soars high above the peaks and valleys of the French Alps at speeds of up to 240 km/h, wearing nothing but a suit seemingly styled after a flying squirrel. There is great beauty in Brennan’s gravity-defying stunts. It is easy to see why she is considered an artist in the extreme sports community. The mountains of the Chamonix Valley, where Brennan has spent a large part of her BASE career, provide a breathtaking canvas for her to practice her craft. In the BASE jumping world, jumps are known as “exits.” First-person photography of Brennan flying off one cliff after another is a pulse-pounding spectacle to behold, but filmmaker Kristoffer Hegnsvad offers an equally compelling philosophical angle on the life of this remarkable athlete.

Far more contemplative than most extreme sport films, Looking for Exits casts Brennan’s incredible feats in a metaphysical light.

Revealing conversations capture the contradictions apparent in someone who clearly lives life to the fullest, but defies death on a daily basis. Although Brennan knows that something could go wrong with any jump, she can’t help but keep living her dream. A “normal life” just isn’t in the cards for her. Interstitial sequences of ordinary people in Chamonix going about their lives while Brennan floats high above highlights the contrast between her current existence and the one she may be forced to live one day. -CP TRANSPORATION PARTNER

FRIDAY MAY 13

9:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

88:88

Isiah Medina, Canada, 2015, 65 mins

88:88 is a film and also a philosophical essay. Taking inspiration from the French theorist and political activist Alain Badiou, Isiah Medina’s ferociously intelligent debut attempts to intersect the four conditions that Badiou says make up the essence of philosophy: art, politics, science, and love. This may sound abstract and weighty, but 88:88 is not just a heady affair. At its core, it is a personal meditation on family, friendship, and the experience of living in poverty. (The title refers to what happens if you don’t pay the electric bill — 88:88 flashes on stoves and alarm clocks when the power is turned back on.)

As Medina documents the life of his friends living in a low-income neighbourhood in Winnipeg, moments of raw emotion are brought to the fore. Scenes of a couple lounging in their bedroom and friends skateboarding on Portage Avenue are carried along by a hazy soundscape composed of intimate monologues about family struggle, existential conversations, and passages read aloud from Badiou’s texts. Silence also plays a considerable role here — with gaps in audio reminiscent of streaming video being choked by slow Internet speed. Combine this with an extremely dense editing style, and 88:88 starts to feel like an audio-visual endurance test. Critics and cinephiles around the world have embraced this glitched-out social doc, propelling Medina onto the international art house film stage — and with good reason.

88:88 strips image and sound of their representational power, allowing the viewers to confront the very essence of cinema. The result is a critical reflection on documentary form that also offers viewers a healing and regenerative moment. -SC PRECEDED BY

Holland, Man.

Aaron Zeghers, Canada, 2015, 20 mins

A cinematic collage constructed out of footage from handcrafted pinhole cameras, 16mm film, and digital video, captures the dissolution of the filmmaker’s intergenerational family farm in Manitoba. -SC #DOXA2016

83

SATURDAY MAY 14

1:30 PM VANCITY

1:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

La Laguna

A Good American

Twelve-year-old Yu’uk and his younger brother Jose have grown up in the deep, lush rainforests of southern Mexico, nestled in the protective embrace of the Mayan people. The brothers’ days revolve around exploring the jungle, catching fish for their family, canoeing along the wide rivers and lagoons of their community, and eating handmade tortillas fresh off the comal.

Edward Snowden’s revelations started an ongoing conversation about government surveillance of our data and communications.

With news of the possible fate of Bill C-51, and Apple’s ongoing legal battle with the FBI, this conversation shows no sign of disappearing. The balance between security and privacy seems to have no satisfactory solution. But what if the relationship between governments and our data could have been different?

Friedrich Moser’s A Good American poses this question through the story of William Binney, an ex-NSA intelligence official turned whistleblower. Binney pioneered methods of monitoring metadata — information regarding the origins, destinations, and times of phone calls, emails, text messages, and other forms of telecommunications. (More critically, the security system he developed in the early 2000s had built-in privacy protection measures.) Binney’s system was so mathematically rigorous in its ability to identify communications patterns that experts claim it could have prevented 9/11. In remembering September 11, Binney’s pain, regret, and visible disgust with the American security establishment is palpable. As the NSA pushed to develop more expensive, less effective systems to invade citizens’ digital lives in the wake of the “War on Terror,” Binney’s discontent with his former employer reached a breaking point. Although his story shares elements with those of his fellow Citizenfour subject, Binney offers us a unique window into the shadowy world of government security systems. A modern-day Alan Turing, he shows that security and privacy don’t necessarily have to be at odds with one another, adding nuance to one of today’s most divisive conversations. -CP

Aaron Schock, USA, 2015, 40 mins

Their world — like that of so many Indigenous communities around the globe — is increasingly changing. In his small village classroom, Yu’uk cannot seem to connect with the contemporary Mexico that dominates the world outside the jungle — neither with its language nor its unfamiliar culture. And as the microcosm of his familial universe undergoes its own shifts and struggles, Yu’uk is forced to consider how his future may best serve his family, and that it may take him away from the village and his beloved little brother. -PP PRECEDED BY

What Remains Is Mermanat Zeynep Kececiler, Turkey, 2015, 46 mins

Deep in the forested mountains of eastern Turkey, not far from the Black Sea, lies the small village of Mermanat. Traditionally home to small agricultural communities, Mermanat’s population has dwindled in recent years as the land yields fewer crops and financial strain forces families further afield. Not everyone has left, though: Bahri, his older sister Damla, their mother, and their 80-year-old neighbour Mama Nokta brave the cold winter months to remain in Mermanat. In the misty, snow-covered valley they go about their daily lives with all the routine, mischief, joy, hard work, and reflection of any community, helping to care for each other and stave off loneliness. -PP

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SATURDAY MAY 14

#DOXA2016

Friedrich Moser, Austria, 2015, 100 mins

THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POST-FILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

SATURDAY MAY 14

3:30 PM VANCITY

SATURDAY MAY 14

4:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

The Peacemaker

The Ballad of Oppenheimer Park

Padraig (Patrick) O’Malley is a conflict mediator par excellence, and his clients include such war-torn countries and communities as Northern Ireland, South Africa, the Middle East, and former Yugoslavia. Borrowing concepts from Alcoholics Anonymous, O’Malley’s “Conflict Anonymous” brings various divided societies together to help each other work through seemingly insurmountable issues. This peacemaker knows of what he speaks, having left Northern Ireland for grad studies in the US during the Irish “ Troubles.” Since the early seventies, he’s made Boston his somewhat “home” — though in reality it’s where his suitcase is ready-packed for global peace-making junkets. O’Malley is also an alcoholic, a fact revealed early in this compelling study of a conflicted individual. Alcohol has fueled his life: it is the convivial libation to open up lines of dialogue at Conflicts Anonymous, and it’s the means to provide a steady income — he long ago bought the Boston bar where he and his fellow ex-pats met to commiserate.

When director Juan Manuel Sepúlveda first began to hang out in Oppenheimer Park in Vancouver, he was planning to make a film about Latino gangs. But the Central American drug dealers were long gone. Over the course of two years, as Juan became a fixture in the neighbourhood, the idea began to shift.

James Demo, USA, 2015, 91 mins

This quietly spoken, unobtrusive man is a paradox, for though he seeks to bring people together, he is a solitary individual who has kept personal relationships distant, including loyal former lovers and the child — now a young woman — he adopted while working in South Africa. The full weight of his perspective on human relations confronts us head on: he admits to being attracted to the dark side of human nature, and believes that what we do, or work at, is only an escape from utter despair. Director James Demo’s intriguing portrait skillfully reveals O’Malley’s personal side while documenting his unique approach to conflict resolution, leaving us a sliver of hope in an era of unending conflict. -MB

Juan Manuel Sepúlveda, Mexico, 2015, 70 mins

The men and women in the park — Bear, Janet, and Harley — agreed to collaborate in making a film as long as Juan didn’t call it a documentary. Documentary crews and journalists have made the DTES synonymous with poverty and crime. It’s little wonder no one in the park was much interested in being fodder for yet another film. The Ballad of Oppenheimer Park, with its overt echoes to an earlier NFB film, The Ballad of Crowfoot, was conceived instead as an epic — a western in the style of John Ford. This film owes more to the work of Pedro Costa, in particular the Fontainhas trilogy (Ossos, In Vanda’s Room, Colossal Youth), in which the Portuguese auteur hung out with the residents from Lisbon’s marginalized neigbourhood. Like Fontainhas before it, the DTES is in the midst of enormous change, as the forces of gentrification are hard at work, remaking the place. It is neocolonialism of condos and cool new bistros. But inside the park, a community still exists. The park itself is both an archive of history, and a site of resistance. The relationships, memories, and experiences it contains are made visible through the film.

In this sense, like Costa before him, Sepúlveda is engaged in critical work with the people of Oppenheimer Park, capturing their stories, bearing witness, creating an epic that will, as he states: “Open a threshold for the burning recognition of the past within the present...” -DW

#DOXA2016

85

SATURDAY MAY 14

5:30 PM VANCITY

SATURDAY MAY 14

6:30 PM CINEMATHEQUE

Kivalina

The Crossing

At the edge of the world, the Inupiaq people are fighting for survival. Kivalina documents life on this namesake island that teeters on the edge of the North Pacific. Once a nomadic people, the Inupiaq were relocated to Kivalina, Alaska, by the US government more than a century ago. Today, the community struggles to maintain itself in the face of forces largely beyond its control. Climate change threatens to drown the village under rising ocean levels. The neglect of a government thousands of miles away delays repairs to the crumbling sea wall that routinely fails to protect the island from the flooding caused by ever more frequent storms. And, as the melting ice opens up the north to resource extraction and tanker traffic, an oil spill would wipe out the whales and with it the community. The everyday lives of the Inupiaq people carry on under the weight of these impending disasters.

The Crossing tells the difficult story of individuals forced into displacement. The characters in focus are a group of Syrian refugees whose lives are thrown into turmoil as they attempt to flee across the sea from Egypt to Europe. There is no shying away from the harsh conditions of their escape — from being packed shoulder-to-shoulder on a cargo vehicle, to being stranded at sea with no certainty of safe passage. (The transportation of refugees has been exploited by for-profit organizations for whom the safety of their wards is not a priority.) An incredible amount of footage has been filmed on camera phones to give you a firsthand account of their struggle, including the deeply personal and tense moments of secrecy and stealth that punctuate their journey. These refugees, like any group of individuals, come from diverse backgrounds and occupations. Some of them are journalists, some are teachers and musicians, but they are all bonded through a common desire for peace, even if it means being uprooted from their culture and their families. -AP

Gina Abatemarco, USA, 2016, 64 mins

Director Gina Abatemarco and her crew document traditional hunting and food preparation, coexisting with the frustrations of teenage boredom and bureaucratic intransigence. Kivalina shows the consequences of colonialism, economic exploitation, and bureaucratic neglect for this community while foregrounding the voices of the people themselves. Intimate and unflinching, the film shows the cultural as well as the environmental consequences of climate change. -JC

George Kurian, Norway, 2015, 55 mins

PRECEDED BY

50 Feet From Syria

Skye Fitzgerald, USA/Turkey, 2015, 39 mins

The reality that would cause people to flee their homes is given an unsparing look in 50 Feet From Syria. The film follows Dr. Hisham Bismar, a surgeon who returns to his homeland to bring his medical skills to people torn apart by a brutal conflict. -AP THIS SCREENING IS PART OF THE JUSTICE FORUM SERIES AND WILL INCLUDE A POST-FILM DISCUSSION. READ MORE ON PAGE 14.

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#DOXA2016

SATURDAY MAY 14

9:00 PM VANCITY

SATURDAY MAY 14

9:00 PM CINEMATHEQUE

The Prison in Twelve Landscapes

Nuts!

Brett Story’s film essay possesses a quiet power that is all the more affecting for its restraint and sorrow. In stories and images collected from across the US, the experiences of people directly impacted by the prison industrial complex are fashioned into a searing indictment of systemic injustice. By way of introduction, is a radio call-in show filled with messages of love and support from the families and friends of men and women behind bars. We never see an actual prison, but what we do see is the blast fields they create in families and communities. The residual wounds in the people themselves are not always immediately apparent. A chess player in Washington Square explains how he learned the game in prison as a means of making money. Against the cool grey beauty of Eastern Kentucky, people talk about how the federal prison became the only employer after the coal companies left town. In Marin County, a former inmate proudly narrates her experience of being a volunteer firefighter. As the scale of injustice slowly reveals itself, pathos and absurdity combine into a Kafkaesque reality, whether it’s the safety of music cassettes in prisons (no screws allowed) or parking tickets that are used to target the poorest, most vulnerable people. There is an enormous sense of loss at the centre of the film — a void that radiates with grief, pain, and long-banked rage. -DW

Many folktales have been woven out of the plentiful yarn provided by the dustbowl of early 20th-century America. From Franklin D. Roosevelt to Howard Hughes, the Great Depression was full of the colourful characters that inhabit our modern myths. Somewhere along the way though, John R. Brinkley was forgotten, despite arguably having the strangest story of them all. Brinkley started out as a down-on-his-luck doctor, travelling around the United States practicing “Eclectic Medicine” during the 1910s, to little financial avail. When he came across the now forgotten town of Milford, Kansas, though, his life took a dramatic turn thanks to, well, goat nuts. Specifically, Brinkley pioneered a technique to treat (human) male impotence through the grafting of goat testicles onto existing anatomy. This rather unusual surgery catapulted Brinkley to fame. Only a few years later, Brinkley founded the KFKB radio station, and became a pioneer in media advertising when he used it to promote his goat gland practice. His popular radio show became the launching pad for a political campaign waged against the government, and medical officials skeptical of his practices. But did Brinkley deserve the empire he created, or were his political opponents right to label him as nothing more than a quack?

Brett Story, Canada, 2016, 90 mins

Brett Story has made a potent political film without having to spray viewers with a fusillade of alarming numbers to back it up. She trusts viewers to intuit their way through fascinating anecdotes and detours that gain a cumulative power, one that data alone cannot possibly express. -VARIETY

Penny Lane, USA, 2016, 79 mins

DOXA alumna Penny Lane (Our Nixon) energetically captures Brinkley’s life in all of its stranger-than-fiction glory in her latest film, Nuts!. Whimsical animation and almost equally quirky stock recordings take viewers on a fascinating ride that will surely leave a bigger smile on their faces than a swig of one of John Brinkley’s virility tonics. -CP WINNER: SUNDANCE SPECIAL JURY AWARD FOR EDITING

#DOXA2016

87

MONDAY MAY 9

THURSDAY MAY 5

4:45 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

7:00 PM | VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE

RISTEARD Ó DOMHNAILL, IRELAND

JOHN BOLTON, CANADA

6:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

TAMARA HERMAN AND SUSI PORTER-BOPP, CANADA

JAKOB BROSSMANN, AUSTRIA/ITALY/SWITZERLAND

2:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

ATLANTIC (p 49)

AIM FOR THE ROSES (p 33)

WE CALL THEM INTRUDERS (p 51)

LAMPEDUSA IN WINTER (p 51)

FRIDAY MAY 6

6:45 PM | SFU-GCA

6:45 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

CLAIRE SIMON, FRANCE

UNDER THE SUN (p 41)

VITALY MANSKY, RUSSIA

WE CALL THEM INTRUDERS (p 51)

TAMARA HERMAN AND SUSI PORTER-BOPP, CANADA

LOVE BITE: LAURIE LIPTON AND HER DISTURBING BLACK & WHITE DRAWINGS (p 41)

JAMES SCOTT, UK

BEYOND THE VEYO

WITH

JACOB CHAMBERLAIN, USA

PERFECTION IS FOREVER

AND

LES PATIENTS (THE PATIENTS) (p 53)

6:45 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

7:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

MARA TRIFU, ROMANIA/UK

LE BOIS DONT LES RÊVES SONT FAITS (THE WOODS DREAMS ARE MADE OF) (p 53)

CLAIRE SIMON, FRANCE

OF SHADOWS (p 55)

LUCHA MEXICO (p 43)

9:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

MR. GAGA (p 43)

7:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION! SHORTS PROGRAM (p 65)

9:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON SPARKS

(p 67)

PINI SCHATZ, ISRAEL

PEPSI, COLA, WATER?

TOM BOGAERT, SWITZERLAND/EGYPT

(p 55)

9:15 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

HOW TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE

SUNDAY MAY 8

STANDBY FOR TAPE BACK-UP (p 67)

TUESDAY MAY 10

2:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

AND BEYOND

11:30 AM | SFU-GCA

PERSONAL AND THE

POLITICAL (p 19)

SUD EAU NORD DÉPLACER (SOUTH TO NORTH) (p 57)

ANTOINE BOUTET, FRANCE

3:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

UNDERSUNG (p 57)

ADAM LARSEN, USA WITH

WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU...

HEIDI JANZ AND EVA COLMERS, CANADA

12:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

THE ACT OF BECOMING

(p 45)

VERNON LOTT AND JENNIFER ANDERSON, USA WITH

LEFT ON PURPOSE (p 65)

ROSS SUTHERLAND, UK

PANEL: DISTRIBUTION

PANEL: THE

6:45 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

WITH

JAY CHEEL, CANADA

SATURDAY MAY 7

(p 19)

BLACK IS...BLACK AIN’T (p 63)

MARLON RIGGS AND CHRISTIANE BADGLEY, USA

9:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

TOMER HEYMANN, ISRAEL

9:30 AM | SFU-GCA

4:45 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

8:30 PM | SFU-GCA

YI CUI, CHINA/CANADA

ALEX HAMMOND AND IAN MARKIEWICZ, USA

HOW TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE (p 55)

JAY CHEEL, CANADA

JUSTIN SCHEIN AND DAVID MEHLMAN, USA

8:45 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

8:45 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

12:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

BARBARIAN PRESS

SARAH (EMMETT) RACE, CANADA

CLAIRE SIMON, FRANCE

5:45 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

AMY HARDIE, SCOTLAND

6:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

SEVEN SONGS FOR A LONG LIFE (p 59)

(p 59)

MAYA ANGELOU AND STILL I RISE

BOB HERCULES AND RITA COBURN WHACK, USA

MIGRANT DREAMS (p 47)

LES BUREAUX DE DIEU (GOD’S OFFICES) (p 68)

RÉCRÉATIONS (PLAYTIME)

PATRICK SHEN, USA

MIN SOOK LEE, CANADA

3:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

CLAIRE SIMON, FRANCE

5:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

2:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

ACT OUT: SHORTS PROGRAM (p 68)

4:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

12:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE (p 45)

12:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

TRAPPED (p 71)

DAWN PORTER, USA

7:00 PM | MUSEUM OF VANCOUVER

THE INFINITE HAPPINESS (p 71)

ILA BÊKA AND LOUISE LEMOINE, FRANCE/DENMARK

6:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN: THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF DR. MARIAN DIAMOND (p 61)

7:15 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

THE FINAL PASSAGE (p 73)

PASCAL MAGONTIER, FRANCE

2:00 PM | SFU-GCA

CATHERINE RYAN AND GARY WEIMBERG, USA

PANEL: EDITING FOR DOCUMENTARY (p 19)

WITH

MARATUS: A DOCUMYSTERY

8:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

AND

THE HONEYS AND BEARS

AFRAA BATOUS, LEBANON/SYRIA/TURKEY

SIMON CUNICH, AUSTRALIA

2:15 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

ALISA IN WARLAND (p 47)

9:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE 8:15 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

NO LIMITS (p 49)

SKIN (p 73)

VEENA RAO, USA

ALISA KOVALENKO AND LIUBOV DURAKOVA, POLAND

4:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

MIMI (p 61)

BROTHERS (p 74)

ASLAUG HOLM, NORWAY

CLAIRE SIMON, FRANCE

JOHN ZARITSKY, CANADA

8:45 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE 4:00 PM | SFU-GCA

PRESENTATION: NFB’S

HISTORY (p 19)

FREE EVENT

THE BABUSHKAS OF CHERNOBYL

MAKING MOVIE

(p 69)

(p 63)

HOLLY MORRIS AND ANNE BOGART, USA/UKRAINE

WITH

THE MEADOW

JELA HASLER, SWITZERLAND

WEDNESDAY MAY 11 12:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND: SHORTS PROGRAM (p 75)

2:45 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

COÛTE QUE COÛTE (AT ALL COSTS)

(p 75)

CLAIRE SIMON, FRANCE

5:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

COMMON NOTIONS: HANDBOOK NOT REQUIRED (p 77)

CARLA BERGMAN, CORIN BROWNE AND JOHN COLLINS, CANADA WITH

RAISING THE WORDS

CHLOË ELLINGSON, CANADA

6:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

DO NOT RESIST (p 77)

CRAIG ATKINSON, USA WITH

I, DESTINI

FRIDAY MAY 13 12:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

INAATE/SE/ [IT SHINES A CERTAIN WAY. TO A CERTAIN PLACE./IT FLIES. FALLS./] (p 81)

ADAM KHALIL AND ZACK KHALIL, CANADA/USA

PISTOL SHRIMPS (p 35)

BRENT HODGE, CANADA

AVA DUVERNAY, USA

9:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

NUTS! (p 87)

5:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

9:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

FLOW MECHANICS (p 82)

SEED: THE UNTOLD STORY (p 82)

JON BETZ AND TAGGART SIEGEL, USA

LOOKING FOR EXITS: CONVERSATIONS WITH A WINGSUIT ARTIST (p 83)

8:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

LEAGUE OF EXOTIQUE DANCERS (p 37)

RAMA RAU, CANADA

9:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE ISIAH MEDINA, CANADA

WITH

HOLLAND, MAN.

AARON ZEGHERS, CANADA

12:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

WIZARD MODE (p 78)

1:00 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

BROTHERS (p 74)

7:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

88:88 (p 83)

THURSDAY MAY 12

SUNDAY MAY 15

ASLAUG HOLM, NORWAY

ROSHMIA (p 78)

SALIM ABU JABAL, PALESTINE

PENNY LANE, USA

NATHALIE LOUBEYRE, FRANCE

8:45 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

WIZARD MODE (p 78)

THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES

BRETT STORY, CANADA

KRISTOFFER HEGNSVAD, DENMARK

JEFF PETRY AND NATHAN DRILLOT, CANADA

9:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

THIS IS THE LIFE (p 81)

PATRICK SHEN, USA

7:00 PM | VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE

ADAM KHALIL AND ZACK KHALIL, CANADA/USA

2:45 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

6:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE (p 45)

INAATE/SE/ [IT SHINES A CERTAIN WAY. TO A CERTAIN PLACE./IT FLIES. FALLS./] (p 81)

(p 87)

NICHOLAS PILARSKI AND DESTINI RILEY, USA

6:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

7:15 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

JEFF PETRY AND NATHAN DRILLOT, CANADA

SATURDAY MAY 14

3:15 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

1:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

3:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

AIM FOR THE ROSES (p 33)

JOHN BOLTON, CANADA

3:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

MAYA ANGELOU AND STILL I RISE

(p 59)

BOB HERCULES AND RITA COBURN WHACK, USA

5:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

PISTOL SHRIMPS (p 35)

BRENT HODGE, CANADA

6:15 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

LOOKING FOR EXITS: CONVERSATIONS WITH A WINGSUIT ARTIST (p 83)

KRISTOFFER HEGNSVAD, DENMARK

8:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

800 KILOMÈTRES DE DIFFÉRENCE / ROMANCE (800 KILOMETERS OF DIFFERENCE / ROMANCE) (p 79) CLAIRE SIMON, FRANCE

5:00 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

OF SHADOWS (p 55)

YI CUI, CHINA/CANADA

LA LAGUNA (p 84)

CAMERAPERSON (p 39)

KIRSTEN JOHNSON, USA

AARON SCHOCK, USA WITH

WHAT REMAINS IS MERMANAT

ZEYNEP KECECILER, TURKEY

1:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

A GOOD AMERICAN (p 84)

FRIEDRICH MOSER, AUSTRIA

6:45 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

A MATTER OF TIME (p 79)

CASEY COHEN, CANADA WITH

NIMBI

COLIN GARCIA, USA

6:45 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

JONAS AND THE BACKYARD CIRCUS

(p 80)

3:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

THE PEACEMAKER (p 85)

JAMES DEMO, USA

4:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

THE BALLAD OF OPPENHEIMER PARK (p 85)

PAULA GOMES, BRAZIL

JUAN MANUEL SEPÚLVEDA, MEXICO

7:00 PM | VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE

5:30 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

RAMA RAU, CANADA

GINA ABATEMARCO, USA

LEAGUE OF EXOTIQUE DANCERS (p 37)

8:45 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

YALLAH! UNDERGROUND (p 80)

FARID ESLAM, UK/USA/GERMANY/CANADA/EGYPT/CZECH REPUBLIC

KIVALINA (p 86)

6:30 PM | THE CINEMATHEQUE

THE CROSSING (p 86)

GEORGE KURIAN, NORWAY WITH

9:15 PM | VIFF’S VANCITY THEATRE

THE ACT OF BECOMING (p 45)

VERNON LOTT AND JENNIFER ANDERSON, USA WITH

BARBARIAN PRESS

SARAH (EMMETT) RACE, CANADA

50 FEET FROM SYRIA

VENUES VIFF’s Vancity Theatre 1181 SEYMOUR STREET

The Cinematheque 1131 HOWE STREET

Vancouver Playhouse 600 HAMILTON STREET

SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

SKYE FITZGERALD, USA/TURKEY

(SFU-GCA)

7:00 PM | VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE

Museum of Vancouver

CAMERAPERSON (p 39)

KIRSTEN JOHNSON, USA

149 W HASTINGS STREET 1100 CHESTNUT STREET

More Great Film Festivals Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth FILM FESTIVAL

April 8-15, 2016 | www.r2rfestival.org Share your love of film with the young people in your life!

Offering the opportunity to learn about film and cultural perspectives from around the world, R2R includes: international family friendly films, hands-on workshops, a Youth Media Conference, and a showcase of films made by youth. Don’t miss Sunday Fun Day! Spend the day watching and making animation. R2R is sure to delight, move and amaze audiences of all ages.

Vancouver Latin American Film Festival August 25 - September 4, 2016 | www.vlaff.org “Our ultimate goal is nothing less than the full integration of Latin American cinema. That simple, and that excessive.” Garcia Marquez.

Vancouver Jewish Film Festival November 3-10, 2016 | www.vjff.org The Vancouver Jewish Film Centre will present its 28th Annual Vancouver Jewish Film Festival at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas, November 3 - 10 with an engaging mix of narrative and documentary films to amuse, educate and provoke conversation. The Jewish Film Centre screens films monthly at various venues around Vancouver. We present films that showcase the diversity of Jewish culture, heritage and identity we foster community consultation, multiculturalism and inclusiveness.

Golden Horn Vancouver Turkish Film Festival December 2016 | www.vtff.org Inaugurated in 2015, the Golden Horn Vancouver Turkish Film Festival (VTFF) aims to showcase the best of contemporary Turkish cinema. Having set out with the vision of becoming a staple of the yearly art calendar of Vancouver, VTFF will continue its mission of curating poignant, inspiring and evocative genre-diverse works — drawing from a cinema in full bloom, burgeoning and totally self-aware in witnessing its own renaissance. Stay tuned for what we have in store in 2016!

Just Film Festival February 2017 | www.justfilm.org The Just Film Festival brings the pursuit of justice to the big screen. We feature social justice and environmental documentaries that go to the heart of issues confronting communities here and around the planet. We are BC’s largest social justice film festival.

Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois et francophone February 2017 | www.rendez-vousvancouver.com Visions Ouest Productions offers a variety of events & activities throughout the year. The 23rd Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois et francophone, February 2-12, 2016, recognizes the success of Canadian and Francophonie Internationale cinema, celebrating the diversity and talent of our artists. The Salon du cinema, Beaux Jeudis Serie and the School Matinees screenings provide ideal opportunities to foster the link with the francophone community via the presentation of top quality films.

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