APRIL 25 - MAY 2 / 2019 | FREE Volume 53 | Number 2675
ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Tenants face recharging barriers
VERSES FEST
Vivek Shraya confronts hate
WORMWITCH Metal with a pro edge
DOXA Fest Trauma gives way to sisterhood in Vancouver director Baljit Sangra's Because We Are Girls ; plus, features and reviews from the DOXA Documentary Film Festival
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APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 3
CONTENTS
April 25 –May 2 / 2019
16 COVER
At DOXA, director Baljit Sangra follows a Punjabi-Canadian family as it faces the taboo of sexual abuse. By Janet Smith Cover photo by Emily Cooper
T H I S M O N T H AT 11
FEATURE
There’s a breathtaking array of choices for parents and their kids when it comes to summer camps—and part of the reason is the rise of specialization since the 1970s. By Charlie Smith
22 FOOD 3
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On the menu: themed dinner series are taking Vancouver residents on culinary journeys.
FLOOR
By Gail Johnson
23 ARTS
FRIDAY & SATURDAY 9PM – 1AM
Writer, musician, and trans activist Vivek Shraya explores online dangers at the Verses Festival. By Alexander Varty
31 MUSIC
Timothy Showalter made the new Strand of Oaks LP, Eraserland, with a lot of help from some good friends. By John Lucas
ONE AND A HALF APRIL 25
e Start Here 21 THE BOTTLE 8 CANNABIS 32 CONFESSIONS 14 HOROSCOPES 15 I SAW YOU 20 MOVIE REVIEWS 35 SAVAGE LOVE 13 STYLE 9 TECHNOLOGY 28 THEATRE 27 VISUAL ARTS e Listings 30 ARTS 33 MUSIC
DUELING PIANOS APRIL 26 SATURDAY APRIL 27
Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly Volume 53 | Number 2675 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1W9 T: 604.730.7000 F: 604.730.7010 E: gs.info@straight.com straight.com
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Photos: Sunset Beach Park—the morning after 4/20 Vancouver. RCMP finds 29-year-old Surrey woman dead in Okanagan Lake. New coin honouring LGBT rights features design by Joe Average. Which Canucks have played their last game with the team? Returning tenants at new development will pay higher rents.
GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight
The Georgia Straight is published every Thursday by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. Copies are distributed free every week throughout Vancouver, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver, New Westminster, and Richmond. International Standard Serial Number ISSN 0709-8995. Subscription rates in Canada $182.00/52 issues (includes GST), $92.00/26 issues (includes GST); United States $379.00/52 issues, $205.00/26 issues; foreign $715.00/52 issues, $365.00/26 issues. Contact 604-730-7087 if you wish to distribute free copies of the Georgia Straight at your place of business. Entire contents copyright © 2019 Vancouver Free Press, Best Of Vancouver, Bov And Golden Plates Are Trade-Marks Of Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. SUBMISSIONS The Straight accepts no responsibility for, and will not necessarily respond to, any submitted materials. All submissions should be addressed to contact@straight.com. Canadian Publications Mail Agreement #40009178, return undeliverable Canadian addresses to The Georgia Straight, 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C, V6J 1W9
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NEWS
Dream of LRT across Fraser is revived by Carlito Pablo
T
he prospect for rail transit south of the Fraser River appears to be on track. The province has included creating the potential for future rail as part of its goals in reviewing options for the George Massey Tunnel. For Richmond councillor Harold Steves, the idea of having rail from his city to Delta, and eventually to White Rock, has been a long time coming. “Forty-five years ago, it was seen as the major way of alleviating traffic at the tunnel,” Steves told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “It’s just as true today.” According to Steves, the concept was promoted by the governments of premiers Dave Barrett and Bill Vander Zalm, although it was never done. “It’s time somebody else built it,” he said. Steves recalled that when he was an MLA during the 1970s, he asked the Barrett government to look into light rail transit, or LRT, for Richmond. It was then more than a decade since tram service from Vancouver to Steveston in Richmond had been cancelled in 1958. According to Steves, the minister of municipal affairs at the time, Jim Lorimer, had a study done that identified a route from Richmond to Delta as an addition to the George Massey Tunnel. Steves went on to note that when Vander Zalm became premier he announced sometime around 1990 that the tunnel could be twinned for light rail. “Right now, people are sitting in that traffic at that tunnel, they’ll drive into Richmond and they’ll park at [the Canada Line’s] Bridgeport Station and take the SkyTrain [to Vancouver],” Steves said. “So if the LRT went to Del-
The Christy Clark government proposed a bridge too high for passenger light rail.
ta, you could probably cut that traffic by half, and so we’ve been promoting LRT for a long time.” The Richmond councillor said that when the previous B.C. Liberal government announced a 10-lane
orum FOF THE WEEK DOCKLESS bikes. Electric
scooters. These gizmos could be the next big thing in urban transportation. In many cities around the world, residents access these micromobility gadgets through sharing apps. Is Metro Vancouver ready for the ride? A forum called “The Future of Mobility: How can micromobility support a livable region?” may provide some answers. The Vancouver event will be held Thursday (April 25) at UBC Robson Square (800 Robson Street), starting at 6:30 p.m. g
bridge to replace the tunnel, it didn’t disclose that a study had determined that the crossing was too high for light rail. “You could put buses on, but that’s all, and there would be no LRT,” Steves said. Richmond city planners have identified two options for the George Massey Tunnel, which was constructed in 1959, and both include future LRT. According to the city, an LRT line could extend from either the Bridgeport or Richmond-Brighouse station of the Canada Line to Delta and, eventually, farther south. In September 2017, the B.C. NDP government stopped the construction of a $3.5-billion bridge replacement for the tunnel. The current administration ordered a technical review, which later found that a smaller, sixto eight-lane bridge or a new tunnel of up to eight lanes could work. The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has released a new statement of principles and goals for a Massey crossing, which includes a provision to “ensure potential for future rail rapid transit”. The revised statement was prepared in response to suggestions by the finance-and-intergovernment committee of Metro Vancouver. “Metro Vancouver staff have reviewed the Province’s high level principles and goals for the George Massey Crossing project and note that they are generally in line with Metro Vancouver interests,” states a report by Neal Carley, general manager of planning and environment with the regional government. The Metro Vancouver board is expected to endorse the province’s identified principles and goals for a south-of-the Fraser crossing at its meeting Friday (April 26). g
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he saying goes “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,â€? which turned out to be exceptionally true of Vancouver’s 25th annual 4/20 cannabis protest. Last weekend, quashing the concerns of the city’s park board, the only smoke at Sunset Beach Park came from the weed. And the only fire came in the form of the passion burning in thousands of cannabis advocates. On Saturday (April 20), against the sunny backdrop of False Creek, organizers pulled off a full day of celebration and civil disobedience without any major incidents. For yet another unpermitted year, event facilitators said that more than 150,000 people showed up in total during the day to demonstrate support for Canada’s cannabis community. The day opened with a traditional Coast Salish blessing performed by Kwitsel Tatel of the StĂł:lĹ? Nation. “I would like to hold my hands up to you for making yourself present at this very important medicinal protest, social protest, political protest, spiritual protest,â€? Tatel said before performing a prayer to honour the unceded territory. Then cannabis activist David Malmo-Levine explained “hug powerâ€?, a nonviolent arrest-resistance tactic. “How many people are prepared to get busted on protest day resisting the genocidal war against the herbal autonomous people?â€? he asked the crowd as the majority held up their hands. The main stage then pumped out the smooth tunes of singer Giorgi Holiday, the politically charged lyricism of Haisla Nation hip-hop duo Snotty Nose Rez Kids, and the counterculture-shaping tracks of rap legends Cypress Hill. Speeches by B.C.–based advocates were also peppered throughout the performances, including
“As I look back, I feel like a mom who gave up her baby for adoption and found the right parents to grow and nurture it,� Rozek said. “I could not have imagined being here on a stage this size with so many people.� As 4:20 p.m. rolled around, the crowd peaked at about 65,000—the largest turnout a Canadian 4/20 has ever seen. Neil Magnuson, head of a harmreduction program in the Downtown Eastside, led the crowd in a weedy rendition of the national anthem, “O Cannabis�. “Four, three, two,� Malmo-Levine counted down as free prerolls were handed out. Then tens of thousands chanted “Happy 4/20!� in unison and lit joints. A giant cloud of cannabis smoke covered the entire park. “It was incredible seeing that big crowd peacefully sit down, share joints, send up our smoke signal. For me, that was something else,� said activist Jodie Emery shortly after 4:20 p.m. The Vancouver Police Department reported 14 medical emergencies, 30 tickets, and three impaired-driving investigations. Event organizer Dana Larsen added later on Twitter that no major criminal incidents were reported and no minors were admitted to the emergency room. As the event wrapped up at about 7 p.m., the “green team� got to work. Sponsored by local dispensary Weeds, volunteers took to the park, picking up trash and roaches on the grass, walkways, and beach. At 9 a.m. the following day, the Georgia Straight reported a “spotless� landscape where the historic protest had taken place just hours prior. “See, I told you,� 4/20 host Greg “Marijuana Man� Williams told a Straight reporter as the sun set over the park. “Every year, it’s magic.� g
Last week’s 4/20 crowd peaked at about 65,000 people. Photo by Craig Barker
from Chris Bennett, Freddie Pritchard, and Danna Rozek. On April 20, 1995, Rozek organized the city’s first ever 4/20 at Victory Square. “We ran extension cords, borrowed a PA system, speakers, and a microphone‌.The day was grey, but the people came,â€? she said. “4:20 in the afternoon came and we lit it up. That grey April day was the spark that started the big blazing fire that we have today.â€? The event is still run on extension cords—but rather than a few scrounged from local businesses, there are hundreds rented from production companies, along with dozens of volunteers, a fully equipped broadcast truck for the Cannabis Life Network live stream, and more than 350 vendors who make up the event’s contemporary “farmers marketâ€? billing. The ’95 4/20 was both the first and last of the annual protests that Rozek would attend, until this year.
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Tenants face barriers in joining electric revolution
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by Charlie Smith
ritish Columbia is ideally situated to be the electricvehicle capital of the world. With about 93 percent of the province’s electricity coming from hydropower, EVs would truly be fuelled by renewable energy. The provincial and federal governments have ambitious plans, with each declaring that every new car sold in 2040 will be a zero-emission vehicle. But a new City of Vancouver report reveals lesser-known challenges in providing sufficient recharging infrastructure for tenants. Nowadays, it’s relatively painless for cash-rich owners of single-family homes to buy an EV or a plug-in hybrid. They can power up their vehicles in home recharging stations while they’re sleeping. Moreover, the city’s Green Homes Program requires new one- and two-family houses to be wired to accommodate electric-vehicle charging systems. It enables wealthy Tesla owners to virtue-signal to the world that they’re good environmental citizens, even if they’re living in a 10,000-square-foot mansion. But that option isn’t available for many thousands of Vancouver tenants living with much smaller environmental footprints in threestorey walkups and parking economy cars on the street. Nor is this feasible for those in older concrete high-rises without recharging stations in underground parkades. “Access to home charging is considered a key enabler for electric vehicle uptake,” the city report states in one of the appendices. “It also reduces reliance on higherpowered, short-term public charging that is necessarily more expensive to use and operate.” One recommended action is to create a neighbourhood charging strategy to level the playing field somewhat. It could include the addition of “light-pole charging” and recharging stations in lower-use parking areas, including at parks and schools, where vehicles can be left overnight. “For the thousands of Vancouver residents without access to off-street parking, including many renters, this strategy will seek to enable access to convenient, more equitable nearhome charging,” the report states. But will Vancouver residents be willing to buy a zero-emission vehicle if they have to drive a few blocks to a nearby park or school at night—only to discover that every spot has already been filled by other car owners recharging their EVs? That’s an open question. Plus, there are higher fees at public recharging stations than the single familyhome owner would pay in his carport, creating another disincentive. According to the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association, powering EVs costs three to five times less than gas. Meanwhile, the provincial and federal governments provide subsidies of up to $5,000 each for those who buy or lease a new battery-powered electric vehicle, adding up to $10,000; those who purchase a plug-in hybrid receive smaller rebates.
A city report says access to recharging is strongly linked to electric vehicle use.
The only real irritant is the frequency and amount of time it takes to recharge them. There are only 75 “Level 2” (240 volt) public charging points in all of Vancouver, according to the city website. This allows recharging in about one hour. “It’s estimated that another 175 charging points are available to EV drivers in Vancouver that are managed by parking garages, hotels, shopping malls, and other services,” the city states. That’s a pittance in comparison to what’s going to be required, given the number of zero-emission vehicles that could be purchased in the coming years. According to the University of California, Davis’s PH & EV Research Center, most EVs can travel 160 kilometres before needing to be recharged. Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, only travel for 16 to 80 kilometres on electricity before switching to gasoline, which can carry them almost 500 kilometres. “Plug-in hybrids with smaller batteries can recharge in about 3 hours at 120V and 1.5 hrs at 240V,” the PH & EV Research Center states on its website. “Electric vehicles with larger batteries can take up to 20+ hours at 120V and 4-8 hours using a 240V charger. Electric vehicles that are equipped for fastcharging can receive an 80% charge in about 20 minutes.” The city report calls for a fast-charging hub within a 10-minute drive of anywhere in Vancouver. Another recommendation is to “explore options to encourage the installation of home charging in existing buildings”. “Renters face a significant barrier to adding home charging if their building is not already equipped with charging infrastructure,” it notes, “and cost has been flagged as the greatest barrier to adding charging in multi-family buildings.” It’s beyond the city’s financial capacity to cover the cost of adequate recharging infrastructure in parking facilities at scores of rental buildings. So this means tenants are out of luck if the provincial and federal governments don’t step up. Without that, it will be increasingly difficult to make a smooth transition to a clean, green future on the roads. g
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FEATURE
Summer camps specialize in skills
S
by Charlie Smith
ome parents have acquired deep insights about summer camps—mainly because they’ve been sending their kids to them for so many years. B.C. government employee Caroline Richardson is just one example. The mother of an 18-year-old son and 15- and 12-year-old daughters laughed when asked how long she’s been enrolling her children in summer programs. “Starting at kindergarten and Grade 1, they all started going to day camps,” Richardson revealed to the Georgia Straight over the phone. Her kids have been to local educational day camps as well as overnight camps in B.C. and Ontario. Her two oldest children also attended an overseas summer camp in Brittany, France. “They were in French immersion, but there was still a lot of English chitty-chat,” the Dunbar resident said. “That was a way of getting them fully immersed in nothing but French for two weeks. It was quite successful.” So what advice does Richardson have for others? She believes that it’s best to begin kids with a weeklong experience, even if they’re feeling a little anxious about this beforehand. “As a parent, make sure you’re positive and encouraging,” she emphasized, “but a little bit of tough love helps on the summer-camp front— because I can’t tell you how often my kids have seemed reluctant at the outset and then came home and they’d had the time of their lives.” Last year, Richardson’s middle child created a film with fellow day campers in Vancouver, which impressed her and other parents. Her son came back from six weeks at an Ontario camp much more talkative and feeling more confident.
When we got him back from the six-week camp, he was like a different person – Caroline Richardson
(Left to right) Kaitlyn, Cayden, and Katriel Carino have enrolled in Geering Up camps at UBC because their mom is priming them for careers in science and technology.
“I felt like by the end of the school year he had retreated so far into his electronic devices,” Richardson recalled. “When we got him back from the six-week camp, he was like a different person.” One of the biggest decisions for parents is whether to send kids to day camps in town or to overnight camps, where they’ll be separated from the family for longer periods of time. An East Vancouver mother, Sandra Akers, told the Straight by phone that her 10-year-old daughter has enjoyed day camps at 4Cats Arts Studio and the UBC Farm, but next year she may go to her first overnight camp. Akers advised other parents to book early and do plenty of research. She added that as kids grow older, they become more discerning and want to have a greater say in where
they’ll be spending their time. “There is so much choice out there: everything from girls’ rock-band camp to ecology camps to full sporting camps,” Akers said. “So if you just take the time to look at what’s out there, there’s literally something for every child.” In addition to arts-oriented and filmmaking camps, there is also a vast array of educational day camps on socalled STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects. Camps can teach kids coding, digital media, mathematics, and engineering. Vancouver mother Khristine Carino has high hopes for her three kids, so she’s signed them up for the weeklong Geering Up science and engineering day camps at UBC. The university offers bursaries, which she said is helpful for families like hers. Her 12-year-old daughter has been
attending these camps since she was in kindergarten. “I’m priming my kids to get into science and technology careers,” Carino, a director of the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology, told the Straight by phone. Summer camps weren’t always so specialized. Leslie Paris, a UBC associate professor of history, is the author of the 2008 scholarly book Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp. It examines the origins of summer camps in the late 19th century in the northeastern United States and the evolution of this industry until the 1940s. “By looking at the early history of camps, I could trace changes in nostalgia for an imagined time before industrialization,” Paris said. “I could trace changes in childhood and how children were considered by adults. I could trace the expansion of the idea that children were entitled to recreation and pleasure.” This dovetailed with legal reforms
after the start of the 20th century that promoted the protection of children, including compulsory education for an increasing number of kids. “There is an idea that started in the middle class in the 19th century— but that’s extending to working-class children as well by the early 20th century—that children should be protected from many of the responsibilities of adulthood,” Paris noted. “And that includes child-labour laws.” There were “fresh air” summer camps as well as settlement-house camps, which Paris described as the predecessors of community centres. And the vast majority of the kids who attended them were white. “It was a period of significant urbanization and industrialization in the United States, so we can read camps as places where grownups were teaching children in their care a kind of nostalgic vision of the American past,” she said. Paris explained that in the 1970s some traditional summer camps folded as a result of an economic recession, a shrinking share of children and teenagers in the population, more divorces, and cheaper air travel, making it easier for families to travel with kids. That corresponded with a proliferation of specializedskill camps devoted to activities like football, basketball, and tennis. The 1980s saw the rise of computer camps, which set the stage for more specialization in the future. “Today, parents and kids are interested in a greater variety of skills,” Paris said. “But there are also many parents and children who still value the more traditional camp experience, with its campfires, canoeing, and overnight hikes.” g
APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 11
CDM camp teaches digital literacy to teens (This article is sponsored by the Centre for Digital Media.)
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arents have plenty of good reasons to pay attention to the rise of the digital economy. It’s already transformed a multitude of industries, including financial services, tourism, construction, and energy. Not only that but artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to displace many existing jobs in manufacturing, retail, and transportation. Without digital literacy, workers risk being left far behind in the 21st century. It’s never been more urgent for young people to acquire these skills. Fortunately, the Vancouver-based Centre for Digital Media offers teenagers a chance to get an early start in ways not taught in the traditional school system. Over a two-week period, the Tomorrow’s Master of Digital Media program enables students to develop a playable digital media product. It’s usually a game or an app, but sometimes it’s a video or virtual-reality project. Sponsored by gaming giant EA, the TMDM program runs from July 8 to 19 and is open to students entering grades 9 to 12. In addition to doing projects, teens meet guests from industry and explore educational and career opportunities in the digital-media sector. Those with an aptitude for technology or art and who enjoy solving problems are especially well-suited. Applicants must write a letter of intent and obtain a signature from teachers. Classes take place at the campus of the Centre for Digital Media, a highly regarded graduate-level tech school. It opened on Great Northern Way in 2007 through a partnership of UBC, SFU, BCIT, and Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Tomorrow’s Master of Digital Media program offers teenagers an immersive, project-oriented learning experience at Vancouver’s Centre for Digital Media.
Teens enrolled in the summer tech camps receive mentorship from Centre for Digital Media grad students and are provided with daily lunches and a TMDM T-shirt. In fact, the TMDM program is a boiled-down, young persons’ version of graduatelevel tech education. Consider it an hors d’oeuvre. The first week focuses on developing teens’ foundational skills. They’re exposed to different forms of software and what they can accomplish. Mentors also help students hone their artistic skills for the tech world, which is essential for anyone considering a career in the booming animation or visual-effects industries. The TMDM program is not just an exercise in being a geek, though geeky students are certainly welcome to apply. There’s also a premium placed on teenagers improving their cognitive skills and learning how to function well in teams. In the second week, groups of three to five students are presented with a problem to solve. Then they must consider how that can be accomplished on a deadline. This entails group discussions, as in any workplace.
As Centre for Digital Media faculty member Jason Elliott likes to say: “You’re not a one-man show. We teach how you can utilize other people to build a singular vision and how to align with someone else’s vision as well.” In past years, teens enrolled in the TMDM program have accomplished amazing feats. One group used the HTC Vive to create a virtual-reality video game. Another group created an app that enabled people to report crimes to the police. On the final day, students practise public speaking by delivering presentations on their projects to their parents and industry representatives. This simulates what the teens can expect to have to do if they ever embark on a career in digital media. Then the students are presented with a certificate of completion. g For more information on CDM’s Tomorrow’s Master of Digital Media program, visit thecdm.ca/program/ tmdm/. To apply for admission, go to thecdm.ca/tmdm/admission-process/. The program is sponsored by EA.
— BRING YOUR CREATIVE IDEAS TO LIFE. TECHNICAL ARTISTS FOR A COMPLEX WORLD. Combine creativity and imagination with technical expertise. The new BCIT Technical Arts Advanced Diploma program sets students up for delivering solutions that bridge the technical and content side of visual effects, gaming, and animation projects. Learn more at bcit.ca/technicalarts
12 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
STYLE
Portobello West celebrates the local by Tammy Kwan
Our ultimate goal at SwitzerCultCreative is to provide people with the potential to create personal spaces that harmonize peace, tranquility and true sustainability.
Designers at this year’s Portobello West craft market include (left to right) Street & Saddle, Chic Little Boho, and Jessica Redditt.
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hen Vancouver’s popular craft market Portobello West began 13 years ago, there weren’t many like it around town. Buying locally made goods hadn’t become mainstream, and spending extra money on handcrafted, highquality items was still a foreign idea to many shoppers. “When we started in 2006, we were probably the only local market,” Shalu Dugal Sharma, Portobello West’s events, communications, and marketing manager, told the Straight in a phone interview. “But now so many have joined, and it really shows the influence of the shop-local scene.” The upcoming spring market will feature more than 50 vendors selling everything from sustainable clothing, foraged jewellery, and handpainted home décor to organic skin care, craft cider, and artful chocolates. Portobello West made its debut as a fashion and arts market but has since evolved to incorporate a diverse range of goods. “We’ve grown by adding local
foods, potters, and other artisan goods, but what we’ve maintained is always the high quality of vendors,” explained Sharma. “They need to meet a certain criteria, and maybe the price point is higher, but the items are valuable and will last, which can be passed onto future generations. They aren’t mass-produced, and you won’t find them anywhere else.” One of the highlights at the seasonal event is the comeback of fashion. Ten vendors will be showcasing their products, with a focus on ecofriendly and upcycled designs. Shoppers will be able to check out vendors like KOME Clothing, which makes its garments with freehandcut, natural fabrics; John died designs, a newcomer that makes vests, jackets, and shirts for adults and children out of screen-printed recycled fabrics; and Street & Saddle, a Strathcona-based studio that creates custom equestrianstyle clothing using locally sourced and natural fabrics. “The idea is all about slow and sustainable, [and] that kind of represents all the vendors and not just fashion,”
said Sharma. “Our skin care is going vegan and natural. Our food is using natural and organic products. Even the ceramics are following the trend of minimal and earthy vibes.” Attendees can bring the entire brood—it’s a family-friendly event with food trucks, live music, and interactive photo booths. There will also be perks for those who arrive early: the first 25 people in line get a swag bag, which contains goodies like jewellery, hand products, scarves, and more. The market is run as a nonprofit society, which means that Portobello West isn’t about making money, but about exposing people to shopping locally. “All funds collected go toward the vendor fees, future markets, advertising, and permits, so no one is making a dollar by putting on this market,” said Sharma. “It’s for our vendors to sell and succeed and grow.” g Portobello West takes place at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre (181 Roundhouse Mews) on Saturday (April 27) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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Studio ■ 1 Bedroom ■ 2 Bedroom ■ Townhouse Stunning, historical neighbourhood with many urban amenities. Close to shopping. www.pwme-shannonmews.com info@shannonmewsandappartments.com APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 13
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APRIL 26 & 27 | 2019 Experience the latest audio technologies
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luto has just begun its annual retrograde cycle, and on Monday evening Saturn will follow suit. Both planets are travelling in the sign of Capricorn and will remain in retrograde motion until the fall (mid-September for Saturn; beginning of October for Pluto). What does this mean? The reality, priority, schedule, or necessity now shifts. There’s also a shift regarding who or what is in control. If you have been running up against it and have not yet been able to get past it, these retrograde cycles can be helpful. Saturn and Pluto will tear down or remove whatever has been holding you back. On the other hand, if it isn’t solid, viable, or legit, it will fall apart. These retrograde transits are best used to reformat, to resecure the base, to build it better from the inside out. This includes examining the reasons and rationales that have propped it up to date. Friday/Saturday, Mars/Neptune favours pleasure-seeking and shooting the breeze. On the other hand, Mars/Neptune can expose it, reveal a secret, or surprise you with something you didn’t notice or didn’t know. Too much gossip, secondhand information or opinion, too little fact. It is easy to get lost, lose track, or buy into the advertising. You may suddenly realize that you have been misled or deceived. You can just as easily talk yourself into it or misread it, too. Pay extra attention to health, road, and information-sharing safety. A virus or infection can spread; allergies, alcohol, drugs, or gambling can get the better of you too. Keep open-ended; allow an extra time margin on Monday/Tuesday. Saturn retrograde can slow you down. By Wednesday/Thursday, the Aries moon aims for the next item on the list.
A
ARIES
March 20–April 20
The stars are conspiring on your behalf. Keeping head and heart on the same page, Mercury and Venus are on the upswing in Aries. You’ll feel it as a sharpening of instincts and a fresh energy boost. As of Saturday, Mars in Gemini is on an informing or clarifying breakthrough with Neptune. You’ll kick-start it better now, especially regarding creative and marketing projects.
with NASA Astronaut Terry Virts May 7 at 7pm | Orpheum theatre more info at
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14 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
F
VIRGO
G
LIBRA
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SCORPIO
I
SAGITTARIUS
August 23–September 23
Have you filed your taxes yet? The stars have put several pressing matters on your to-do list. Although they may be separate items, once you get one thing out of the way, it’ll act as an icebreaker for the next. Monday/Tuesday, Saturn retrograde can require you to shift gears or reschedule, but overall you’ll get it worked out just fine. September 23–October 23
Expect your phone to ring and for folks, opportunities, or issues to resurface. Pluto has just turned retrograde, and late Monday Saturn will do the same. Along with Mars in Gemini moving past Neptune’s invisible barrier, you should find you are able to gain better ground as the month comes to an end and a new one begins. Easy does it best through Tuesday. October 23–November 22
Keep your plans openended. Whether it is stream of consciousness, a surprise find, a piece of information, or something more, Friday/Saturday could trigger the unexpected. Monday/Tuesday, Saturn retrograde can shift your perspective or the priority. Now through the end of next week takes you through an unfolding process. Watch for greater clarity to come—for the next step or winning pick to reveal itself. November 22–December 21
J
C
A VIEW FROM ABOVE
no necessity to push what isn’t coming naturally. One thing leads to another. Watch for the conversation to take on a life of its own, for the game plan to play out naturally, especially Saturday/Sunday. Monday/Tuesday requires you to shift gears. Wednesday onward, you’ll gain better results.
The phone rings; the news arrives; the missing blank fills in naturally. Thursday/Friday, one thing leads to another; spontaneity delivers. Mars/Neptune is good for inspired moments and for reading between the lines. You should have no problem getting your pleasure fill through the weekend. Monday/TuesTAURUS day, creative activities or solutions April 20–May 21 are your best pick. Stick to simple When in a quandary, do and easy. both or say yes to the extra. There’s CAPRICORN more than one way to see, say, try, or December 21–January 20 do it. If you must choose one, go with Thanks to the start of Pluto your first impression or the fresh option (that may or may not be the retrograde, Thursday could set an same thing!). Friday/Saturday, Mars/ important next phase or stage. Don’t Neptune can spill the beans or rev second-guess yourself; follow your up something unexpected. Monday/ gut. If you are still unsure, keep on watch. Time will sort it out for you. Tuesday, go with the flow. Friday/Saturday, Mars in Gemini GEMINI keeps it rolling along. Saturn retroMay 21–June 21 grade, starting late Monday, also Friday/Saturday could trigger shifts the action or priority. something unexpected or something AQUARIUS more. Watch for an opportunity to January 20–February 18 come clean, let yourself off the hook, Not sure of what’s next? find what’s missing, or gain a second chance. Mars/Neptune can spark Watch for the moon in Aquarius and creativity, romance, or great poten- Mars in Gemini to provide fresh intial, but it’s not the best for keeping a centive and/or a quick perk-me-up grip on the reality. Monday/Tuesday, Friday/Saturday. Sunday through time or energy can evaporate. Next Tuesday, simple, creative, or easy Wednesday/Thursday, Mercury calls does it best. If it isn’t coming naturally, don’t sweat it; switch gears for straight shooting. instead. Next Wednesday/Thursday CANCER dishes up something new or added.
B
Explorer Speaker Series
APRIL 25 TO MAY 1, 2019
D
K
June 21–July 22
It is easy to get swept up or swept away on Friday/Saturday. As Mars triggers Neptune, you can lose track of what’s real, what’s worthwhile, or how much you have spent, drunk, or ingested. If you plan to party, take a cab home. Monday/ Tuesday, you can’t bank on it or them. Saturn retrograde can remove a block or change a mindset.
E
LEO
July 22–August 23
Getting a mixed message or uncertain of your best option? You’ll know soon enough. There’s
L
PISCES
February 18–March 20
Friday/Saturday could see you hit a second wave or next phase. Watch for Mars/Neptune to push the refresh button, perhaps unexpectedly. Sunday through Tuesday, the moon in Pisces keeps you going strong, completely consumed, and/or feeling it all. Take your lead from inspiration, intuition, creativity, or the moment. Next Wednesday, you’ll head into a next project, page, or phase. g
Book a reading or sign up for Rose’s free monthly newsletter at rosemarcus.com/.
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> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < TONGUE-TIED AGAIN... SIGH...
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 5, 2019 WHERE: Lonsdale & Esplanade, North Van
SERVER AT GERARD LOUNGE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 13, 2019 WHERE: Gerard Lounge
TALL HANDSOME ARTIST
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 1, 2019 WHERE: The Morrissey
You're a server at the Gerard Lounge in the Sutton Place Hotel. You're tall, brunette, and a total knockout. You look great in those little dresses you wear. I'm usually in with coworkers so it seems awkward to ask you out, but I would love to take you for dinner and get to know you better. You recently became a flight attendant so I don't see you there as much. I order Maker's on the rocks.
You’re an artist at heart but for awhile you worked in a kitchen. I did more dishes that year than I’ve done in my whole life. “Finally, the veil is lifted” you said when I bashfully admitted a dream I’d had about you. We got one night, it had to be enough. Seeing you awhile ago was wonderful. We are both somewhat happily married (well, I always was) so I have no expectations. Just wanted you to know - I still think of you.
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 21, 2019 WHERE: Denman/Davie
PARTHENON GREEK MARKET
HOTTIE WITH A RACIST DOG
We literally bumped into each other on Denman St. after a much too fast mutual apology and a quick smile, you were gone a half block away. As fate would have it, I caught up with you at a bus stop on Davie. We smiled at each other again and I joked that I was fine. I wanted to ask if you'd care to get coffee but somehow my words came out as "enjoy the rest of your day". So... coffee?
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: NOVEMBER 30, 2018 WHERE: Parthenon Greek Market in Kitsilano
ICE COL DREAMS
AUGUST BURNS RED
You were waiting to cross the street, I was crossing over to your corner. You smiled and said ‘Hello’ as I approached. As sometimes happens when a beautiful woman does that, I was tongue-tied - my apologies, I should have returned your greeting. If you’d like to have an actual chat, tell me which corner you were on. :)
YOU CUT ME OFF!
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 19, 2019 WHERE: Chinatown
You: waiting in line at Matchstick Chinatown then crossing the street in shades. Me: post boxing workout, talking with my friend at High Top and then on sidewalk. Felt like you saw me too, felt good, let's more?
YOU SHOWED ME THE VERY BEST PIE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 18, 2019 WHERE: IGA on Blundell, in Richmond, in the Bakery. I was shopping at IGA on Blundell, in Richmond. You saw I could not make up my mind. You showed me the very best pie. I wish I could eat it with you.
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You were a tall redhead with a septum ring and I was a short girl with a shaved head and a red headband working the till. You complimented my septum jewelry and we had a quick conversation about where I bought it before you had to go.
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 13, 2019 WHERE: Moxie’s Bar and Grill (Davie) To the cool bartender that gave me a band recommendation. Not sure if you read these, but I wanted to say "thanks". I really like the sound of this band. Specifically the song Laniakea.
YOU LIKED MY PURSE!
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 15, 2019 WHERE: Starbucks Cambie & 8th You told me you liked my bag and we chatted a bit about how I'd just moved over from Sydney, AU! You were super nice but I didn't have the guts to get your number. Message me if this was you. xo
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 16, 2019 WHERE: St. Marys/Powerline Trail You were wearing a light grey sweater with a baseball cap and yoga pants as you bumped into my group. Some of my dogs chased off yours, and then you told me about your dogs hatred of Poodles. You are a vision, being around you was disorienting and I wish I had said more. I gathered myself and backtracked to find you but you were long gone. If you’re open to a younger guy, game for a doggy date?
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— M AY R A C I N G & E V E N T S 2 0 1 9 — F R E E A D M I S S I O N | R AC E T I M E S 1 : 5 0 P M
0 4 S E AS O N O P E N E R
0 5 C I N CO D E M AYO
1 1 L I V E RAC I N G
1 2 M OT H E R ’ S DAY
1 8 P R E A K N E SS STA K E S
2 0 V I C TO R I A DAY
2 5 B U L L D O G RAC E S
2 6 B U L L D O G RAC E S
GEAR CHECK HAIL STORM
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 14, 2019 WHERE: Sun Run Gear Check Tent We were both trying to navigate our way through the gear check chaos during the hail storm post sun run. You mentioned what a bad idea it was to bring your generic black bag and I was having the same issue. We chatted a little and you saw the table and said hopefully our bags were there and not on the ground. Lost you after that but felt a bit of a spark and would have enjoyed continuing the conversation. I hope you found your bag!
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APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 15
doxa
Punjabi-Canadian Girls given a voice
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by Janet Smith
hen Vancouver filmmaker Baljit Sangra started to make her new documentary Because We Are Girls, she felt herself moving between two wildly different but deeply connected worlds. One was the bleak and snowy B.C. mill town of Williams Lake, where the true story takes place. There, three Punjabi-Canadian sisters joined forces to speak out about sexual abuse by a cousin 25 years ago, and struggled to reconcile with their traditional parents. The other was the brightly hued, musical fantasy world of Bollywood, which she interweaves expressively into the story of trauma and justice— to increasingly unsettling effect. That’s because Sangra, who grew up steeped in the Punjabi culture here in the Lower Mainland, realized while making the film that she had been fed similar messages about submission, honour, and purity by Bollywood cinema as a girl. “When I asked these three sisters, ‘What was your happiest moment?’ they said, ‘Going to the movie theatre in Williams Lake,’ ” she tells the Straight over the phone, before the film’s premiere at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival. “Once a week the Punjabi community would show a Bollywood movie there. And for the girls that was kind of your fantasy, and probably informed their ideas of romantic relationships and the role of the woman.” As shown in the retro clips she threads through the documentary, the films are obsessed with chastity—the idea that truly “good” girls don’t get raped. “The heroine would be so pure. And even if she didn’t do anything she had to beg for forgiveness,” she observes of characters blamed for inviting the actions of men. “So we come from the same cultural background, I grew up with the same cultural norms, and I got the shame and the honour thing. You don’t even realize how much this is impressed upon you.” That’s just a hint of the complex web of cultural messages Sangra found herself exploring as she followed the three sisters—Jeeti, Kira,
Three sisters in Wiliams Lake, B.C., confront the abuse suffered at the hands of an older family member in Because We Are Girls.
and Salakshana—through taking their abusive cousin to trial. “The court case is a big thread, but it’s also about family, relationships, the immigrant experience, and racism,” Sangra explains. “It’s like I’m peeling this onion, and you don’t realize the layers until you start doing it, and there are just more and more.” The idea for Because We Are Girls started directly enough. Jeeti, a Surrey fashion-store owner whom Sangra had befriended through past work on Channel M and Citytv’s arts-and-entertainment series VIVA, asked the director if she’d make a documentary about sexual abuse. Soon after, she disclosed what had happened to her. When word came that the ordeal was finally going to make it to court, Sangra knew she had to act—first by asking Jeeti to keep a video diary, and then by hauling her equipment up to Williams Lake, holing up in hotel rooms with the sisters, and recording the way they were dealing with blowing open a subject that’s taboo. “In our culture, you can’t even talk about sex, let alone sexual violence,” Sangra explains, noting that the #MeToo movement was exploding at the same moment.
It was Jeeti Pooni who first approached filmmaker Baljit Sangra with her story.
sisters, from an eldest sibling doomed to a toxic marriage, to a youngest whose free spirit was continually quashed. She also explores their mother and father’s relationship, which started with an arranged marriage in India. “While I was making this movie, I really felt the way that our mothers and grandmothers had absolutely no voice,” Sangra says. “It made you just feel that there were generations of silence.” Sangra digs into the pressure Jeeti’s family experienced to bring other family members into Canada as immigrants. At one point in the film, Sangra shows an old picture IN BECAUSE WE Are Girls, she digs of the family’s small Williams Lake deeply into the individual pasts of the house filled with children and adults,
with over a dozen living there as they struggled to find their footing in a new country. One of the newcomers, a male cousin they’d been reminded to obey, began to abuse the young sisters—a trauma they didn’t realize they’d shared till they opened up many years later. Sangra also stresses the way the sisters are fighting to break the cycle of abuse for their own daughters. At one moving point, a tearful Jeeti, exhausted at the prospect of facing the perpetrator in court, tells her daughters, “We’re doing this for you.” “They felt strongly: ‘We’re not passing this down to the next generation. We have to take the taboo off it,’ ” Sangra explains. “In Punjabi there is a word, izzat, and it means ‘honour’. We learn that word when we’re little—it’s especially impressed upon girl children—and how it reflects on our family and our family name. So it’s embedded in your culture. That’s how the perpetrators get this power: they know that family honour will make them stay quiet.” Because We Are Girls is one of a few films that Sangra has made about her community, including Many Rivers Home, about South Asian seniors living in assisted care, and Warrior Boyz, about South Asian gang culture. But none, she says, has hit her so hard personally.
She admits to several times breaking down into tears behind the camera, during filming—most debilitatingly during a scene near the end, where a sit-down tea with the sisters and their parents suddenly turns into a cathartic confrontation. The unsaid is finally said—and unbearable questions, like “How much did you know was going on?”, are finally asked. “It just sort of happened, to be honest; they just started the conversation that they didn’t feel supported by their family. And we just let it roll,” Sangra explains, then adds: “It’s not a movie about blaming or attacking. It’s about how a family copes with something like this.” For now, the court case remains unresolved: last year, the Supreme Court of British Columbia found the accused guilty of four out of six charges of sexual assault, but he has filed a Jordan application, alleging that his charter right to be tried within a reasonable time was compromised. Judgment is expected on that in June. WHETHER THE JUDGE accepts or denies that application, Sangra feels the documentary can build momentum. And filming it has committed her to a cause. “I feel connected with them forever and it’s changed me and empowered me for sure,” says Sangra. “We’re committed to making change. And the more we talk about it, the bigger impact it has.” The film ultimately instills hope—not just because of Sangra’s approach, but because of the surprisingly positive attitude of Jeeti and her sisters in the face of trauma. Sangra sees inspiration that goes far beyond the South Asian community. “If she didn’t have sisters, there’s no way she would have gone forward with it,” Sangra says. “And I think a lot of women might really relate to that. In this era of #MeToo and #TimesUp, you can mobilize a sisterhood. You can find sisters, for sure.” g Because We Are Girls screens at the Vancouver Playhouse on May 3 and at the Vancity Theatre on May 7..
Power, corruption, and going walkies
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ith a whopping 82 films to choose from at this year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival, it’s hard to know where to start. Please allow us to help, and check back next week or visit Straight.com for even more reviews from our crack team of nonfiction fanatics. For information right from the source, visit www.doxafestival.ca/.
BERLUSCONI:
THE
MONDADORI
masks, painting watercolour portraits of Dalton, and making little houses out of cardboard boxes. A bit less time spent on arts and crafts and a lot more focus on Dalton’s mesmerizing music and tragic life trajectory might have saved this sporadically diverting but frustratingly narcissistic exercise. This is, after all, the woman Bob Dylan once earnestly called “my favourite singer”, and she deserves better than this. Cinematheque, May 3 (8 p.m.) and 11 (2:15 p.m.) by John Lucas
AFFAIR
(France) Highly recommended for those still trying to figure out how Trump could happen, Mosco Levi Boucault’s film is absorbing and unfussy, flashes of wit aside (like the film’s ironic use of Nino Rota’s score from Amarcord). In the late ’80s, media tycoon Berlusconi used bribes to win the controlling share in Italy’s biggest publishing house, Mondadori. With high-powered accomplice judge Vittorio Metta in the dock for his part in the scheme, Silvio Berlusconi, now prime minister, used his Forza Italia party to brazenly adopt a string of new laws designed to outrun the justice system, some almost comically provocative. This is all recounted in wry style by the presiding judge at Metta’s trial, who received a seedy, thinly veiled threat from the accused as proceedings wrapped up. It’s an especially instructive moment for those who think media blackmail at this level exists exclusively in the overheated imaginations of Hollywood screenwriters. Parallels to the here and now should be screamingly
BUDDY (Netherlands) A tribute to the sheer Who’s a good boy? The genius of service dogs is celebrated in the Dutch documentary Buddy.
obvious, in the form of government capture by corporate capitalism, oligarchs, gangsters, and their buffoonish frontmen. Cinematheque, May 4 (noon) by Adrian Mack A BRIGHT LIGHT: KAREN AND THE PROCESS
(Switzerland) If you didn’t know anything about ’60s Greenwich Village almost-was Karen Dalton before watching A Bright Light, you won’t know much afterwards, either. Forsaking the prosaically biographical approach of actually telling the viewer anything about her nominal subject, director Emmanuelle Antille takes a more impressionistic tack—which for some reason means including many scenes of herself and her crew bouncing on motel-room beds in feathered
16 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
genius of service dogs, and dogs in general, Buddy introduces us to a number of canines living, working, and being very good boys and girls in Amsterdam, illuminating how each adapts to the needs of its human partner. There’s longhaired retriever Makker, who makes a great running mate for blind but spry octogenarian Edith van der Meulen, and there’s Labradoodle Kaiko, who can fill a basket with groceries for paraplegic Erna Aarsen and pay for them. In one unforgettable sequence we see how avidly the poodle Mister observes veteran Trevor Veira, suffering an unsettling episode of PTSD right on camera. The emotional benefits to both species are clear, and an apparent telepathy in some cases impossible to ignore. Of course, if your inclination is to holler “Anthropomorphizing!” like some pouty little Neil deGrasse Tyson, then forget it. You’ve likely never had a true relationship with one of these friends from the more-than-human world, or
pondered the privilege extended by them to us. For anyone else, this amounts to about 90 minutes of going “Awwww…” and feeling grateful. Vancity, May 5 (3:15 p.m.) by AM CITY OF THE DEAD (Spain) “What happened to him?” asks a mortuary worker. “He feels empty,” replies the other, pulling the entire rib cage from a fresh corpse. That eye-opener aside, those of us tuned to the very tiny subgenre of docs about the death industry will find this contemplative piece closer to 1979’s haunting Des Morts than, say, the mondo autopsy porn of Death Scenes. Observing the daily business at Palma de Mallorca’s cemetery and funeral home—its crumbling spiral looks like it was designed by zombie Frank Lloyd Wright—Miguel Eek’s film wanders from an embalmer scoffing at Silicon Valley’s promise of human immortality “in the next 20 years”, to the solemn front-office business of selling coffins, where a widow insists to the funeral director that she saw an angel who alleviated her suffering. An aging security guard jokes that, yes, his colleagues will see him naked once he ends up on the slab, while two gardeners discuss the soul’s journey, a conversation that somehow becomes a bizarre dissertation on the prophetic meaning of Michael Bay’s Armageddon. But what else would you expect inside such a weird interzone of quotidian work, black humour, and sacred ground? Vancity, May 4 (2:30 p.m.); Cinematheque, May 6 (9 p.m.) by AM
DOXA
That’s what you get for loving Gord
T
by Mike Usinger
he goal was a daunting one for directors Joan Tosoni and Martha Kehoe when they got famously enigmatic Canadian icon Gordon Lightfoot in front of the camera to tell the story of his life. “We really, really wanted to get something more than what people have heard already,” Tosoni says, in a conference call with Kehoe from Toronto. “And we knew that would take some time, because he needs to trust you. He’s an inscrutable man, and we were aware of that from the beginning.” The fascinating thing about Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind is the way that one of the greatest storytellers in the history of pop music—Canadian or otherwise— seems at once totally open, and yet at the same time leaves one thinking there’s plenty going on inside that he’s never going to share. That’s hinted at by Lightfoot’s peers. At one point in If You Could Read My Mind, Murray McLauchlan suggests that Bob Dylan and Lightfoot have more in common than a mutual admiration and respect for each other’s talent. “Murray says if two enigmatic people could be in a perfect marriage, it would be Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot,” Kehoe says with a laugh. “That’s really true. I was very gratified to hear his drummer say, ‘You could drive across the country with Gord and he’d never say anything poetic.’ He says everything that he has to say in his songs.” If all this makes it sound like Lightfoot is unwilling to pull back the curtain on his career, it shouldn’t. Fans whose working relationship goes back to the long-running CanCon staple The Tommy Hunter Show, the directors began seriously working to get Gordon Lightfoot: If You
A famously enigmatic (and cranky) Canadian icon tells you everything you wanted to know, and some things you didn’t, in Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind.
Could Read My Mind off the ground a half-dozen years ago. That’s when Lightfoot let them know he was ready to tell his story. “I think he had a fear that he never wants his career to end,” Kehoe says. “He didn’t want to do a comprehensive film as if it was over. I think, at this point, he’s getting on, and he feels a responsibility to his body of work. So he wants to bring attention to it, and this is part of that.” If You Could Read My Mind starts off in the present day, with Lightfoot looking back at footage of his younger self performing his ’60s hit “For Lovin’ Me” and being appalled. Not by the fact that it showcased him as a monster talent who’d rack up an endless string of monster hits over the coming decades, including “Sundown”, “Rainy Day People”, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, and too many others to count here. Instead, right before declaring “I hate this fucking song,” he confesses “I guess I don’t like who I am.” His reason? The song is an almost painfully autobiographical account of a messed-up-on-multiple-fronts
What also emerges is Lightfoot’s deep respect for his craft—as much as he had a golden touch that’s seen his work covered by everyone from Elvis to the Dandy Warhols, he’s also taken a meticulously workmanlike approach to the business of songwriting. What ultimately emerges is a picture of a deeply conflicted and perhaps tormented artist, whose life includes a long path of failed relationships and the profound regrets that come with them. No matter how big a Lightfoot fan you might be, you’ll learn things to the point where you’ll never listen to the timeless “If You Could Read My Mind” the same way again.
“He really is an artist, first and foremost,” Kehoe says. “But also within that headspace there’s the workman, there’s the dreamer, there’s the lover, there’s the crabby guy. All these different characters are there within Gord. And then there’s also this guy from Orillia, and that’s who he feels he needs to be a lot of the time.” With that, Tosoni jumps in with, “He’s very, very unpretentious, but not pretentiously so. He’s basically got a very Canadian personality.” g Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind screens at SFU Woodward’s on May 4 and the Vancity Theatre on May 12.
Lightfoot walking out on his wife and young family. Consider that a heads up that Kehoe and Tosoni don’t just focus on the highs in If You Could Read My Mind. Little moments make it clear how deep the filmmakers dug for the film: an early Lightfoot interview with an impossibly young Alex Trebek; scratchy audio of his earliest live performance, as a choirboy in church in his hometown of Orillia, Ontario. Mixed in with modern-day interviews and performances is a treasure trove of crazily obscure historical moments (Lightfoot as a bit player on the ’60s CBC show Country Hoedown), snaps of old posters and rare archival photos (star-studded ’70s house parties in Toronto where you can almost smell the Crown Royal), and auxiliary interviews with peers and insiders that put his career in complete and important perspective. The 80-year-old is deservedly feted in the film by a long list of artists that includes Steve Earle, Sarah McLachlan, Geddy Lee, Alec Baldwin, Anne Murray, and a clearly thrilled-to-bethere Greg Graffin of Bad Religion.
The real Don Corleone revealed
I
by Adrian Mack
t’s more chilling than The Godfather, grislier than Goodfellas, and all true. The blood-drenched rise and fall of Salvatore “Totò” Riina gets the epic documentary it deserves with Corleone, in which some of the most notorious Mafiosi in Sicily’s brutal history go on-camera to describe the slaughter they committed under the command of the “Godfather of Godfathers”. During the gang wars and escalating tensions of the ’80s and ’90s, nobody in Palermo was safe. “The whole story of this poor peasant reaching the highest position in the Mafia in such a bloodthirsty way—this is impressive. Impressive,” says DOXA Documentary Film Festival programmer Thierry Garrel in an excited call to the Georgia Straight. “Italians, of course, remember because the whole state was shaken and was under threat, month after month, for years. Before, the Mafia was not attacking the powerful. They were extortionists, taking advantage of any money circulating, or drugs, things like that, but the fact that they started having policemen, then judges, then politicians killed…” Killed publicly, and in spectacular fashion, which the archive-raiding doc presents in gruesome detail. It might be director Mosco Levi Boucault’s crowning achievement as a filmmaker. His career-length excavation of crime and politics Italianstyle receives its first-ever retrospective as part of Garrel’s Italia Italia series, running at this year’s festival. In Boucault’s grand, novelistic approach, both sides of the law emerge as natural storytellers—including the killers. In one incredible moment, the man who blew crusading prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and his wife to
Killers, commandos, prosecutors, and cops go on the record to tell the story of the most vicious of Sicily’s mob bosses, Salvatore “Totò” Riina, in the epic Corleone.
smithereens in ’92 recalls his hesitation at detonating the bomb. As with 2011’s They Were the Red Brigades, also coming to DOXA, Boucault is drawn, in Garrel’s words, to “the threshold, the limits of what humanity should be”. Adds the programmer: “There’s a dimension of tragedy inside the darkest human being.” Perhaps. One of Riina’s commandos describes the boss as “pure criminal”, a “man of honour” who rewrote all the rules of the Cosa Nostra in the blood of his enemies, and then his friends. He was unique in his absolute psychopathy. When he’s finally captured in 1993 after 24 years on the run, Riina’s performance in front of a jury is a masterpiece of operatic dissembling, as the twinkle-eyed monster insists that he’s merely a humble farmer from the town of Corleone. The mask slips when he’s confronted by a rival boss whose children were killed on Riina’s orders. The Godfather of Godfathers laughs in his face.
Totò Riina died in 2017, still denying his guilt, after another 24 years in solitary confinement. But organized crime didn’t die with him. As we see in another of Boucault’s films, Berlusconi: The Mondadori Affair (2006), the hot nexus of political, corporate, and underworld corruption thrives in Italy—and elsewhere. Garrel, a Paris native now living in Vancouver, remarks: “Berlusconi, he was the first real populist leader, coming from the corporate world, and cynical. Remember, at that time we were looking at Italy across the Alps and saying, ‘Well, this is quite significant. What is happening there will happen here.’ ” With Trump to the south and the graft being exposed within our own institutions, might we look across the ocean and say something similar? g Corleone screens at SFU Woodward’s on May 5, preceded by a master class with Mosco Levi Boucault at the same venue. Corleone screens again at the Vancity Theatre on May 10.
APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 17
S RT EEK! A ST T W X NE
OPENING GALA SCREENING
FRI MAY 3
BIOGRAPHIES
7 PM PLAYHOUSE FRI MAY 3 SAT MAY 11
8 PM CINE 2:15 PM CINE
A Bright Light: Karen and the Process Emmanuelle Antille
Karen Dalton was a crucial figure in the Greenwich Village urban folk scene of the 1960s and lauded by Bob Dylan and Tim Hardin. SAT MAY 4 SUN MAY 12
VIFF’S VANCIT Y THEATRE 1181 Seymour St THE CINEMATHEQUE 1131 Howe St SFU’S GOLDCORP CENTRE FOR THE ARTS 149 W Hastings St
Because We Are Girls
7 PM SFU 4:45 PM VANCIT Y
COMMUNITIES OF CARE SAT MAY 11
12 PM VANCIT Y
E N V I R O N M E N TA L
POLITICS OF PLACE THU MAY 9
8:30 PM VANCIT Y
FRI MAY 3 THU MAY 9
6 PM CINE 2:30 PM VANCIT Y
GLOBAL ISSUES WED MAY 8 SAT MAY 11
8:45 PM SFU 6:30 PM CINE
América
Greetings From Free Forests
Flow
American Factory
When their father is jailed for allegedly neglecting his eponymous 93-year-old mother, grandsons Rodrigo, Bruno, and Diego reunite to care for her.
An evocative portrait of the Slovenian landscape that facilitated what is considered to be Europe’s most effective resistance movement during World War II.
A meditative journey along two rivers — the Ganges in India, and the Biobío in Chile — that serves as a junction between two similar but distinct ways of life.
A post-Fordist drama that provides a gripping and often humorous insider-look at cultural differences between American and Chinese workers.
SUN MAY 5
MON MAY 6
SAT MAY 4 SUN MAY 12
MON MAY 6
Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside
Ian Soroka
3:15 PM VANCIT Y
6 PM CINE
Nicolás Molina
Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
9:30 PM VANCIT Y 1:45 PM CINE
12 PM VANCIT Y
REPEAT SCREENING TUE MAY 7 | 6:30 PM | VANCITY
Baljit Sangra
A conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused in their childhood years. With and empathetic lens, director Baljit Sangra explores the impact of sexual abuse on a family and crafts an intimate portrait that celebrates the strength of sisterhood in the face of profound pain and trauma.
CLOSING GAL A SCREENING
SAT MAY 11
7 PM SFU
THE PL AYHOUSE 600 Hamilton St MUSEUM OF VANCOUVER 1100 Chestnut St
Candice
Buddy
Director Sheona McDonald explores the life and career of Candice Vadala (aka Candida Royalle), known to many as the “godmother of feminist porn.”
A heartwarming exploration of the dog-human bond, celebrating the extraordinary skills of service dogs and how they support their companions.
SUN MAY 5 SAT MAY 11
WED MAY 8 SUN MAY 12
Sheona McDonald
Heddy Honigmann
5:30 PM SFU 12 PM CINE
4:15 PM VANCIT Y 12 PM CINE
In the Claws of a Century Wanting Jewel Maranan
Four families in Manila are forced to resettle by the government, in this critical look at the everyday violence in a globalized city. WED MAY 8 FRI MAY 10
6 PM VANCIT Y 8 PM | CINE
The Hottest August
Call Me Intern
It’s August in New York City and the cityscape is permeated by an undercurrent of unease due to climate change, unemployment and race tensions.
Call Me Intern calls attention to unpaid labour and new generation of activists who are organizing against, and even suing, some of their former employers.
MON MAY 6 SUN MAY 12
SAT MAY 11 SUN MAY 12
Brett Story
Nathalie Berger and Leo David Hyde
7 PM VANCIT Y 3:45 PM CINE
4 PM VANCIT Y 12 PM SFU
THE POST AT 750 750 Hamilton St VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY 350 W Georgia Street
City Dreamers
DIVE: Rituals in Water
Joseph Hillel
WORLD PREMIERE
1990s
SOUTH ASIAN
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
ITALIA ITALIA
A glimpse into the careers of four trailblazing urban architects of the 20th century, including Vancouver legend Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.
CANADIAN PREMIERE
POLITICS OF PLACE
Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen
REPEAT SCREENING SAT MAY 11 | 8:30 PM | VANCITY
SAT MAY 4 SUN MAY 12
9:15 PM SFU 7 PM VANCIT Y
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir, Elín Hansdóttir, Hanna Björk Valsdóttir
An infant swim class in Iceland is brought to life by a soothing vibrational soundscape and lush underwater cinematography. SUN MAY 5 TUE MAY 7
8:30 PM VANCIT Y 2:30 PM VANCIT Y
Los Reyes
Illusions of Control
One Child Nation
The Los Reyes skate park in Santiago, Chile is home to the stars of this film, canine subjects Football and Chola.
Shot across five different countries, this expansive essay introduces us to five courageous women, each reflecting on crisis and resilience in the face of ecological instability.
Weaving personal experience with archival propaganda, Nanfu Wang reveals the human rights violations and trauma caused by the Chinese government’s one-child policy.
THU MAY 9
SAT MAY 11 SUN MAY 12
Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff
SAT MAY 4 WED MAY 8
9:15 PM CINE 2:30 PM VANCIT Y
Shannon Walsh
Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang
6:30 PM VANCIT Y
6:30 PM VANCIT Y 6 PM CINE
Hepi Mita CARE
JUSTICE FORUM
RATED Y FOR YOUTH
Merata Mita was one of the first Indigenous (Māori) women in the world to write and direct a narrative feature film (Mauri, 1988). Best known for her independent documentaries of the 1970s and 80s, Mita, continues to be recognized as one of the most influential women in Indigenous filmmaking. Directed by her youngest son Hepi Mita, Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen is a tender posthumous tribute to his mother’s life and career.
JUSTICE FORUM GALA WED MAY 8 THU MAY 9
6 PM SFU 12 PM VANCITY
L I V E P R E S E N TAT I O N SAT MAY 4
7:30 PM VANCITY
Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind Joan Tosoni and Martha Kehoe
Provides an illuminating and emotional glimpse into the personality and behind-the-scenes life of a Canadian legend. SAT MAY 11 SAT MAY 11
Postings from Home
nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up
Kelly O’Brien
Tasha Hubbard
Few events in recent Canadian history have sparked as much outrage as the death of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man who was murdered in rural Saskatchewan in 2016. Tasha Hubbard’s essential film follows his family’s fight for justice while casting an unflinching look at systemic racism in Canada.
Kelly O’Brien has taken the collective sharing of one’s personal life on social media combined it with the tradition of a family slideshow to create an emotionally affecting live performance. From the wonders and challenges of motherhood to anxious thoughts about the future during a time of environmental crisis, Postings From Home unearths the poetry found within the everyday.
7 PM SFU 8:30 PM VANCIT Y
Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen Hepi Mita
Hepi Mita crafts a tender posthumous tribute to his mother Merata Mita, one of the most influential Indigenous (Māori) filmmakers of our time. FRI MAY 10 SUN MAY 12
7 PM VANCIT Y 4 PM SFU
How to Bee
Pomelo
Filmmaker Naomi Mark returns home to the Yukon to learn the craft of beekeeping from her father after he is diagnosed with critical health problems.
The historic neighbourhood of Pomelo in Hanoi, a vibrant maze of homes and businesses teeming with life, is being demolished for a highway project.
SAT MAY 11
TUE MAY 7
Naomi Mark
Phuong Thao Tran and Swann Dubus
1:45 PM VANCIT Y
8:30 PM CINE
Scenes from Turtle Island: Shorts Program Various
Shorts films that explore Indigenous life: Fast Horse, Mommy Goes Race, Indian Rights for Indian Women, Ka Ussi-Tshishkutamashuht, OshKiKiShiKaw, Enhior’hén:ne [Tomorrow]. THU MAY 9
7 PM MOV
Mom Calling
Xalko
Toad People
Follows three women who care for their aging mothers with dementia while balancing jobs and other family obligations.
Xalko is a Kurdish village in Turkey — a small, isolated collection of modest houses, ramshackle livestock pens, and scrubby landscape.
Toad People sheds light on how climate change and human interference are impacting Western toads, and the inspiring community-led movement to save this endangered species.
THU MAY 2
SUN MAY 5 TUE MAY 7
TUE MAY 7 WED MAY 8
Nelleke Koop
Sami Mermer and Hind Benchekroun
5:45 PM CINE
2 PM CINE 4:45 PM VANCIT Y
Isabelle Groc and Mike McKinlay
12 PM VANCIT Y 6 PM CINE
Midnight Traveler
Hassan Fazili and Emelie Mahdavian
An intimate study of displacement as well as a compelling road movie, Midnight Traveler follows the Fazili family on their journey to seek refuge in Europe.
THU MAY 9 FRI MAY 10
8:30 PM SFU 12 PM VANCIT Y
Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies Larry Weinstein
Propaganda in its many forms is explored in this timely doc, from symbols of fascist movements to its more subtle forms in political satire and online slander. SAT MAY 4 FRI MAY 10
12 PM VANCIT Y 6 PM SFU
T I C K E T I N F O R M AT I O N GENERAL: $15 • Weekday evenings and weekends WEEKDAY MATINEE: $13 • Weekday films starting at 5pm or earlier
18 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
FESTIVAL PASS: $195 • Includes membership; valid for all film screenings including Opening Gala, Closing Gala, and live presentation
STUDENTS (with valid ID) / SENIORS (65+) / LOW INCOME • $2 discount from regular prices for any film screening except for special presentations
TICKET PACKS: 5 TICKETS - $65 / 10 TICKETS - $115 Only available online. Valid for one ticket per screening. Films must be chosen at time of purchase. NOT valid for special presentations and does not include the $2 membership.
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS: $18 Opening Gala, Closing Gala, live presentation
MEMBERSHIP: $2
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
Young Solitude
Winter’s Yearning
Toxic Beauty
Push
Fans of Davis will revel in watching neverbefore-seen footage and learning more about the complex man behind the canonical body of jazz music.
At a high school in the outskirts of Paris, Claire Simon films groups of kids finding quiet spaces to talk about their families, fears, relationships, and dreams.
When the remote town of Maniitsoq, Greenland, is chosen as the site for a new smelting plant, locals wait with bated breath for construction to begin.
With exclusive access to scientists, lawyers, and whistle-blowers, Toxic Beauty critically examines the global cosmetics industry.
As cities across the globe struggle with housing affordability, experts and citizens explore how housing has become a commodity for the wealthy rather than a necessity for all.
Stanley Nelson
Claire Simon
Sidse Torstholm Larsen and Sturla Pilskog
Phyllis Ellis
Fredrik Gertten
APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 19
S RT EEK! A ST T W X NE
OPENING GALA SCREENING
FRI MAY 3
BIOGRAPHIES
7 PM PLAYHOUSE FRI MAY 3 SAT MAY 11
8 PM CINE 2:15 PM CINE
A Bright Light: Karen and the Process Emmanuelle Antille
Karen Dalton was a crucial figure in the Greenwich Village urban folk scene of the 1960s and lauded by Bob Dylan and Tim Hardin. SAT MAY 4 SUN MAY 12
VIFF’S VANCIT Y THEATRE 1181 Seymour St THE CINEMATHEQUE 1131 Howe St SFU’S GOLDCORP CENTRE FOR THE ARTS 149 W Hastings St
Because We Are Girls
7 PM SFU 4:45 PM VANCIT Y
COMMUNITIES OF CARE SAT MAY 11
12 PM VANCIT Y
E N V I R O N M E N TA L
POLITICS OF PLACE THU MAY 9
8:30 PM VANCIT Y
FRI MAY 3 THU MAY 9
6 PM CINE 2:30 PM VANCIT Y
GLOBAL ISSUES WED MAY 8 SAT MAY 11
8:45 PM SFU 6:30 PM CINE
América
Greetings From Free Forests
Flow
American Factory
When their father is jailed for allegedly neglecting his eponymous 93-year-old mother, grandsons Rodrigo, Bruno, and Diego reunite to care for her.
An evocative portrait of the Slovenian landscape that facilitated what is considered to be Europe’s most effective resistance movement during World War II.
A meditative journey along two rivers — the Ganges in India, and the Biobío in Chile — that serves as a junction between two similar but distinct ways of life.
A post-Fordist drama that provides a gripping and often humorous insider-look at cultural differences between American and Chinese workers.
SUN MAY 5
MON MAY 6
SAT MAY 4 SUN MAY 12
MON MAY 6
Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside
Ian Soroka
3:15 PM VANCIT Y
6 PM CINE
Nicolás Molina
Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
9:30 PM VANCIT Y 1:45 PM CINE
12 PM VANCIT Y
REPEAT SCREENING TUE MAY 7 | 6:30 PM | VANCITY
Baljit Sangra
A conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused in their childhood years. With and empathetic lens, director Baljit Sangra explores the impact of sexual abuse on a family and crafts an intimate portrait that celebrates the strength of sisterhood in the face of profound pain and trauma.
CLOSING GAL A SCREENING
SAT MAY 11
7 PM SFU
THE PL AYHOUSE 600 Hamilton St MUSEUM OF VANCOUVER 1100 Chestnut St
Candice
Buddy
Director Sheona McDonald explores the life and career of Candice Vadala (aka Candida Royalle), known to many as the “godmother of feminist porn.”
A heartwarming exploration of the dog-human bond, celebrating the extraordinary skills of service dogs and how they support their companions.
SUN MAY 5 SAT MAY 11
WED MAY 8 SUN MAY 12
Sheona McDonald
Heddy Honigmann
5:30 PM SFU 12 PM CINE
4:15 PM VANCIT Y 12 PM CINE
In the Claws of a Century Wanting Jewel Maranan
Four families in Manila are forced to resettle by the government, in this critical look at the everyday violence in a globalized city. WED MAY 8 FRI MAY 10
6 PM VANCIT Y 8 PM | CINE
The Hottest August
Call Me Intern
It’s August in New York City and the cityscape is permeated by an undercurrent of unease due to climate change, unemployment and race tensions.
Call Me Intern calls attention to unpaid labour and new generation of activists who are organizing against, and even suing, some of their former employers.
MON MAY 6 SUN MAY 12
SAT MAY 11 SUN MAY 12
Brett Story
Nathalie Berger and Leo David Hyde
7 PM VANCIT Y 3:45 PM CINE
4 PM VANCIT Y 12 PM SFU
THE POST AT 750 750 Hamilton St VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY 350 W Georgia Street
City Dreamers
DIVE: Rituals in Water
Joseph Hillel
WORLD PREMIERE
1990s
SOUTH ASIAN
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
ITALIA ITALIA
A glimpse into the careers of four trailblazing urban architects of the 20th century, including Vancouver legend Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.
CANADIAN PREMIERE
POLITICS OF PLACE
Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen
REPEAT SCREENING SAT MAY 11 | 8:30 PM | VANCITY
SAT MAY 4 SUN MAY 12
9:15 PM SFU 7 PM VANCIT Y
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir, Elín Hansdóttir, Hanna Björk Valsdóttir
An infant swim class in Iceland is brought to life by a soothing vibrational soundscape and lush underwater cinematography. SUN MAY 5 TUE MAY 7
8:30 PM VANCIT Y 2:30 PM VANCIT Y
Los Reyes
Illusions of Control
One Child Nation
The Los Reyes skate park in Santiago, Chile is home to the stars of this film, canine subjects Football and Chola.
Shot across five different countries, this expansive essay introduces us to five courageous women, each reflecting on crisis and resilience in the face of ecological instability.
Weaving personal experience with archival propaganda, Nanfu Wang reveals the human rights violations and trauma caused by the Chinese government’s one-child policy.
THU MAY 9
SAT MAY 11 SUN MAY 12
Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff
SAT MAY 4 WED MAY 8
9:15 PM CINE 2:30 PM VANCIT Y
Shannon Walsh
Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang
6:30 PM VANCIT Y
6:30 PM VANCIT Y 6 PM CINE
Hepi Mita CARE
JUSTICE FORUM
RATED Y FOR YOUTH
Merata Mita was one of the first Indigenous (Māori) women in the world to write and direct a narrative feature film (Mauri, 1988). Best known for her independent documentaries of the 1970s and 80s, Mita, continues to be recognized as one of the most influential women in Indigenous filmmaking. Directed by her youngest son Hepi Mita, Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen is a tender posthumous tribute to his mother’s life and career.
JUSTICE FORUM GALA WED MAY 8 THU MAY 9
6 PM SFU 12 PM VANCITY
L I V E P R E S E N TAT I O N SAT MAY 4
7:30 PM VANCITY
Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind Joan Tosoni and Martha Kehoe
Provides an illuminating and emotional glimpse into the personality and behind-the-scenes life of a Canadian legend. SAT MAY 11 SAT MAY 11
Postings from Home
nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up
Kelly O’Brien
Tasha Hubbard
Few events in recent Canadian history have sparked as much outrage as the death of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man who was murdered in rural Saskatchewan in 2016. Tasha Hubbard’s essential film follows his family’s fight for justice while casting an unflinching look at systemic racism in Canada.
Kelly O’Brien has taken the collective sharing of one’s personal life on social media combined it with the tradition of a family slideshow to create an emotionally affecting live performance. From the wonders and challenges of motherhood to anxious thoughts about the future during a time of environmental crisis, Postings From Home unearths the poetry found within the everyday.
7 PM SFU 8:30 PM VANCIT Y
Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen Hepi Mita
Hepi Mita crafts a tender posthumous tribute to his mother Merata Mita, one of the most influential Indigenous (Māori) filmmakers of our time. FRI MAY 10 SUN MAY 12
7 PM VANCIT Y 4 PM SFU
How to Bee
Pomelo
Filmmaker Naomi Mark returns home to the Yukon to learn the craft of beekeeping from her father after he is diagnosed with critical health problems.
The historic neighbourhood of Pomelo in Hanoi, a vibrant maze of homes and businesses teeming with life, is being demolished for a highway project.
SAT MAY 11
TUE MAY 7
Naomi Mark
Phuong Thao Tran and Swann Dubus
1:45 PM VANCIT Y
8:30 PM CINE
Scenes from Turtle Island: Shorts Program Various
Shorts films that explore Indigenous life: Fast Horse, Mommy Goes Race, Indian Rights for Indian Women, Ka Ussi-Tshishkutamashuht, OshKiKiShiKaw, Enhior’hén:ne [Tomorrow]. THU MAY 9
7 PM MOV
Mom Calling
Xalko
Toad People
Follows three women who care for their aging mothers with dementia while balancing jobs and other family obligations.
Xalko is a Kurdish village in Turkey — a small, isolated collection of modest houses, ramshackle livestock pens, and scrubby landscape.
Toad People sheds light on how climate change and human interference are impacting Western toads, and the inspiring community-led movement to save this endangered species.
THU MAY 2
SUN MAY 5 TUE MAY 7
TUE MAY 7 WED MAY 8
Nelleke Koop
Sami Mermer and Hind Benchekroun
5:45 PM CINE
2 PM CINE 4:45 PM VANCIT Y
Isabelle Groc and Mike McKinlay
12 PM VANCIT Y 6 PM CINE
Midnight Traveler
Hassan Fazili and Emelie Mahdavian
An intimate study of displacement as well as a compelling road movie, Midnight Traveler follows the Fazili family on their journey to seek refuge in Europe.
THU MAY 9 FRI MAY 10
8:30 PM SFU 12 PM VANCIT Y
Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies Larry Weinstein
Propaganda in its many forms is explored in this timely doc, from symbols of fascist movements to its more subtle forms in political satire and online slander. SAT MAY 4 FRI MAY 10
12 PM VANCIT Y 6 PM SFU
T I C K E T I N F O R M AT I O N GENERAL: $15 • Weekday evenings and weekends WEEKDAY MATINEE: $13 • Weekday films starting at 5pm or earlier
18 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
FESTIVAL PASS: $195 • Includes membership; valid for all film screenings including Opening Gala, Closing Gala, and live presentation
STUDENTS (with valid ID) / SENIORS (65+) / LOW INCOME • $2 discount from regular prices for any film screening except for special presentations
TICKET PACKS: 5 TICKETS - $65 / 10 TICKETS - $115 Only available online. Valid for one ticket per screening. Films must be chosen at time of purchase. NOT valid for special presentations and does not include the $2 membership.
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS: $18 Opening Gala, Closing Gala, live presentation
MEMBERSHIP: $2
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
Young Solitude
Winter’s Yearning
Toxic Beauty
Push
Fans of Davis will revel in watching neverbefore-seen footage and learning more about the complex man behind the canonical body of jazz music.
At a high school in the outskirts of Paris, Claire Simon films groups of kids finding quiet spaces to talk about their families, fears, relationships, and dreams.
When the remote town of Maniitsoq, Greenland, is chosen as the site for a new smelting plant, locals wait with bated breath for construction to begin.
With exclusive access to scientists, lawyers, and whistle-blowers, Toxic Beauty critically examines the global cosmetics industry.
As cities across the globe struggle with housing affordability, experts and citizens explore how housing has become a commodity for the wealthy rather than a necessity for all.
Stanley Nelson
Claire Simon
Sidse Torstholm Larsen and Sturla Pilskog
Phyllis Ellis
Fredrik Gertten
APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 19
MOVIES
From Mexican Rififi to lesbian Rafiki REVIEWS MUSEO
Starring Gael García Bernal. In Spanish, English, and Mayan, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
d ONE OF many unusual things about this phenomenal heist movie is that the robbery happens right away. Usually, you spend a lot of time seeing a team assembled and wondering what will go wrong. Here, despite being utter nincompoops, the two guys behind the biggest art theft in Mexican history pull off their one-time job— which really happened, on Christmas Eve of 1985—with almost miraculous aplomb. It’s in what comes after where things really go pear-shaped. The story centres on Juan, a slacker with a heart of pure confusion, played by Gael García Bernal, far from his turn as Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. Juan’s stint as an assistant at Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology doesn’t inflame his love of Mesoamerican history; the real problem is that he gets no respect from the many members of his family, crowding into their handsome home in a cushy Mexico City suburb so anonymous it’s actually called Satélite. Whether to impress his remote doctor father (Chile’s Alfredo Castro) or to defy him, the aging lad dreams of pulling a magnificent crime with his best friend, Wilson (Leonardo Ortizgris). Another tip-off to this film’s skewed vision is that it is narrated by Wilson—odd because the guy seems a bit dim, and disappears from the story for long periods of increasingly strange action. Along the way, one or
Gael Garcia Bernal plans the most ridiculous art heist ever in the wonderful Museo.
both of them head to the cliffs of Acapulco, the pyramids of Palenque, and some nether region where Castaneda meets Camus, with some Maltese Falcon thrown in for fun. Cinematographer Damián García makes every possible use of his widescreen format, with weird angles and uneasy focus adding a feeling of suspense that sometimes dissolves into giggles. The movie’s subtext is that whatever’s been stolen from a museum has already been stolen countless times before. This is underlined by repeated use of Silvestre Revueltas’s score for Night of the Mayas, a 1939 film about conflicts between Mexico’s Indigenous past and its postcolonial identity. In making a tale that fictionalizes the perpetrators of a true-crime landmark, Ruizpalacios tells a pulp story that’s almost a genre unto itself.
on the kind of person movies usually ignore: an aging single woman who does her best for people around her but still seems to come up short in life’s sweepstakes. Our title character is played by Mary Kay Place, herself a highly skilled comic actor, now 71, who didn’t get a real shot at stardom but never stopped working. The tarttongued Oklahoman lent indelible support in The Big Chill and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, as well as more recent stints on Big Love, Lady Dynamite, and Grace and Frankie. Here, her lethally arched eyebrow is aimed at darker stuff, and she eschews the laughs as a small-town Massachusetts woman whose options are dwindling. Lately, Diane has been dividing her time between working in a soup by Ken Eisner kitchen, visiting a beloved cousin (The Affair’s Deirdre O’Connell) DIANE dying of cancer, and checking up on Starring Mary Kay Place. Rated PG her ne’er-do-well son. Played against type by Jake Lacy, who usually pord AS UNASSUMING as its title, trays Midwestern nice guys on shows Diane is a character study centring like Girls, her Brian is a manipulative
sometime drug addict always on the edge of getting it together. All of this leaves Diane caught between false hope and no hope. But the film’s tight writing and sure direction make you wonder if she ever had that much to believe in. There’s a spiritual dimension to her suffering—much of which takes place in her car—that is more existential than saintlike. Diane’s bittersweet poetry is especially striking when you realize that this is writer-director Kent Jones’s first narrative feature, coming after a successful career making film-centred documentaries like Hitchcock/Truffaut and essays about Elia Kazan and lyrical horrormeister Val Lewton. Apart from the main story, Jones displays his love of actors by casting veterans like Estelle Parsons, Glynnis O’Connor, Joyce Van Patten, and Andrea Martin as members of Diane’s extended family. Here, in a world of fading dreams and fading flesh, everyone is lonely. But they sure make a lot of noise before they go. by Ken Eisner
RAFIKI
Starring Samantha Mugatsia. In English and Swahili, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
d RAFIKI MEANS “friend” in Swahili, and this feisty, ruggedly amateurish film from Kenya attempts to interrogate the basic notion of friendship, with or without benefits. This second feature from writerdirector Wanuri Kahiu has a keen eye for the rhythmic hustle and brightly coloured backgrounds of daily traffic in “the Slopes”, a working-class quarter of Nairobi. Almost any western visitor would recognize that teenage Kena Mwaura (Samantha Mugatsia),
with her cropped cut, backwards ball cap, and ever-present skateboard, doesn’t have the orientation expected of the daughter of a local shopkeeper and would-be politician (Jimmy Gathu). But, probably because everyone in this crowd grew up together, best friend Blacksta (Neville Misati) and his pals simply accept her as “one of the guys”. Their perceptions, and her own, are challenged when she bumps into Ziki (Sheila Munyiva), who looks like an Egyptian princess but is all hip-hop girly in spandex and pink-and-blue cornrow extensions. Something clicks, and Kena’s not deterred by the fact that Ziki is the daughter of another, much wealthier guy running against her recently divorced dad in a civic election. The Julie-and-Juliet aspect of the story is the only high-concept thing going here, and the pox-on-boththeir-houses part doesn’t really pay off. Rich and poor alike, in this somewhat underpopulated tale, are freaked out when the two kids get serious. It’s fortunate that the leads have sufficient sparkle to ensure viewer sympathy, because the storytelling here, to be honest, is pretty iffy. Once the stakes are raised, the girls keep acting out their mostly chaste affair in front of the neighbourhood gossip and others likely to cause them harm. That happens. The characters themselves are woefully inarticulate, which might be realistic, although this blunts Rafiki’s opportunity to give them voices. Even so, the movie—banned in its home country—is well worth seeing for the breath of life it brings to people and a part of the world that aren’t nearly as far away as they seem. by Ken Eisner
A candid portrait of porn star Candice
T
by Janet Smith
VIFF‘18
20 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
he name Candida Royalle will forever conjure two loaded words: feminist porn. Her story is now the stuff of legend. After starring in X-rated classics like Hot & Saucy Pizza Girls in the 1970s, she rebelled against the misogyny she experienced on and off camera. In her 30s, Royalle cut her hair short and took a seat behind the camera, blazing a trail as the director-producer of female-friendly erotica—and pushing sex-positive messages that still resonate today. But behind that narrative lay a much more complex woman, whose real name was Candice Vadala. Battling ovarian cancer in her early 60s, she approached Vancouver filmmaker Sheona McDonald to tell her full story, in her own words. The result is the intimate portrait Candice, which premieres at this year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival. For McDonald, it’s the culmination of an intense project that lingered with her for years after Vadala’s death in 2015, at 64. “We were two strangers, thrust into this personal journey,” McDonald begins, speaking to the Straight over the phone. “I didn’t really realize how hard it was going to be. I really struggled, to be honest. There were a lot of threads to pull together.” McDonald first met Vadala when she was making Inside Her Sex, a 2014 documentary about porn, female sexuality, and shame. As they became better acquainted, Vadala asked McDonald if she’d be interested in filming her personal story. Vadala was facing another round of treatment for her cancer, and wanted to search out the story of her mother, who had abandoned her when she was just 18 months old. As McDonald captures in candid interviews, that act had left Vadala with lifelong doubts about her own worth, and nagging questions
The complex trailblazer Candida Royalle gets real in Sheona McDonald’s film.
about what would drive a woman to leave her child. “The weight of her childhood was so heavy,” McDonald recounts. “And she was facing her own mortality. She did not want to die. She was very vibrant and youthful and still had a lot she wanted to do. So the end of her life was quite tragic.” McDonald, who had three young children here in Vancouver, dropped everything and took her camera to New York. “I was living in her house—we were making dinners together,” she recalls. “She was a really interesting woman because she was complex and compassionate, and she loved her cats.” McDonald travelled with Vadala to some of the places she’d lived in, from Brooklyn to San Francisco. But when a private investigator finally uncovered details about Vadala’s mother, and the possibility of a surviving halfsibling, filming took the director and Vadala to a sad corner of Missouri they could never have predicted. Suffice it to say, as McDonald puts it, “It wasn’t a happy story.” McDonald’s own relationship with Vadala ended on similarly unresolved terms. Her last shoot with her subject opens the movie. It took place five months before Vadala’s death.
McDonald was called back to Vancouver to direct the second season of the Knowledge Network’s Emergency Room: Life and Death at VGH, and never got the chance to return to see Vadala again before she died. From there, the director says, she “felt Candice’s presence” when she later strove to complete the project— financing a good chunk of it herself. That involved carefully weaving together the wide-ranging pieces of Vadala’s life. Along with the hours of footage she shot, McDonald juggled black-and-white childhood photos, sometimes disturbing porn clips (like the infamous laundromat rape scene in 1976’s Easy Alice), and appearances on The Phil Donahue Show and other talk shows, as Royalle rose to fame outside of porn. All the while, McDonald felt a heavy responsibility not just to the late Vadala, but to her living relatives. The result is a portrait as fascinatingly conflicted as its subject. McDonald says feminist pornographers are directly following the path paved for them, but in the film, Vadala talks about forever wearing the “scarlet letter” for her work. “I think you might say she did the best she could and managed to build a career—but I think she really would have loved to make it to the mainstream,” McDonald comments. McDonald clearly feels a weight has been lifted off her now that she’s completed the documentary, which was years in the making. There’s just one more lingering thing that needs to be taken care of. “I have this big box of porn in my home,” McDonald says. “What am I going to do with all this now?” g The DOXA Documentary Film Festival presents Candice on May 4 at SFU Woodward’s and on May 12 at the Vancity Theatre.
MOVIES Perry makes Moss smell like grunge
I
by John Lucas
t probably goes without saying that you can’t believe everything you read on Pitchfork. As an example, take this recent headline: “Elisabeth Moss is essentially Courtney Love in the rock ’n’ roll drama Her Smell.” The fact is, Moss makes such an indelible impression as downward-spiralling grunge-era rocker Becky Something that—as many other reviewers have noted— it’s hard not to think of Love in her walking-disaster ’90s heyday. Her Smell writer-director Alex Ross Perry doesn’t blame anyone for coming away with that impression, but he tells the Straight that the Hole frontwoman wasn’t necessarily a major inspiration for his own troubled punk queen. “Pitchfork could, and obviously does, know more,” says Perry, reached at home in Brooklyn, “but for a general reviewer walking out of a screening, if you said, ‘Who is a woman in alternative rock at this time?’ they’d say ‘Courtney Love.’ And then you could say, ‘Who’s another one?’ And they wouldn’t be able to say. The average person doesn’t know Kim Deal. The average person doesn’t know Juliana Hatfield. The average person doesn’t know Mary Timony. None of these women’s names are household names in the way that Courtney Love is a household name. So it doesn’t annoy me. It makes perfect sense, but it’s like Chuck Klosterman says, all of reggae has been reduced to just the representation of Bob Marley. You could not make a movie about a black, dreadlocked reggae musician—no matter what happens in it—without people going, ‘This film was inspired
SUMMER FARMERS MARKETS
2019
SEVEN WEEKLY MARKETS ACROSS VANCOUVER! SEASON BEGINS...
MAY 4TH AT TROUT LAKE & RILEY PARK MAY 5TH AT KITSILANO
Elisabeth Moss cuts loose as a fucked-up riot grrrl in Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell.
by Bob Marley.’ You could say ‘No, it was inspired by Desmond Dekker,’ and they’d go, ‘Who’s that?’ ” Whoever her real-world antecedents may be, Becky is a hell of a character. She spends most of Her Smell—which the Rio Theatre will be screening on Friday, Sunday, and Wednesday (April 26, 28, and May 1)—systematically alienating everyone who cares about her, including her mother (Virginia Madsen), her ex-husband (Dan Stevens), the harried head of her label (Eric Stoltz), and her ever-put-upon bandmates (Agyness Deyn and Gayle Rankin). Perry, who previously directed Moss as the unhinged Catherine in 2015’s Queen of Earth, says his intention with the new film was to present the audience with a difficult character whose self-destructive impulses might trigger repulsion in some viewers and empathy in others.
“In one form or another it comes up in a lot of the movies I’ve made in the last few years that the characters are aggressive or challenging or unlikable in some way, and I wanted to push that,” he admits. “Not to make her more unlikable, but I wanted to push that into a way of making it more narratively understandable why this is the way the character is. And I became very interested in thinking, like, if she’s an addict—if she’s sick, if she has a disease that pushes her to be this way—can audiences still call that unlikable, or can they just look at her in the first threefifths of the movie, when Becky is fully out of control, and just say, ‘Wow, that woman is really sick.’ Or will they just say, ‘Wow, that woman is really obnoxious’?” With Moss firing on all cylinders, many viewers might feel inclined to say both. g
MORE DETAILS AT
WWW.EATLOCAL.ORG OR CALL 604-879-3276
New Late Night Menu 22NDAnnual
2019
Aussie wines focus on a sense of place
I
by Kurtis Kolt
often find wine seems to taste better when I’m enjoying it with the winemaker. Sure, there’s the power of suggestion—the Guinness always tastes better in Ireland, after all—but enjoyment is always enhanced when hearing the story of the vineyard, the nature of production, and so on. It’s kind of like gaining an appreciation of a work of art when the curator speaks to the story behind it. Well, there’s a great opportunity to experience Mac Forbes wines out of Victoria, Australia, with the man himself next Thursday (May 2). So are we talking a fancy-pants winemaker’s dinner that’s gonna set you back a hundred bucks? Nope. In what seems to be a rather Aussie fit, Forbes will be sharing his wines at Kitsilano’s crazy-popular Hundy burger joint, which pops up each Thursday through Sunday night at the AnnaLena team’s Their There café (2042 West 4th Avenue). I have to say, chef Michael Robbins’s burgers have quickly become my favourite in town. The patty made from Two Rivers Specialty Meats beef brisket and shoulder, the pillowy brioche bun, and a good dose of pickle make it a home run for me every time. There will be a nice little array of wines to wash it all down. Forbes’s wines, coming from six different vineyard sites in the Yarra Valley, are pristine and elegant. It’s where he grew up, but he actually got his winemaking chops at a young age working in the south of France. The mentality there, of letting the vineyard’s terroir come through authentically in the bottle without an abundance of intervention or manipulation in the winery, stayed with him when he returned to Australia to begin his wine project in 2004. Three of his wines are going to be available by the glass. Mac Forbes Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2017 is sourced from a few different vineyards, giving a broad look at the cool-climate nature of the region. Citrus and stone fruit are framed well by the wine spending 10 months in older oak after a wild ferment. Mac Forbes Pinot Noir 2017 was partially foot-trod, just like in the good ol’ days, then macerated a month or so with the skins. After a wild ferment, it spent almost a year in older oak, which brings a nice little smattering of cardamom and clove to the cheery red and purple fruit. I could drink this lipsmackingly juicy stuff by the pint. The third wine that will be on tap is Mac Forbes Yarra Valley Syrah 2017. It has a buoyant and bright style and is a far cry from the gloopy, bombastic, jammy Shirazes that became synonymous with Australia back in the day. A little fresh-carved roast beef enjoys a good dusting of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and pepper, lifted with plenty of blackberries, mulberries, and plums. These wines are in step with where much of the Australian wine industry now seems to be heading, with a focus on sense of place, freshness, and food-friendly character and nary a critter on the label.
Australian winemaker Mac Forbes will present some of his wines in Vancouver next week, accompanied by burgers.
It is highly recommended to arrive early; the place is known to fill up fast. For those impressed by the wines, which is very likely, Kitsilano Wine Cellar, just a few blocks up the street, carries a wide array of Forbes wines. The following Thursday, May 9, another tiptop wine producer is going to be hitting town. Alex Sokol Blosser, the second-generation winemaker from Oregon’s Sokol Blosser winery, is doing a casual in-store tasting at Marquis Wine Cellars (1034 Davie Street) between 5:30 and 7 p.m. For a mere 10 bucks, attendees will have the opportunity to chat with the guy while tasting through his Evolution sparkling and white wines, a little rosé, and then four different Pinot Noirs, each from different vineyard blocks. Oregon is well-known for some of the best Pinot Noir on the planet, so this deep dive into the variety will be a good chance to see what makes them tick. Visit www. marquis-wines.com/ to score your ticket. Finally, an advance heads up. A few colleagues and I are putting the finishing touches on the sixth edition of our annual Top Drop Vancouver wine events, happening May 23 and 24. We have 40 terroir-driven wineries from Champagne to Chile coming to town for our grand tasting at the Roundhouse in Yaletown, where, as always, proceeds go to the B.C. Hospitality Foundation, our industry’s charity that assists those in financial hardship due to medical issues. New this year, we’ve added a whole bunch of grazing events around the city, from a pizza party at Campagnolo with a quartet of Italian producers to a big natural-wine throwdown at the American to a rosé-andsausage jamboree at Wildebeest. All the info you need is at www.topdrop.ca/. g
22NDAnnual
2019
Authentic Greek Food
Extensive Wine & Bar List 1830 Fir St. Vancouver | 604.736.9559
www.apolloniagreekrestaurant.com C L O S E D M O N D AY S L U N C H • W E D N E S D AY to F R I D AY 11:30A M ͳ 2:30 P M D I N N E R • T U E S D AY to S U N D AY 4:30 ͳ 9:30 P M APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 21
FOOD Dinner series pop up all over the city by Gail Johnson
THE
A
Marcela Ramirez (left; photo by Gail Johnson) hosts a dinner series at Cacao; Fiore pairs wines with updated Italian classics.
22NDAnnual 18
2015
Celebrating
2019
s restaurant menus turn from comfort dishes to spring flavours, a handful of places and people in the local dining scene are upping the ante by offering special dinner series. Here are four that will add a fresh element to your next supper soiree.
50 years!
Naam Restaurant
Golden Plate Awards Best Vegetarian 20 years running Restaurant for Winner Best a 3am meal Kitsilano Winner Best Restaurant Runner-Up Most Vegan Friendly Runner-Up Best Vegetarian
MARCELA’S DINNER (Cacao, 1898 West 1st Avenue)
Ever since Marcela Ramirez moved to Vancouver from Mexico in 2016, she has been the quiet force behind Cacao. While executive chef Jefferson Alvarez has been the face of the progressive Latin American restaurant since it opened that year—having earned the Kitsilano spot numerous accolades with his inventive cuisine that blends f lavours from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and beyond with local ingredients—Ramirez, Cacao’s owner, is a culinary dynamo in her own right. Born in Monterrey and a mother of four, Ramirez was a celebrity chef in Mexico, having hosted a TV cooking show for 15 years and authored two cookbooks. Now she’s hosting a weekly event called Marcela’s Dinner to showcase and share the f lavours she grew up with and is so passionate about. She also hopes to expand Vancouverites’ understanding and appreciation of Mexican food. With a rotating selection of four menus, Ramirez incorporates ingredients and styles from throughout Mexico but focuses on the food of the south. Examples of dishes include: pork chili relleno with red rice; gorditas, thick cornmeal pastries stuffed with black beans and cream; esquites, a street food consisting of white corn, poblano chilies, and queso fresco; jalapeño chili with shrimp; tostadas; tamales; mole; and more, all made by hand using techniques she learned from her mother and grandmother.
OPEN
24
HOUR
S
• Licensed • 7 Days A Week • Cozy Wood Fireplace • Heated Patio • Live Music Sunday - Thursday 7-10pm
2724 W. 4th Ave. / 738-7151 / www.thenaam.com
AFGHAN HORSEMEN RESTAURANT SINCE 1974
AWARD WINNING
AFGHAN CUISINE
SINCE 2008
22 NDAnnual
2019
NOW SERVING
LUNCH
for a Reservation today call 604.873.5923 1833 Anderson St. (2nd Floor) Vancouver
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Open 7 Days A Week | www.afghanhorsemen.com
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MON - WED • 11AM-9PM SUNDAY • 10AM-9PM
The set three-course menu, $50, Rodriguez will pair with his updated runs every Thursday. More info is at takes on Italian classics. With the series running through www.cacaovancouver.com/. to late fall, here’s an idea of what FORM@ diners can expect, with dishes from (The Mackenzie Room, 415 Powell the kickoff Sicilian menu: squid-ink Street) risotto with asparagus, mascarpone, Running on Tuesday and Wednes- and lemon; pan-seared halibut with day evenings throughout the month strangolapreti, spinach, and shallots. of May, Form@ features four-course Sicily is the theme from April 23 family-style dinners that shine a to May 15; Tuscany takes the spotlight on sustainability and local light from July 16 to September 11; ingredients. It’s one more way for and Piedmont is featured from Occhef Sean Reeve (a Chopped Canada tober 15 to November 6. champion) and his team to celebrate The three-course menu, $55, inand collaborate with farmers, for- cludes wine pairings. More informaagers, purveyors, brewers, and wine- tion is at www.fiorerestaurants.com/. makers from throughout B.C. Each meal, whether it’s a seafood HALF A DOZEN DINNER SERIES or vegetarian feast, centres on a dif- (Various venues) ferent protein. “When coming up Named after local restaurant conwith a dish, the raw ingredient draws sultant and podcaster Brad Bodthe creativity, combined with my narchuk’s Half a Dozen Hospitality experience and training, to develop company, the pop-up dinners have a unique goal: to make great food something new,” Reeve says. On May 7 and 8, it’s Form@LAMB, more accessible to those who generwith wine from Bella; May 14 and 15 ally can’t afford it. The dinners, taking place in a is Form@BBQ, featuring wine from Lock and Worth and Nichol Vine- different setting every time, feayards. The sea is the thing on May 21 ture menus by local chefs who have and 22, with Form@OCEAN featur- been guests on the Half A Dozen ing beer from Steel & Oak alongside Hospitality podcast—with full a “tap takeover”; and Form@VEG on proceeds being donated to a local May 28 and 29 offers wine from Van- food-based charity. The next installment is on June 22 at couver Island’s Rathjen Cellars. (The Mackenzie Room has other set-menu Abbotsford’s Field House Farm (6680 Beharrell Road) and will highlight options as well.) More information on Form@— Taves Family Farms while benefiting $98 per person including wine or the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. beer pairings—is at www.themac- Chef Thomas Davidson-Park will create a six-course plant-based meal. kenzieroom.com/. Among the other charities the REGIONAL ITALIAN WINE DINNERS series supports are the Vancouver (Fiore South Granville, 1485 West Farmers Market coupon program, 12th Avenue) the Salvation Army, and the Union Fiore will take diners on a culinary Gospel Mission. journey through various regions of The price is $100, and people can Italy with monthly special menus. expect five to seven courses along with Fiore Restaurants’ sommelier, Mat- beer, wine, cider, and kombucha. Tickthew Landry, who was recently ets are at Eventbrite.com; more infornamed B.C.’s best sommelier, will mation about Half a Dozen Hospitality be selecting wines that chef Carlos is at www.bradbodnarchuk.com/. g
arts
At Verses, Shraya ponders online threats by Alexander Varty
W
Arts
hen the Georgia Straight reaches Vivek Shraya at home in Calgary, it’s the day before the Alberta election—and, understandably, she’s trying hard to stave off any premonitions of the disaster to come. Shraya allows that she’s worried, but also admits to having moments of optimism. “I’m like, ‘Well, but I’m in Alberta, and I’m a trans teacher at a university, and when I was growing up in Edmonton, I couldn’t have possibly imagined anything like that,’ ” the writer, musician, trans activist, and University of Calgary assistant professor explains. “I couldn’t have imagined a teacher looking like me, or teaching what I’m teaching.…So I’m just trying to remember that there are people here who are really deeply committed to continuing to do the work, and continuing to foster the conversations that need to be had—and I hope to be one of those people. So whatever happens tomorrow, there are definitely many Albertans who will continue to fight the good fight.”
TIP SHEET
d THRONE AND GAMES: THE LAST LAUGH (April 26 to June 15 at the Improv Centre) Game of Thrones fans who can’t get enough of the Lannisters, Starks, and Targaryens in the eighth season can get more—and laugh at themselves at the same time—in Vancouver TheatreSports League’s raucous new parody. Loosely based on the HBO hit, the satire improvises a new sendup with more plot twists than the show has, always driven by audience suggestions. The costumes and sets are pretty epic too. d TETZLAFF-TETZLAFF-VOGT TRIO (April 28 at the Vancouver Playhouse) The saying “Good things come in threes” definitely applies to this Grammy-winning all-star ensemble: violinist Christian Tetzlaff, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, and pianist Lars Vogt. In this return engagement at the Vancouver Recital Society, they’ll put their elegant yet fiery spin on the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Robert Schumann. g
I couldn’t have imagined a teacher looking like me or teaching what I’m teaching. – Vivek Shraya
Now, of course, it’s obvious that continuing the good fight will be even more necessary, bigotry having at least temporarily won the day. But confronting hatred is familiar terrain for Shraya, whose new graphic novel, Death Threat, is about exactly that. A collaboration with illustrator Ness Lee and colourists Emmett Phan and Heng Tang, the book stems from a series of threatening letters emailed to Shraya, but it’s also a larger examination of the dangers that lurk online. “One of the things that’s at the core of this project is wrestling with the expectation, in many of our jobs, to be visible and active online,” Shraya says. “That does benefit our jobs— I certainly could not reach the kind of people that I’ve been able to reach with my music, for example, without being online—but simultaneously there’s no protective measures in place for the kind of things that have happened to me. And I’m not unique in this experience, right?
For her new graphic novel, Death Threat, musician, writer, and trans activist Vivek Shraya drew ideas from the threatening letters that she had received via email. Photo by Heather Saitz
There’s all kinds of vile things that happen on the Internet that there are just no safety measures for, and I would love for us to be thinking more about how we can create or reimagine the Internet as somewhere where people don’t just have to turn the other cheek, if you will.” Death Threat doesn’t offer a prescription for what ails the Internet, but should stimulate more discussion of the case. Saturated in the bright primary colours of superhero costumes and advertising—scarlet, blue, and yellow—
the book’s graphic elements are an effective mirror of the online world, where things are often heightened, unreal, or even crude. “I love Ness’s work, but she tends to operate a lot in black-and-white,” Shraya says of her primary collaborator. “And with a book called Death Threat, I just felt that with black-andwhite it would just get dire very quickly.…The vision of the project was always to have something that would use humour as a way to dismantle the power of these letters, and so colour
felt like an equally important device, so it wasn’t just my character in black-and-white, crying in my bedroom.” The next challenge Shraya faces is that of bringing her graphic novel onto the stage— Death Threat will be launched this weekend, at the Verses spoken-word festival. “This is a tricky one,” she admits. “The story itself is not a long one and I don’t want to give the ending away, so I have tight parameters there. But in terms of how to do it live, I’m thinking of reading largely the letters themselves, because those are where the entire project started.” Her Vancouver presentation will also be a chance for her to explore other aspects of her work, including songwriting and memoir. “They’ve generously given me 45 minutes, which is longer than it would take to read that book 17 times,” she says, laughing. “So I’ve been thinking a lot about explorations of letters and violence and masculinity in my other works— and there’ll be some poetry in there as well.” g Verses Festival presents Vivek Shraya at the York Theatre on Sunday (April 28). For a full festival schedule, visit www.versesfestival.ca/.
Pantayo’s gongs meet EDM rhythms
A
by Alexander Varty
ccording to Pantayo’s Kat Estacio, the group’s music is “going to be quite different from what you may be expecting”, and truer words have never been spoken. The Toronto-based collective, made up of five young women of Filipino origin, plays kulintang, a style of music that’s almost unknown in Vancouver—or, indeed, in most of North America. Named for its primary instrument, a horizontal array of tuned kettle gongs not unlike the bonang used in Indonesian gamelan, it’s the music of several Indigenous groups from the southern Philippines; Pantayo’s music is specifically derived from that of the Maguindanaoan and T’boli peoples. As Estacio explains, the members of Pantayo originally came together to explore their shared heritage; as young, diasporic Filipinas, they felt a need to look beyond the American-inf luenced pop culture of the Filipino capital, Manila. “It’s part of uncovering tidbits of what our identity means as, you know, Filipinos who aren’t in the
We’re just providing another perspective on what Filipinas can be. – Kat Estacio
Toronto’s Pantayo draws from traditional kulintang music of the members’ Filipino heritage, but the gamelanlike form continues to evolve. Photo by Yannick Anton
Philippines, and who are settlers in another land,” she says. Kulintang isn’t a virtuosic music, she goes on to explain. In its original context it was a way of bringing villagers together, to strengthen communal bonds and provide a soundtrack for seasonal celebrations, and Pantayo has kept that aspect of the style intact. But before you conclude that
they’re engaged in some kind of ethnomusicological research, check out the sounds that they’re readying for an upcoming album release, some of which can be found on YouTube. Gongs still play a prominent role, setting the music’s pace and structure, but electronic keyboards, synthesized bass, EDM rhythms, and R&B– inflected vocals have also been subtly
integrated into Pantayo’s sound. If its roots are in villages past, its present lies clearly in the global village. “That’s the beautiful thing about culture—that it’s not static, right?” Estacio says. “And it’s ever-evolving, all the time. “The kulintang music that’s being played in the Philippines, it’s also evolved,” she continues. “It gives us permission and ownership of our artistic work to think that we are part of that evolution of culture. And, yeah,
it’s awesome to now see that there are more kulintang players in the diaspora, and also in the Philippines, because of social media and access to the Internet and things like that.” At home in Toronto, Pantayo’s members are particularly involved with getting more young Filipinas into music, in part through collaborations with organizations like Girls Rock Camp. And although Estacio doesn’t want to make a big deal of the fact that Pantayo’s all-female lineup is a deliberate choice—“You never ask an all-male band ‘Why all-male?’ ” she says pointedly—she doesn’t deny that it’s also a political choice. “Filipinas in the diaspora—when people think about them, what’s the immediate stereotype?” she asks, alluding to the service-sector jobs— caregiver, nanny, cleaner—many first-generation Filipinas have to take. “So if women are playing percussion, that’s always a statement. We’re just providing another perspective on what Filipinas can be.” g Vancouver New Music presents Pantayo at the Orpheum Annex on Saturday (April 27).
APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 23
ARTS Art Vancouver extends global reach by Janet Smith
P 8pm Friday, May 10, 2019 Shaughnessy Heights United Church 1550 West 33rd Avenue at Connaught Drive
Vancouver Chamber Choir Jon Washburn, conductor Vancouver Youth Choir Carrie Tennant, conductor Highlighting winners of the 14th Young Composers’ Competition, the Vancouver Chamber Choir and Vancouver Youth Choir also celebrate the wonderful combination of Youth & Music with pieces by Tavener, Rutter, Sandström and Washburn. There will be four newly-commissioned pieces from young professionals. If you love music and believe in young people, this concert will warm your heart!
1.855.985.ARTS (2787) vancouverchamberchoir.com
laying out its 2019 theme of “uniting nations through art”, Western Canada’s largest international contemporary-art fair is getting set to pull in a globe-spanning mix for its fifth annual edition. In addition to showing individual artists from about a dozen countries, Art Vancouver has announced it is now adding two Asian international art fairs under its convention-centre roof this year. Taiwan’s Art Kaohsiung is bringing the event a taste of work from China, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. The fest held in the city known for its street art is in its seventh year. Art Vancouver is also bringing in South Korea’s PLAS Contemporary Art Show, a festival dedicated to the exploding niche market of plastic arts in that country. Coming here straight from Seoul, it will be displaying its array of moulded or modelled pieces—think sculpture, glass art, installations, and mixed media. Four-day Art Vancouver is also known for showcasing a strong contingent of local and Canadian work. But here are a few of the offerings that bring it a marked international flavour this year:
ADELINE BUENAVENTURA Based in Bangkok, by way of the Philippines and France, the artist uses bright colours and bold graphics on pop-arty resin and fibreglass sculptures. MALOK CHOI The Korean-born and -trained, Vancouver-based artist explores the “mystery of the forest” and Stanley Park via mixed media and painting, combining emotionally charged black line drawings of leaves
For its fifth edition, running Thursday to Sunday (April 25 to 28), Art Vancouver is pulling in two Asian fairs under its roof—one from Taiwan, and one from Korea.
and branches with subtly painted col- panel discussions, art classes, live our elements, like butterflies and birds. demos, and guided tours. The event kicks off, as always, with its signature GALERIAKALO A fascinating peek Face of Art runway show, featuring into the art scene of Albania, from artists carrying a piece of their art moody abstract landscapes to strik- down a catwalk. ing portraiture. Amid the other offerings, Art Ignites, a youth-centred art fair GLOBAL ART STREET The paint- that’s part of the broader event, ings of Delhi comic and animation runs Friday (April 26) from 1 to 5 artist Dheeraj Verma feature war- p.m. under the Canada Place sails. riors, Transformers, and mytho- Included as part of its programlogical creatures swooshing through ming is a panel talk at 2 p.m., with vivid fantastical landscapes. five speakers from different creative fields, including emerging artist SHURELEN GALLERY OF FINE Tara Lupovici and video-game artARTS Based in Ulan Bator, the gal- ist Jude Godin. The next day (April lery brings in paintings that capture 27), Elena Nahum Leroy of RusArt the vast steppes of Mongolia, and the Art Supplies leads a class in drawing nomadic peoples who live there. with pastels, inspired by Van Gogh’s Wheat Field With Cypresses, from MOHAMED BEN SOLTANE The 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. comical and the monstrous come Preregister and find a full schedule together in the drawings and paint- at www.artvancouver.net/. g ings of this expressive Tunisian artist. Look closely, and you’ll see refer- Art Vancouver takes place from Thursday ences to the tumult going on in his to Sunday (April 25 to 28) at the Vancouver Convention Centre East. home country. Elsewhere at the art fair, check out
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24 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
APRIL 25 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 25
ARTS
On Dance Day, duo’s Dust delivers a DIY spectacle
I
by Janet Smith
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nternational Dance Day isn’t just about celebrating established companies, but about recognizing the growing wave of independent artists who—against all economic and logistical odds—make work happen here. More and more of Vancouver’s contemporary-dance artists are deciding to go rogue to create shows. Erika Mitsuhashi, who’s getting ready to debut the multimedia new solo Dust with cocreator and the work’s performer Francesca Frewer, calls it taking a “doit-yourself-or-die attitude”. For this innovative emerging duo, here’s what that looks like. Frewer and Mitsuhashi have filled multiple surfaces of their homes with the drying flowers they use as metaphorical materials in Dust, which is all about volatility, decay, and the unbound. The dancers themselves have also been drawing the gridlike design on the walled, paper structure that composes the set. Together, they’ve taken extraordinary steps over many months to bring the multimedia work to fruition. They’ve travelled to Berlin’s PAUL Studios for a residency and come back to Left of Main studio for a stint, and are now preparing for a tech rehearsal at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, before debuting the piece there on Sunday (April 28) and International Dance Day on Monday (April 29), amid the centre’s array of free events. Speaking to the Straight over Facetime video with her collaborator, Frewer says the initial inspiration for Dust was the writing of poet and classicist Anne Carson, particularly her chapbook collection Float. The form-pushing exploration of disorder and myth drove Mitsuhashi and Frewer to investigate what volatility and unpredictability could look like on-stage. “The idea was creating an atmosphere as an audience member where you’re not quite sure what’s going to go on—the feeling of anything could happen,” Frewer explains. “And that offers intense possibility for the performer.” In movement terms, that’s taken the duo deep into improvisation. “The real goal was for Francesca to be completely unbound,” says Mitsuhashi. “It’s been a pretty wild journey, I have to say,” Frewer adds. “Everything is improvised. You’re confronted with yourself and making decisions on the fly. You can’t hide.” In only their second work, Mitsuhashi and Frewer have already found a dance-theatre voice that mixes those improvisational impulses with striking visuals, props, and spoken text. Surprisingly, the pair didn’t meet in a dance studio, but while serving up food and drinks at Gastown’s late, great Chill Winston. Mitsuhashi was studying at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary
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Francesca Frewer dances amid a paper structure in Dust. Photo by Lukas Hyrman
Arts, and Frewer had earlier headed to Europe to train at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. They started working together here in Vancouver, often in mutual friends’ dance pieces. Both are standouts on-stage, Frewer most recently in 605 Collective’s Loop, Lull and Julianne Chapple’s Suffix, Mitsuhashi in dumb instrument Dance’s Public and Private. Their first official cocreation, the subtly absurd, bittersweet duet The Saddest Girl at the Party, debuted at last year’s rEvolver Festival. “For the most part we see eye to eye on pretty much everything, and then in the moments where we diverge, I find we’re able to tell the other person what it should be, what would best serve the idea,” Frewer says. “I feel we each have different strengths. Like, Francesca is a lovely writer,” Mitsuhashi offers. “And Erika is really good at working with visuals,” Frewer says, jumping in. “She has been the mastermind of some pretty elaborate sets.” In the case of Dust, they’ve also collaborated with other artists, some of them based in Berlin, where Frewer once worked and lived. They include electroacoustic composer Adam Asnan and costume designer and textile artist Nellie Gossen, both of whom play here with ideas of change and deterioration. Vancouver’s Daniel O’Shea creates the video projections. All of those elements, coupled with the improvisation, the text, and the dried flowers and paper, should create an atmosphere where things are constantly shifting and anything is possible—kind of like in the dance scene. “A lot of the materials we’re working with are also fragile,” observes Mitsuhashi. “There is something so powerful in doing an action that can’t be reversed,” adds Frewer. g Dust is at the Scotiabank Dance Centre on Sunday and Monday (April 28 and 29) at 6 p.m.
“Smart, feisty, highly enjoyable”
taxes included
—Vulture
THE GREAT LEAP By Lauren Yee
The Great Leap is presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc
26 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
Apr 25— May 19 COMMUNITY PARTNER | 2018–19 SEASON
The cast; photo by Pink Monkey Studios
playing at stanley industrial alliance stage
granville island stage
goldcorp stage at the bmo theatre centre
ARTS Women and water flow through exhibit by Robin Laurence
VISUAL ARTS QAʔ YƏXW—WATER HONOURS US: WOMXN AND WATERWAYS
At the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art until October 2
d THIS SMALL yet powerful group exhibition is titled qaʔ yƏxw, a hən̓ q̓ əmin̓ əm̓ term meaning “water honours us”. Subtitled Womxn and Waterways, the show celebrates the relationship between Indigenous women and that most fundamentally life-giving element, the one that is in and of us all, the one we cannot survive without. And, yes, the one that is under huge environmental threat, along with the creatures that dwell within it. Recently opened at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, the show spotlights works by emerging artists affiliated with different First Nations groups across British Columbia and beyond: Richelle Bear Hat (Blackfoot/Cree), Krystle Coughlin (Selkirk), Lindsay Katsitsakataste Delaronde (Mohawk), Alison Marks (Tlingit), Dionne Paul (Nuxalk/Sechelt), Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena), Marika Echachis Swan (Nuu-cha-nulth), Carrielynn Victor (Sto:lo), and Veronica Waechter (Gitxsan). It is curated by four members of the ReMatriate Collective, which honours the role of Indigenous women as knowledge holders and is, the exhibition brochure states, “dedicated to strengthening future generations through positive self-representation, image sovereignty and agency”. Mostly modest in scale, works range from photography to beadwork and from performance to woodblock printing. Among the most moving pieces here are two tintype-based
In its image-text works at the Bill Reid Gallery, the ReMatriate Collective features young Indigenous women posed powerfully in glorious ocean, river, and lake settings.
portraits of Musqueam activist Audrey Siegl, photographed by Spitzer. The images represent an emotionally charged collaboration between the two women, in recognition of Siegl’s place in the show as “Water Keeper” and in honour of her recently deceased sister Maria. The sorrow-tinged images also commemorate thousands of “stolen” Indigenous women and, reaching outward, stolen Indigenous land, water, and human rights. Coughlin has employed iridescent blue beads, long strands of white thread, and thin lines of copper wire, all worked on shaped canvas, to create ta ts’echo (Big Waves). The abstract patterns joyfully evoke sunlight glinting off water, the round shapes and dangling threads conjure up jellyfish, and the wire alludes to the cultural significance of copper among Northwest Coast cultures. In dialogue with this beautiful work is Coughlin’s tu dzen elin (Cloudy Waters), a grey-hued painting with conspicuously nonsparkling beading and a tangle of oil-dark threads, grimly alluding to the growing environmental dangers of tanker traffic in the Salish Sea.
Take a Walk on the Art Side
Roundhouse Preview Gala & Sale, Thurs, May 9th Exhibition: 10am – 9pm | Reception: 7pm – 9pm (181 Roundhouse Mews | www.roundhouse.ca)
Open Studio Tour & Sale Sat & Sun, May 11th & 12th, Daily 11am - 5pm For more information and an online map visit:
www.artistsinourmidst.com
Instagram: @WestofMainArtWalk #WestofMainArtWalk Facebook: @ArtistsInOurMidst
Reflections, a mask carved and painted by Waechter, Mother, a necklace created by Marks, and A Woman’s Moon, a mixed-media work with an evocatively painted skin drum by Victor, all honour women and water in persuasive ways. At the same time, they remind us that carving and painting, typically thought of as “men’s work” on the Northwest Coast, can be confidently claimed by women too. Also on view here are four waterthemed image-text works by members of the ReMatriate Collective, selected from their online and social-media campaign. They feature young Indigenous women—“role models to look up to and be inspired by”—powerfully posed in glorious natural settings, on ocean, lake, and river. Among those portrayed here is Autumn Peltier, the 14-year-old Anishinaabekwe environmental activist, internationally recognized for her clean-water advocacy. With head bowed, she raises a waterfilled copper vessel toward the sky, her gesture symbolizing not only thanksgiving but also hope for a socially and environmentally just future. Water honours us all. g
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Please recycle this newspaper.
April 25-28, 2019 Vancouver Convention Centre Art Vancouver International Art Fair presents over 100 galleries and artists from around the world. You can look forward to experiencing over 1,200 visual artworks, panel talks and a curated speaker series, art classes, live art demonstrations and more.
Tickets available at: artvancouver.net APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 27
ARTS
Bed & Breakfast finds the charm in home ownership
Program 3 May 9 10 11 Choreography Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar Bedroom Folk
In Bed & Breakfast, Mark Crawford (left) and Paul Dunn play a urbanites who decide to move to an old Victorian house in cottage country. Photo by Moonrider Productions
Serge Bennathan New Work
THEATRE
seasoned professionals and inject the show with gentle charm.
By Mark Crawford. Directed by Ashlie Corcoran. An Arts Club Theatre Company production, in partnership with the Great Canadian Theatre Company. At the Granville Island Stage on Saturday, April 13. Continues until May 4
DEAD PEOPLE’S THINGS
Ohad Naharin Minus 16
BED & BREAKFAST
Queen Elizabeth Theatre Tickets at balletbc.com PLATINUM SEASON SPONSOR
PERFORMANCE SPONSORS
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SUPPORT FOR BALLET BC HAS BEEN GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY
MEDIA SPONSORS DANCER PETER SMIDA. PHOTO MICHAEL SLOBODIAN.
28 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
HOTEL SPONSOR
Following sold out performances in London and Tel Aviv
d BED & BREAKFAST IS a play about that unifying obsession of Canadian urbanites: real estate. Brett (Mark Crawford), an interior designer, and Drew (Paul Dunn), a hotel front-desk clerk, live together in a Toronto condo. They’re aspiring house buyers, but they’ve been outbid seven times. Their detached dreams take a turn for the better when Brett’s aunt dies, leaving him a sprawling Victorian house in cottage country. While at first the couple consider selling to be able to afford a Toronto home, they fall for the local community and open a bed-and-breakfast instead. Early scenes are heavy on exposition and light on conflict, so the play takes a while to warm up. It finds its feet in the second act when our fledgling hoteliers must stickhandle their opening-weekend guests, including horny honeymooners, a prohibitionist, and a bi-curious Englishman. The two actors perform theatrical gymnastics as they play a whole town’s worth of characters, from Dustin, a shy teenager, to an octogenarian neighbour. They use gestures and poses to effectively signal their switching between roles. As you’d expect, some characters, like the hilariously equivocating Dustin, are better realized than others. Aside from the two central roles, most of the other characters are exaggerated stereotypes. Given the show’s lightheartedness, this is less of a problem than you’d imagine. The production’s overwhelming aesthetic is grey. Brett and Drew’s wardrobe is largely monochrome and the entire set, which represents multiple locations, is the colour of fireplace ash. The overall effect was much more airport Marriott than homey bed-and-breakfast. The actors mime almost all of the props, completing the effect of a blank slate. I expected the set to be gussied up to reflect the B&B’s renovation into a “chic and modern country getaway”, but it remained grey. This seemed a puzzling choice. If we were meant to use our imagination to bring the B&B to life, we needed more colour in the script. Right from the start, these selfstyled “gay pioneers” worry about small-mindedness in this small town. From sly digs to outright hatred, Brett and Drew are indeed faced with homophobia. They weather these storms admirably, even if the storytelling sometimes slips into after-school special. With its bare-bones set and zany antics, Bed & Breakfast presents a bit like an upgraded Fringe production. But Crawford and Dunn are
by Darren Barefoot
By Dave Deveau. Directed by Cameron Mackenzie. A ZeeZee Theatre production. At Studio 16 on Friday, April 19. Continues until May 5
d THERE IS A specific kind of emptiness when one feels utterly and irreparably alone in the world. It’s an immersive hollowness, the slow crawl of absence. I’ve caught the edge of that feeling, but I’ve never witnessed it fully and completely evoked on-stage until now. Dave Deveau’s new play, Dead People’s Things, is smart and heartfelt, funny, and devastating. Phyllis (Meaghan Chenosky) is stunned when she’s named the sole heir in her estranged aunt’s will, and she’s definitely not prepared to deal with Beatrice (Eileen Barrett), her aunt’s long-time next-door neighbour and friend. Beatrice is also the executor of the will, and demands that Phyllis deal with her aunt’s stuff before she can claim what’s hers. Together, they set upon the house, which is full of boxes piled floor to ceiling, all labelled with Post-it Notes and vague instructions to “keep” or “donate”. It is total chaos under a veneer of order, just like these two women who are doing their best in the complicated aftermath of suicide. Barrett’s and Chenosky’s performances are exceptional, and they have plenty to dig into in Deveau’s rich, complex characters. Beatrice and Phyllis are broken in drastically different ways, but the root is the same: allconsuming loneliness. Phyllis is still mourning her mother’s death from cancer, and now she’s lost her sole remaining relative, whom she never really knew, while Beatrice must face the fact that she spent decades living next door to the life she truly wanted, unable to articulate her feelings even once while her friend was alive. Dead People’s Things tackles life’s biggest, messiest experiences—grief and survival, fear and depression— and then revels in the quiet moments it carves out for itself in the characters’ personal reckonings. The play grapples with all the ways loss ruins us, the way it haunts, rages, exhausts, and inspires us, leaving ash in our mouths from all the questions we never asked, little fires in our bones, our best intentions left to smoulder out. I only wish Deveau had trusted his own radical talent enough to end the play about 10 minutes earlier, refusing the impulse to pack everything up in a tidy box and put his own Post-it on it, if you will. Dead People’s Things doesn’t need a clean resolution. It is not a mystery to be solved. The power of the play is its ability to stare into the wreckage of sorrow and fight the urge to “fix it” or “make it better”. It shows us how to carry our loneliness, and make space for it, without letting it swallow us whole. by Andrea Warner
Emily Carr show celebrates class of 2019 (This story is sponsored by Emily Carr University of Art + Design.)
E
mily Carr University of Art + Design is a worldrenowned school and Vancouver institution, which has produced some of the city’s most famous and influential artists, like Douglas Coupland and Molly Bobak, who have contributed globally to the cultural sector and economy. So it’s no surprise that the annual graduation exhibition has become one of the most anticipated events of the year. The Show, featuring the work of more than 300 graduating students, gives the school and the public a chance to celebrate and invest in the next generation of talent. “Our alumni go on to win major art awards, found innovative startups, and design solutions to society’s most pressing problems,” says Rob Maguire, the university’s director of marketing and communications. “In many ways, The Show is an exciting opportunity to peek into our future and to meet the people who will lead us there.” This year’s exhibition—taking place for two weeks, from May 4 to May 19—will transform Emily Carr’s campus (520 East 1st Avenue) into the largest gallery in Vancouver. Student works will be displayed on all four levels of the stunning building, giving members of the public a rare glimpse behind the scenes of the $122-million, purpose-built campus, which was completed in 2017. The Show is free to attend is recommended for anyone with an interest in art, design, and media. The exhibition kicks off with a special opening event, taking place from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on May 3. “The opening night of The Show
The Show in 2018 featured many works of art, including Muteness. a silk inkjet print by Photography BFA student Xiaomeng.
always draws a large crowd,” Maguire says. “Thousands of people from across the city come to celebrate with our graduating students and to see what Vancouver’s brightest young creatives are capable of. Thousands of This year, the Friday-night celebrapeople from across tion will also feature four themed lounges along with DJs, food the city come to trucks, a candy bar, and other fun celebrate with our surprises.” graduating students The now famous show has become a highlight of the Vancouver – Rob Maguire arts calendar, but even seasoned attendees can expect to see something different and inspiring. The online catalogue of the work of 2019’s graduating students will be available on May 4. In the meanAlthough the new location is time, those interested can see a sight to behold in itself, visitors the previous years’ catalogue at will be able to view a vast array of theshowcatalogue.ecuad.ca. works from all 11 academic majors
and five degree programs: bachelors of fine arts, media arts, and design and masters of fine arts and design. “Every graduating student can participate in The Show, so there’s a really diverse range of work on exhibit,” Maguire says. “You’ll see painting, photography, and sculpture in our galleries and watch film and animation in our theatres. You can check out innovative projects in augmented reality and wearable tech and learn about student research in health, design, and sustainability.” At The Show, attendees can also see preview screenings of all the films created by the class of 2019, including works of 2-D and 3-D animation and film/video + integrated media. From the students’ perspective,
The Show represents a culmination of many hours of hard work during their time at Emily Carr before they embark on the next chapter of their careers. “Some students have spent a month or two working on their contribution to The Show, while others may have spent an entire semester or more,” Maguire says. “In many ways, though, students have been working toward this exhibition since they first walked through the university’s doors four years ago.” Emily Carr was established in 1925 and is now a world leader in education and research. By encouraging experimentation in art, design, media, and technology, the school offers an interdisciplinary environment in which students’ creativity can thrive. For those interested in pursuing a postsecondary education at the school, The Show presents a wonderful opportunity to be inspired and explore the possibilities available to them. Prospective students can not only look at the work but they can also talk to the students to get a sense of university life. “For anyone thinking about studying at Emily Carr, coming to The Show will give you a taste of what students are creating in our many programs,” Maguire says. “At opening night, you can meet our grads and ask them about their experience. Most of all, though, I hope The Show will spur your imagination and get you thinking about what is possible.” g The Show is free and open to the public from Saturday (May 4) to Sunday (May 19) at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (520 East 1st Avenue). For more information or to RSVP via the event’s Facebook page, visit the website at theshow.ecuad.ca/.
THE SHOW May 4–19, 2019 M–F 10am–8pm S–Su 10am–6pm Opening Friday, May 3, 5–10pm
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APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 29
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BED & BREAKFAST The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Mark Crawfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s comedy about being out and finding home. To May 4, Granville Island Stage. Tix from $29. CHERRY DOCS A Jewish lawyer is assigned to defend a skinhead. To Apr 28, 8-10:15 pm, Pacific Theatre. $20-36.50. DEAD PEOPLEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S THINGS Zee Zee Theatreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s darkly comedic play about a millennial who inherits a house and all of its contents after her estranged hoarder aunt commits suicide. To May 5, Studio 16. From $28. THE BEST BROTHERS The Sidekick Players presents Daniel MacIvorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eccentric modern comedy. To Apr 27, 8-10 pm, Tsawwassen Arts Centre. $18/15. MAL AND CARA Comedy about a Vancouver couple and a radical career change. To Apr 28, PAL Theatre. $10-20. TEATRO INTIMO DEL FLAMENCO Karen Flamenco Dance Company presents live traditional flamenco music, dance, storylines, puppetry, and magic every Sat. at 3 & 5 pm. To Apr 27, The Improv Centre. $12. VANCOUVER ART GALLERY aFRENCH MODERNS: MONET TO MATISSE, 1850â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1950 to May 20 aAFFINITIES: CANADIAN ARTISTS AND FRANCE to May 20 aDISPLACEMENT to Jun 9 aMOWRY BADEN to Jun 9 aMOVING STILL: PERFORMATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY IN INDIA to Sep 2 aVIEWS OF THE COLLECTION: THE STREET to Nov 17 THE POLYGON aA HANDFUL OF DUST to Apr 28 aCHESTER FIELDS 2019 to Apr 21 aSK _WX _WĂ&#x161;7MESH NATION BASKETBALL: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALANA PATERSON to May 12 MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC aIN A DIFFERENT LIGHT: REFLECTING ON NORTHWEST COAST ART to summer 2020 aSHAKEUP: PRESERVING WHAT WE VALUE to Sep 1 MUSEUM OF VANCOUVER aWILD THINGS: THE POWER OF NATURE IN OUR LIVES to Sep 30 aHAIDA NOW: A VISUAL FEAST OF INNOVATION AND TRADITION to Dec 1, 2019 aTHERE IS TRUTH HERE to Dec 31
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BEST OF VANCOUVER Fundraiser for the Small Talk Centre for Language Development features standup comedy by Graham Clark, Patrick Maliha, Charlie Demers, and Simon King. Apr 24, 8 pm, The Comedy MIX. $15. LET'S TRY THIS STANDING New show by writer-performer Gillian Clark. Apr 24-27, 8 pm, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. $15-36. OUT AGAIN AT THE INN A Leaping Thespians original comedy. Apr 24-27, 8-9:30 pm, Havana Theatre. $20 (pay-what-you-can Thu).
7:30-9:30 pm, Unitarian Church of Vancouver. $25/35. GRAHAM CLARK'S QUIZ SHOW Comedy game show with host Graham Clark. Apr 26, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. $10/$12. IELEâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;LAMONDANCE SHOW Dance performance inspired by Romanian folklore. Apr 26-27, 8-10:30 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts. $25.
BLOOMING ART Works by more than 40 local artists and craftspeople. Apr 27, 2-7 pm, Pacific Arts Market. Free. SATURDAY NIGHT IMPROV A night of improv comedy with The Radical. Apr 27, 7:309 pm, Presentation House Theatre. $10-12. THE COMIC STRIP Standup comedy by Jacob Samuel, Ola Dada, and headliner Simon King. Apr 27, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $18.
SATURDAY, APRIL 27
SUNDAY, APRIL 28
MANIFESTATIONS Multidisciplinary art exhibit and artist talks as part of the Capture Festival. Apr 27-28, The Arc. Free. TWOBIGSTEPS COLLECTIVE: LIVESPACE Movement installation uses livestream video to explore the emotional states we experience in relation to technology. Apr 27-28, Scotiabank Dance Centre. Free. THIRD ANNUAL VANCOUVER OPERA FESTIVAL Nine days of voice, music, theatre, and visual arts. Apr 27â&#x20AC;&#x201C;May 5, various Vancouver venues. FAUST Jonathan Darlington conducts the Vancouver Opera Orchestra and Chorus in Gounodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opera. Apr 27â&#x20AC;&#x201C;May 5, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. LA CENERENTOLA Vancouver Opera presents Rossiniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s masterpiece. Apr 27â&#x20AC;&#x201C; May 11, Vancouver Playhouse. ART IN ACTION! Live painting by Amelia Alcock-White. Apr 27, 12-5:30 pm, Petley Jones Gallery. THE BIG SING METRO VANCOUVER The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival's new choral event. Apr 27, 12:30-2:30 pm, Vancouver Art Gallery Plaza. Free. CREATIVE DANCE FOR PARKINSON'S Creative Latin-style dance for people living with Parkinson's. Apr 27, 1-2:15 pm, IMPACT Parkinson's. By donation. CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVALâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; SONY PHOTO WALK WITH JOHN LEHMANN Gastown photo walk with John Lehmann as part of Capture Photography Festival. Apr 27, 2-4 pm, Pendulum Gallery. Free.
INTERNATIONAL DANCE DAY VANCOUVER Performers include Francesca Frewer and Erika Mitsuhashi, Kinesis Dance somatheatro, and Sujit Vaidya and Isabelle Kirouac. Apr 2829, Scotiabank Dance Centre. Free. CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVALâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; CANADA LINE PUBLIC ART PROJECT: GUIDED TOUR Transit tour of Canada Line public art as part of the Capture Photography Festival. Apr 28, 12-2 pm, Waterfront Station. Free, registration required. INTERNATIONAL DANCE DAY RICHMOND Join us for two free International Dance Day celebrations at Aberdeen Centre. Sunday, April 28: Displays and demonstrations from dance schools from 1-5 pm; multicultural dance performance from 2-4 pm. Monday, April 29: Free community dance workshops from 1-2:30 pm. All ages and abilities welcome; no experience necessary. Apr 28, 1-5 pm; Apr 29, 1-2:30 pm, Aberdeen Centre. Free. SON RUINATO: I AM UNDONE Music of the Renaissance with soprano Elspeth McVeigh. Apr 28, 2-3:30 pm, Visual Space Gallery. $25. OPERA ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON Burnaby Lyric Opera presents pieces from various operas. Apr 28, 3 pm, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. $15. BURNABY LYRIC OPERA Music from La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and La Traviata. Apr 28, 3 pm, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. $15. BERGMANN DUO: CELEBRATING BERNSTEIN Celebration of Leonard Bernsteinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 100th birthday. Apr 28, 3 pm, Kay Meek Arts Centre. $48/46. MONA KUHN: ARTIST TALK AND BOOK SIGNING L.A.-based artist discusses her work included in the A Handful of Dust exhibition. Apr 28, 3-5 pm, the Polygon. By donation. COMEDY FOR THE DOGS (FOR THE BLIND) Comedy show benefiting the CNIB guide-dog program. Apr 28, 7 pm, Yuk Yuk's Comedy Club. $20. BABA BRINKMANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RAP GUIDE TO CONSCIOUSNESS Part rap concert, part standup comedy, and part TED Talk. Apr 28, 7:30 pm, Science World at Telus World of Science. $20. NINA CONTI English actress, comedian, and ventriloquist. Apr 28, 8 pm, Rio Theatre. Tix on sale Feb 15, 10 am, $39.50. JOKES N TOKES COMEDY Comedian Andrew Packer hosts a night of weed-oriented standup. Apr 28, 8 pm, Cannabis Culture Headquarters. $10.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 25 THE GREAT LEAP The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Lauren Yee's play, a jump shot across borders. Apr 25â&#x20AC;&#x201C;May 19, Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre. Tix from $29. ART VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR Western Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest international contemporary art fair. Apr 25-28, 6-5 pm, Vancouver conventrion Centre. $15-100. ROBYN HARDING Author discusses her latest book Her Pretty Face. Apr 25, 7-10 pm, Christianne's Lyceum of Literature and Art. $22. SPLENDOR IN SPACE: A DRAG ODYSSEY All-ages drag performance with music and astronomy. Apr 25, 7:30 pm, H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. $15-20. LA STATION CHAMPBAUDET Le Petit ThÊâtre presents a classic French vaudeville play, with English surtitles. Apr 25-27, 7:30 pm, Alliance Française de Vancouver. $20. LITTLE VOLCANO Veda Hille's new solo show blends storytelling and live music. Apr 25-27, 8-10 pm, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. $15-50.
FRIDAY, APRIL 26 IGNITE! Vancouver's largest youth-driven arts festival. Apr 26â&#x20AC;&#x201C;May 4, The Cultch. Youth tickets $2. THRONE AND GAMESâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;THE LAST LAUGH Improvised Game of Thrones parody. Apr 26â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Jun 15, The Improv Centre. From $10.75. VOX SINGING COMPETITION Young singers compete at an event hosted by CBCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sylvia Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ecuyer. Apr 26, 6:30 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. $65. EZRA DUO Viola and piano duo. Apr 26,
KICKSTARTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S 21st ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION (April 26
at the Cultch) Mesmerizing American singer and violinist Gaelynn Lea is coming here to headline a concert that fetes Kickstartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work for arts in the disability community. Her fragile, hauntingly expressive voice has been compared to Karen Daltonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and Joanna Newsomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, and although her string skills started out in the classical sphere, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve journeyed far beyond, into Celtic-folk and ethereal pop via looping pedals and gorgeous layering. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s achieved all this while living with a congenital disability called osteogenesis imperfecta, using her transcendent music as a platform to advocate for social change. Adding to the eveningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inspiration is humorist David Roche, and a visual-arts presentation by painter Mujtaba Saloojee.
TUESDAY, APRIL 30 THE SEA Slamming Door Artist Collective presents Edward Bond's comedy. Apr 30â&#x20AC;&#x201C; May 19, Jericho Arts Centre. $18-29. ELINOR FREY Music on Main presents baroque cellist performing works by Bach and composers Linda Catlin Smith, Lisa Streich, and Ken Ueno. Apr 30, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. Tix $29/10.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1 SCHEHERAZADE Featuring the music of Ravel and George Crumb. May 1, 5 pm, CBC Studio 700. INCITE Cartoonist Seth in conversation with cartoonist Ken Boesem. May 1, 7:30-9 pm, Alice MacKay Room. Free.
THURSDAY, MAY 2 HEATHER McDONALD Host of the comedy podcast Juicy Scoop with Heather McDonald. May 2, York Theatre. $35. TALENT TIME: THE SITCOM EPISODE Comedy/variety/talk show and live sitcom taping. May 2, 8-10:15 pm, Rio Theatre. $12/14. ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight. com/AddEvent. Events that don't make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.
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30 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; MAY 2 / 2019
music
Strand of Oaks searches for purpose
H
by John Lucas
is picture is on the cover, but Timothy Showalter insists that he is not, in fact, the person primarily responsible for the existence of the latest Strand of Oaks album, Eraserland. In fact, there was a point, sometime between the release of his last LP (2017’s Hard Love) and the start of the Eraserland sessions, when Showalter was pretty certain he didn’t want to make another record. Ever. It was a time of soul-searching for the 36-yearold singer-songwriter. He had always defined himself as a musician, but suddenly that didn’t seem like enough to sustain him. He wanted to know who Timothy Showalter really was. It might be somewhat ironic, then, that the very thing that helped Showalter through his existential crisis was music. Just how cathartic did writing and recording Eraserland turn out to be? Well, consider that the album opens with the line “I can’t feel it anymore” (from “Weird Ways”) and closes with “I hope it never ends” (from “Forever Chords”). Showalter gives full credit to his friend Carl Broemel, who happens to be the guitarist for My Morning Jacket, for pulling him out of his slump. “I had no songs,” Showalter says when the Straight reaches him on the road in Birmingham, Alabama. “Carl kind of reached out through the mist and said, ‘Hey, if you ever want to play songs or write some music together…’ And I said, ‘Of course,’ and then he spent the rest of the day contacting the rest of the people on the album and booking the studio time. And when I found out it was a reality, surprisingly, then I was faced with ‘Oh, I need to write songs now.’ And I think that was the true jumping-off point. I wrote songs for them as opposed to me, and I wanted to give them as good of songs as I could create at that moment. I’d never had that approach before, and I think it allowed for the songs to maybe evolve and change from the pattern I’d done in the past.”
Music
TIP SHEET
c CATLOW (April 25 at the Biltmore) Vancouver indiepop veteran Natasha Thirsk celebrates the re-release of her latest EP, 2018’s Main of Nowhere, on white vinyl, with Other People, the Slip-Ons, and the Furniture. White vinyl! c THE 1975 (April 26 at Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre) The 1975 released one of 2018’s best albums, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, walking a fine line between Auto-Tuned millennial pop and vintage Manchester mope rock.
Timothy Showalter collaborated with members of My Morning Jacket to make the latest Strand of Oaks album, Eraserland.
It didn’t hurt that among the people Broemel tapped to help make the album were his My Morning Jacket bandmates: bassist Tom Blankenship, drummer Patrick Hallahan, and keyboardist Bo Koster. The result is perhaps the finest record Showalter has ever released under the Strand of Oaks moniker, with highlights including the fade-into-you ballad “Keys”, the lysergically motorik “Hyperspace Blues”, the heartlandrocking “Ruby”, and the mournfully dreamy hymn that is the title track. Throughout the recording process, Showalter found himself in awe of his collaborators—not just for their chops, but also for their restraint. “As a fan of their music, I was game for them to just be on all cylinders the whole time,” he says. “I want to see Carl Broemel play a solo for 45 minutes, and Patrick do drum fills and whatnot, but what was so amazing about how they interpreted a song was that it was almost what they didn’t play
that made the record so special. They all were so in tune with their own part, but also how it fit in with the song as a whole. It’s just a testament to them as musicians, but more importantly as human beings, because it was so based around love. I think they truly loved the idea of working together, and the four of them are such a special unit.” In the end, Showalter found himself a step closer to answering the questions that had left him immobilized before Broemel and company lit a fire under him. Those questions, he says, included “Why am I here?” and “Why am I doing this?” “Not just musicwise, but why am I doing all of this?” he clarifies. “And why am I who I am? My producer, Kevin Ratterman, made this good point. He said, ‘This record, lyrically, sounds like a breakup letter or a suicide note to your ego.’ I really think that makes sense, and I think that might be what Eraserland means. You have the power to say ‘I’m not going to be
willed into this existence that may have trapped me with patterns or behaviour or inherited anxieties,’ and all of those issues we face constantly. It’s that kind of liberating freedom, like, ‘I can break this cycle—or try to, at least.’ ” What’s most striking about talking to Showalter—aside from how unflinchingly honest he is—is how much he sounds at peace with himself and his place in the world. It’s as if he has come to the conclusion that defining himself as a maker of music isn’t so bad after all. “My biggest fear in life is to not have purpose,” he says. “And I think that’s part of the reason why I really identify so much as being a musician. Because I love playing music and everything, but it gives me a reason to exist. “I always say that my concept of success is just having something to do next, and a reason to do something next,” he adds. “And I felt like before I made Eraserland, I didn’t have that, and I didn’t have the confidence nor
c NICK WATERHOUSE (May 1 at the Biltmore) There’s retro and then there’s retro. Nick Waterhouse’s canny blend of ’50s rock ’n’ roll and ’60s soul ought to console anyone who missed the JD McPherson show a few weeks back. c EPIK HIGH (May 2 and 3 at the Vogue) Seoul-based hip-hop trio Epik High comes to town bearing dope beats and enough English-language rhymes to spread its good vibes beyond Vancouver’s South Korean expat community.
the reason to do that. And that’s why I’m so thankful, especially to Carl for giving me purpose again. And now I can be on the road and get to connect with people every night and talk to the really good people who come out to my shows. And that just reinvigorates the whole sense of purpose even more.” g Strand of Oaks plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Saturday (April 27).
Wormwitch looks beyond local scene
P
by Mike Usinger
recise execution is important to Vancouver’s Wormwitch, the quality control as high on the band’s new full-length, Heaven That Dwells Within, as on its recent blood, fire, and battle-ritual video for “Disciple of the Serpent Star”. “We’re big professionalists,” says guitarist Colby Hink, reached on his cellphone in a tour van making its way across New Mexico. “We like to be DIY to a degree, but at the same time we really focus on every aspect of the band, from the visuals to anything music-related. We’re not interested in slacking off in any way.” That’s more than evident on Heaven That Dwells Within, a punishing and more than worthy follow-up to the trio’s impressive 2017 debut, Strike Mortal Soil. From the hard-charging opener that is “Disciple of the Serpent Star” to the black-midnight-mass closer, “Alone Before the Doors of the Silent House”, the band’s sophomore outing is heavy on razor-sharp sheets of guitar, hard-gallop drums, and vocals that fall somewhere between an enraged death growl and the beginning stages of seventh-circle possession. Both releases have established Wormwitch as a band to watch on the international metal front, which is to say Hink, singer-bassist Robin Harris, and drummer Izzy Langlais have set their sights higher than conquering the dive bars of the Lower Mainland. Tellingly, the band didn’t take long
Heaven That Dwells Within, the sophomore album from Vancouver’s Wormwitch, positions the hard-working band as one to watch on the international metal scene.
to land on the radar of tastemakers outside of the 604 area code. Wormwitch was still primarily focused on writing and making demos when an early single, “Coffin Birth”, caught the attention of Los Angeles–based metal label Prosthetic Records, home to globe-spanning acts ranging from Lamb of God to Dragged Into Sunlight. The company’s A&R head, Steve Joh, reached out. “We weren’t looking for a label at all, but I guess they heard the single,” Hink says. “It was funny. Steve, who is a really good guy, emailed us out of the blue, but didn’t say in the first 10 emails that he wanted to work with us. He just asked us about the future, and what our plans were.”
The importance of that initial email and the subsequent correspondence becomes huge when you consider the decidedly casual beginnings of Wormwitch. Hink and Harris knew each other from the underground punkmetal scene in Metro Vancouver and formed a hardcore unit called Dead Hand. “It was kind of a crusty, indie-style hardcore band,” he notes. As anyone who ever spent a night at the pregentrification Cobalt or wendythirteen-era Funky Winker Beans will testify, most bands that fall under the “crusty” banner seem to spend a couple of years drawing little more than flies at shows, maybe self-releasing a CD that cuts every
corner imaginable, and then slinking off to die with no one caring— including relatives and close friends. When Dead Hand morphed into Wormwitch, Harris and Hink initially focused on putting a punkish edge on black metal—which admittedly doesn’t sound like a battle plan for going double platinum or selling out Rogers Arena on a Monday. Still, it quickly became evident that they were onto something, and the interest from Prosthetic—which promptly asked them to write a full-length album— proved a major motivator. “We were just a local Vancouver band that wanted to play, write some songs, and play some shows,” Hink says. “We didn’t have big aspirations for things like touring or bringing out records. They made us think that maybe we could do this and take things seriously. That was a really pivotal point.” Touring North America for Strike Mortal Soil—including opening for underground heavyweights Black Dahlia Murder—helped Wormwitch figure out where it wanted to go for Heaven That Dwells Within. The brute power displayed on the band’s debut is still well-represented on tracks like “Spirit Braid”. But there’s also no shortage of brilliant flourishes, from the Gregorian death chants in “Benighted Blade” to the awe-inspiringly symphonic guitar magic in “Midnight Sun”. “We didn’t really know what we wanted to sound like when we wrote
Strike Mortal Soil,” Hink admits. “We’re metal fans and we have a lot of different influences, so we just sort of threw them all together and put out a record. But after doing that, and then touring with a lot of other bands, we kind of realized what kind of specific stuff we really enjoyed playing the most, and what kind of things that we wanted this band to revolve around. We actually went in the same direction to begin with and then scrapped half the record—the songs were more rock. We’re big fans of melodic, oldschool death metal and black metal, and that felt like something that we really wanted to do.” Like any band interested in moving art forward, Wormwitch puts its own spin on things on Heaven That Dwells Within, which is to say you won’t find songs suggesting that now’s as good a time as any to pledge allegiance to Satan and then burn down the nearest Scandinavian church. On Strike Mortal Soil, Harris, the band’s lyricist, delved into themes that seemed rooted at times in the personal: religion, mortality, and society’s attitude toward both. This time out, he comes on like a major student of fantasy-world giants like J.R.R. Tolkien. Consider, for example, “A titan’s grip upon her cruel blade ‘Urfang’/Blood runs hot across the frozen waste” from “Iron Woman”. Or “Doomed to roam this wretched sphere/The Midnight
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APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 31
The Georgia Straight Confessions, an outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives—or for the voyeurs among us who want to read what other people have disclosed.
Scan to confess Forgiveness in waves My husband cheated on me. I forgave him after months of emasculating punishment. But I have a hard time now and then believing that he is changed. It wasn’t a storybook romance kind of affair. He didn’t accidentally fall for his coworker. He didn’t get too drunk one night and clumsily smooch a friend. He deliberately joined dating sites and cruised multiple women for months, maybe years. How can I trust that he won’t do it again? He was so good at lying!
Breathe deep I finally got rid of Tinder today and just had it up to here with one disappointment after another. One of the worst apps for dating. I can breathe now.
Milkshakes... I gotta admit... when you order a milkshake in a restaurant, and when they bring it... they also bring the metal thing... you know what I mean... Isn’t that just the best?!
IS it normal to bump into people? Some days, as I walk in a straight line on the sidewalk, some people veer into my direction. Sometimes I just play chicken and sometimes I bump into them and continue to walk. 99% of the time, I move out of the way for a ton of people... but sometimes, it’s just insane... it is as if people are trying to make you move... I don’t mind bumping into these people. Does this happen to you?
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MUSIC
Wintersleep balances light and dark d BEAUTIFULLY DRAMATIC and upbeat as most of Wintersleep’s justreleased In the Land Of is from a sonic perspective, the Halifax indierock vets aren’t afraid to deal with some heavy topics. Looking at things from a widescreen approach, the idea of feeling out of place in a rapidly changing, white-noise-filled world is a recurring theme—see the lush electro-alternative number “Waves”, in which frontman Paul Murphy sings “Maybe I’ll move to the countryside/ That little French town I’ve had in my mind’s eye.” Chalk up that feeling of displacement, and the longing that goes with it, partly to the singerguitarist’s recent move back to the East Coast after a decade or so in the DIY mecca of Montreal. Wintersleep also deals in specifics on In the Land Of, most noticeably on “Beneficiary” and “Never Let You Go”, the former dealing with Canada’s treatment of its First Nations communities and the latter ruminating on the way our oceans have become polluted by tons upon tons of floating plastic garbage. What’s striking about both numbers is that they are anything but dour and dirgelike, with “Beneficiary” a bright-eyed exercise in anthemic folkrock and “Never Let You Go” working a joyous acoustic-pop groove. That Wintersleep seems more interested in uplifting fans while hopefully giving them something to think about isn’t an accident. “It’s funny—I just had to write out
In 2016, Halifax’s Wintersleep scored a number-one hit with the single “Amerika”.
the lyrics for ‘Never Let You Go’ for our website because it’s being released as a single,” Murphy says from his Halifax home. “I was thinking ‘Man, that’s a pretty dark song.’ But there’s also a hopeful feeling. I think both those songs are about the way that you treat the world, and also about reflecting on how we can do things better.” If Wintersleep was aware of anything during the making of In the Land Of, it was that people were watching the band and waiting for a new record. The group started out nearly two decades ago, playing sometimes-meditative indie rock at a time when the White Stripes, Strokes, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs were spearheading a North American rawk revival. Over the years, Murphy and his bandmates—who today include drummer
Loel Campbell, guitarist Tim D’Eon, keyboardist Jon Samuel, and bassist Chris Bell—have ridden out countless pop-music palace revolutions while building a devoted base of fans. What made In the Land Of important was that the goalposts shifted somewhat for Wintersleep after the release of 2016’s The Great Detachment. That album spawned a number-one hit with “Amerika”, a whip-smart gangchant rocker that suggested the U.S.A. was in for an ugly ride thanks to the rise of a certain Donald J. Trump. “Over the past couple of years it’s felt like people who maybe haven’t heard of us before are coming to the shows,” Murphy acknowledges. “There are definitely people that know that record the most, which is funny because, for us, we’d think it would be Welcome to the Night Sky, which we relased in 2007 and has been a real cornerstone of our band.” Murphy and his bandmates’ primary aim was making sure they liked what they came up with for In the Land Of. “Mostly we want to put together something that’s interesting both musically and lyrically,” he says. “If something happens after that, that’s great. But really it’s more about the process. Luckily, most people look at our band through a wider lens rather than the few songs that we end up submitting as singles.” g by Mike Usinger
Wintersleep plays the Ballroom on Friday (April 26).
Commodore
from previous page
Stream would make a fitting grave” from “Dancing in the Ashes”. Given Harris’s flair for the evocative as a lyricist, there was plenty to work with when the band got together with director Christopher Lennox-Aasen to collaborate on the video for “Disciple of the Serpent Star”. Footage of Wormwitch playing in a riverside clearing is intercut with scenes of three warriors meeting in daylight, and then engaging in a blood-soaked fireside ritual after darkness descends. Done wrong, it all could have ended up looking like an old SCTV skit. Like most everything Wormwitch does, though, it’s pro from start to finish, which is to say authentic-looking enough to suggest the band does indeed have zero interest in half-assing things. You’ve been warned. Now be afraid. g
to post a Confession
Wormwitch plays the SBC on Friday (April 26).
MAY
A BAND CALLED DEATH
WITH GUESTS WAR BABY
21+22 SCREENING MAY 21 & LIVE SHOW MAY 22 MAY
2
WYRDING WAY
ALBUM RELEASE
MAY
3 PERTURBATOR
MAY
MOLOTOV
4 CARAVAN 8
MAY
10 FILTHY FRIENDS
MAY
EAST VAN
11 SHOWCASE:
MAY
15 SUPERSUCKERS
MAY
16 COMBICHRIST
MAY
WITH GUESTS LUCID AFTERLIFE, HEOFON, WOLFBROOD, MOMY FORTUNA
JULY
7
18 THE LEMONHEADS
WITH GUEST TOMMY STINSON
WITH GUESTS BELPHEGOR & CO-HEADLINING INCANTATION, HATE, VALE OF PNATH, 20 DARK FUNERAL NIGHTMARER *AT THE MAY (ALBUM RELEASE) WITH GUESTS WISE MIKE EDEL GLASS FOREST, THE WILD ROMANTICS H A LL* 23
MAY
WITH GUEST GOST FEAT. APRIL O’PEEL, NEIL E. DEE, VIXEN VON FLEX, YUKI UEDA, SAMBA FUSION & MORE WITH GUESTS EYELIDS UNDERGROUND (SHORT FILMS FROM LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORS) 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ALBUM “THE EVIL POWERS OF ROCK ’N’ ROLL” WITH GUESTS SPEEDEALER WITH GUESTS SILVER SNAKES & MORE
17 DESTROY WRESTLING
MAY
WITH GUESTS WAINGRO
MAY MODIFIED GHOST FESTIVAL IV (NIGHT 1)
24
MUNICIPAL WASTE WITH THE SPITS, NIGHT BIRDS, SORE POINTS, STORC, CHAIN WHIP
MAY MODIFIED GHOST FESTIVAL IV (NIGHT 2)
25
CONVERGE WITH XIBALBA, KEN MODE, CULT LEADER, THE ATLAS MOTH, NECK OF THE WOODS, NUMENOREAN
MAY MODIFIED GHOST FESTIVAL IV (NIGHT 3)
26
HIGH ON FIRE WITH TOXIC HOLOCAUST, DOOMRIDERS, DOPETHRONE, BLACK WIZARD, SPIRIT ADRIFT, HASHTEROID
MAY MODIFIED GHOST FESTIVAL IV (NIGHT 4)
27
MAY
VOIVOD WITH EXCITER, EXMORTUS, NYLITHIA
31 PIG DESTROYER
WITH BAPTISTS, WAKE, WAINGRO
THE ARISTOCRATS
(GUTHRIE GOVAN, BRYAN BELLER, MARCO MINNEMANN) WITH GUESTS TRAVIS LARSON BAND
32 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 25 – MAY 2 / 2019
MUSIC LISTINGS CONCERTS JUST ANNOUNCED
FRIDAY, APRIL 26
DANIEL WESLEY Local reggae-pop singersongwriter. Jun 22, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Apr 26, 10 am, $25. LUCINDA WILLIAMS Grammy-winning Americana singer-songwriter performs with her band Buick 6. Jun 24, 8:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Apr 26, 10 am, $59.50. KELLY FINNIGAN & THE ATONEMENTS Frontman for the Monophonics leads his eight-piece soul band. Jul 13, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $17. THE RACONTEURS American rockers featuring Jack White of White Stripes fame. Jul 19-20, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. July 19 SOLD OUT, tix for July 20 on sale Apr 26, 10 am, $89.50/85/70/55. WAAX Rock band from Australia. Jul 20, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. $15. MOTHER MOTHER Local indie-rock band plays two nights, with guests Tokyo Police Club, the Zolas, and Sam Lynch. Sep 21-22, 5:40 pm, Malkin Bowl. Tix on sale Apr 26, 10 am, $49.50/four-packs $180. POLO & PAN Electro duo from France. Sep 26, Vogue Theatre. Tix on sale Apr 26, 10 am, $29.50. MATT CORBY Australian indie-rock singersongwriter. Sep 29, 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Apr 26, 10 am, $47.50. JINJER AND THE BROWNING Metal bands from Ukraine and Kansas. Oct 31, 6:30 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $18-145. JULIA MICHAELS Dance-pop singer-songwriter from Davenport, Iowa. Nov 16, Vogue Theatre. Tix on sale Apr 26, 10 am, $25.
CAMARO 67 Local band plays a dance party with Missy D and guest Ndidi Cascade. Apr 26, WISE Hall. $15. TURNOVER Rock band from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Apr 26, 6 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $26. PARK SOUND PRESENTS Monthly showcase features performances by Kaylan Mackinnon, Holly Rees, and Derek Wayne Martin. Apr 26, 7 pm, Park Sound Studio. $8-10. THE 1975 Indie-rock band from Manchester, England, with guests Pale Waves. Apr 26, 7 pm, Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre. $69.50/59.50/45. THEDA PHOENIX AT ST. PAUL'S LABYRINTH Live eco-folk songs as accompaniment to meditation. Apr 26, 7-9 pm, The Labyrinth at St. Paul’s Church. Free. RÜFÜS DU SOL Electronic-music trio from Australia. Apr 26, 8 pm, PNE Forum. $45. APRIL IN PARIS Performances by Gypsy-jazz bands the Bills (Apr 26), the Hot Club of Mars & the Lawless Firm (Apr 27), and Van Django (Apr 28). Apr 26-28, 8 pm, St. James Hall. $28-33. TODDCAST PODCAST PRESENTS Best Night Ever album-release party, with guests the Fallaways and Bobby's Cane. Apr 26, 9 pm, Railway Stage and Beer Café. $8/10. FRIDAY JAZZ The Steve Lloyd Smith Quartet performs classic jazz. Apr 26, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $12. WINTERSLEEP Indie-rock band from Halifax. Apr 26, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $30/ four-packs $100. BOOMDADDY Local reggae/funk band. Apr 26, 10 pm, Backstage Lounge.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24
SATURDAY, APRIL 27
VANCOUVER WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL Festival highlights include Mokoomba from Zimbabwe and a tribute to Paul Simon's Graceland. Apr 24-27, Imperial Vancouver. $15-50. KERO KERO BONITO Indie band from London, England. Apr 24, 7 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $19.
WILDWOOD FIRE Acoustic trio mixes bluegrass standards and original roots tunes. Apr 27, Gallery Bistro. $35 (includes dinner). ANOUSHKA SHANKAR Sitar player and composer. Apr 27, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. ARIANA GRANDE American pop superstar. Apr 27, Rogers Arena. MAYIBUYE IAFRIKA Freedom Dance for 25 years of South African democracy. Apr 27, 7 pm, Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture. $45/30. MOTOWN MELTDOWN Twelve-piece band performs the music of Motown. Apr 27, 7 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $32.75. MOKOOMBA Traditional Tonga, Luvale, and Nyanja sounds laced with Congolese soukous and soul. Apr 27, 8 pm, Imperial Vancouver. $25/30. STRAND OF OAKS Rock project by songwriter and producer Timothy Showalter, with guests Wild Pink. Apr 27, 8 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $20.
THURSDAY, APRIL 25 KING PRINCESS Pop singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, with guest Banoffee. Apr 25, Vogue Theatre. CAITLIN CANNING Alt-pop singer-songwriter from Abbotsford, with guests Counterfold, Eric Gray, and Rocky. Apr 25, 8 pm, Railway Stage and Beer Café. $10/13. MATT ANDERSEN & THE MELLOTONES Canadian blues singer-songwriter and guitarist, with guests Wild River. Apr 25, 8 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. $46.50. THE DAVID WEISS QUARTET Jazz group from New York City. Apr 25-26, 8 pm, Frankie’s Jazz Club. $32.50.
Employment EMPLOYMENT Careers
FULL-TIME FOOD SERVICE SUPERVISOR Responsibilities:
($17-$18P/H)
■ Supervise, establish, & schedule staff
calendar ■ Estimate & order ingredients/supplies ■ Train staff in job duties & other procedures ■ Ensure food & service meet quality control standards
Interested email resume:
bc001@pokeworks.com
KC3 Holdings Inc. o/a Arbutus Furniture & Closets
Is hiring Office Administrative Assistant. Permanent, full time (35 h/week) Wage - $22.00/hour. Previous clerical experience 1-2 years, good English. Education: High school Main duties: Conduct telephone conversations and email correspondences; Assist with generating/reviewing reports, invoices etc.; Maintain electronic and hard copy filing system, co-ordinate the flow of information; Take responsibility for sorting, filing and storing data; Provide administrative and clerical support; Improve and establish office’s day to day procedures; Order office supplies and maintain inventory.Company’s business address and job location: 195 W 7th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5Y 1L8 Please apply by e-mail: hr.arbutus.furniture@gmail.com
Mind EMPLOYMENT Body & Soul Support Groups ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION Looking to start a parent support group in Kitsilano. Please call Barbara 604 737 8337
Battered Women's Support Services provides free daytime & evening support groups (Drop-ins & 10 week groups) for women abused by their intimate partner. Groups provide emotional support, legal information & advocacy, safety planning, and referrals. For more information please call: 604-687-1867
Certified Massage
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EMPLOYMENT Callboard
PAT CHESSELL BAND Celtic-fuelled sounds with influences of roots, folk, and country. Apr 27, 8-10:30 pm, Surrey Arts Centre. $24. WEST COAST CHICAGO Chicago tribute band. Apr 27, 8-11 pm, Hastings Racecourse. No cover. FIESTA AFRICANA DJ Marc Fournier's tropical dance-music party. Apr 27, 10 pm, The Backstage Lounge. $10.
SUNDAY, APRIL 28 JAZZ VESPERS Featuring Vancouver the Henry Young Quartet. Apr 28, 4-5 pm, First Baptist Church. By donation.
DIAMOND FOREVER—A CELEBRATION OF NEIL DIAMOND Jason Scott's tribute to Neil Diamond. Apr 28, 7-9 pm, Two Lions Public House. $20/25. GLENEAGLE Rock 'n' roll band plays a homecoming show, with guests Yvette, Molly Aspinall, and Bryan Michael. Apr 28, 7:30 pm, Railway Stage and Beer Café. $10/13. ORA COGAN Victoria musician blends elements of shoegaze, folk, dark-wave, and experimental. Apr 28, 10 pm, The Lido. Free.
TAKE NOTICE THAT ELSIE CHOW (THE “DECEASED”), BORN IN 1919, ORIGINALLY OF TORONTO, DIED IN VANCOUVER ON MARCH 27, 2019 LEAVING SIX SURVIVING GRAND CHILDREN. IF YOU ARE A GRANDCHILD OF THE DECEASED, PLEASE CONTACT THE LAW FIRM OF MACKENZIE FUJISAWA LLP (ATTENTION: PATRICK M. HOLMES), SOLICITORS FOR THE ESTATE AT 604-689-3281
WEEN TRIBUTE NIGHT Three local acts perform the music of Ween. May 3, 8 pm, Pat's Pub & Brewhouse. $10. DIANE LINES' JUMP! Pianist-vocalist Lines and her band perform jump blues. May 3, 8-10 pm, Bez Arts Hub. $34. HORNBY BLUES Performances by Cécile Doo-Kingué, Tim Williams, Paul Pigat, and Michael Jerome-Browne. May 3, 8-10:30 pm, St. James Hall. $28/24.
MUSIC LISTINGSare a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don't make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.
TUESDAY, APRIL 30 CHRIS WEBBY Rapper from Norwalk, Connecticut. Apr 30, Imperial Vancouver. HUNTER & FRIENDS An all-ages night of music and comedy hosted by Char Hunter and Richard Lett. Apr 30, 7-10 pm, Cottage Bistro. No cover. MORMOR Psych-pop singer-songwriter from Toronto. Apr 30, 9 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $23. Special Guest:
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1
LA Santos
NICK WATERHOUSE Southern California rocker, with guest Ben Pirani. May 1, Biltmore Cabaret. QUARTETO NUEVO Western classics, eastern European folk, Latin, and jazz. May 1-3, 7:30 pm, Kay Meek Arts Centre. $38. PHIL DWYER TRIO Local jazz saxophonist performs with bassist Conrad Good and drummer Joe Poole. May 1, 8 pm, Frankie’s Jazz
EMPLOYMENT Music
Guest Performers: Ysabelle Santa Ana Russel Figueroa
Vip $100 | Dress Circle $75 | Orchestra $55 | Balcony $45 ***Additional service charges on orders online***
Tickets are available at eventbrite.ca for Tickets and Sponsorship call: Joyce: 778-996-0810 | Janice: 778-772-5847 | Stella: 778-865-5982
JAPANESE $60
EMPLOYMENT Personals
4095 Oak St. Vancouver 604-266-6800
Repairs
Tantra
Basone Guitars – Vancouver's BEST Guitar Shop! GREAT DEALS on Guitars, Amps, Pedals, Ukuleles, Plus professional REPAIR SERVICES and Custom Electrics. Stop by today! 1 blk East of Main St. 318 E 5th Ave 604-677-0311 basoneguitars.com
Exquisite Tantra Massage Mature Beauty~Sensual Mastery Shakra. 604-783-3483 Kitsilano www.shakra.ca
Personal EMPLOYMENT Services
Bodywork
Women Seeking Men
DEEP RELAXATION Tues, Wed & Thurs
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for a Respectable, Reliable and Honest Canadian Gentlemen for friendship and possible marriage. Serious callers only please.
UBC Nutrition Study
NOTICE
DIZZY Indie-pop band from Oshawa, Ontario. May 3, Biltmore Cabaret. $14.99.
SPRING FEVER 2019 Fundraising evening of pop, rock, blues, and comedy. Apr 29, 8 pm, The Improv Centre. $30/40/180. THE ORIGINAL JAM SESSION FOR PAUL LEAHY 2019 A No Fun concert of, about, and for Paul Leahy. Apr 29, 8:30 pm, Heritage Grill Backroom Theatre. Free. THE PALMS Pop trio from L.A. Apr 29, 9 pm, Fox Cabaret. $15.
Dating Services
Notices
RIVAL SONS Bluesy modern rockers. May 4, Vogue Theatre. TELEKINESIS Indie-rock/power-pop singer-songwriter, with guests Sontalk. May 4, Biltmore Cabaret. IONNALEE Solo project of audiovisual project iamamiwhoami’s creator and front person Jonna Lee, with guests Allie X. May 4, 7 pm, Venue. $29/35. HENRY JAMISON Alt-folk singer-songwriter from Vermont performs tunes from latest album Gloria Duplex. May 4, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. $15. BIG JOHN BATES: NOIRCHESTRA Local filmnoir inspired Americana band, with guests Shiloh Lindsey and the Van Rays. May 4, 8 pm, Railway Stage and Beer Café. $12. PACIFIQUE EN CHANSON Francophone showcase features Autoheart, Brigitte Desjardins, Françoise Thibault, and the Stranger Brew Band. May 4, 8-10 pm, Waterfront Theatre. $15.
EPIK HIGH Alternative hip-hop group from Seoul, South Korea play two shows. May 2-3, Vogue Theatre. ALEC BENJAMIN American singer-songwriter performs original tunes. May 2, 8 pm, St. James Hall. $20. LADY LAMB Indie-rock singer-songwriter from the States. May 2, 8:30 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. Tix $16.
THE BOOM BOOMS Indie-soul band from Vancouver. May 3, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $24.50.
MONDAY, APRIL 29
Pls. call Monica 604-365-0416
Annoucements EMPLOYMENT
SATURDAY, MAY 4
THURSDAY, MAY 2
FRIDAY, MAY 3
CORY WEEDS QUARTET Vancouver jazz quartet led by saxophonist Weeds. Apr 28, 4-5 pm, Northwood United Church. By donation.
Volunteers seeking healthy men and women aged 50-75y to participate in yoghurt study (4 clinic visits, 30min each). Yoghurts provided free of cost and gift cards as remuneration. Call 604-822-1250 or email yoghurt.study@ubc.ca for more information.
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Err on the side of protecting children by Dan Savage
b MY BEST FRIEND’S father is an avid user of social media. He’s retired and spends most of his day posting memes on Facebook and Instagram. Recently, I realized he might not know how Instagram works. I noticed over the past week or so that he has been following, liking, and commenting on a lot of Instagram pictures of young gay men. I don’t think he realizes that anyone who follows him can see that activity. At first I was worried, not because he might be gay or bisexual, but because he may still be “in the closet”. He’s married with a son (my friend), and to my knowledge, if he is bisexual or gay nobody knows. I thought about warning him that his activity is public, but then I saw more. Not only has he been liking pictures of younger-looking men, he’s also been liking and following accounts of very young boy models. Underage boys. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but the evidence is there. So now I’ve gone from wanting to warn this guy that he may be accidentally outing himself by not knowing how apps work to feeling morally obligated to tell my friend that his dad is into dudes and might be a pedophile. I can only imagine the ramifications this news would have on him and his family. - Best Friend’s Dad “I’m sympathetic
to BFD’s concerns,” said Michael Seto, director of forensic rehabilitation research at the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group and an expert on pedophilia and sexual offending. “I know many people wonder what to do if they suspect someone is sexually attracted to children. And I understand how much of a burden it can feel like to keep a big secret, especially from a best friend.”
But before we discuss your options and responsibilities here, BFD, let’s get our terms straight: if by “young boy models” you mean teenage boys past puberty but under the age of consent, then your friend’s father’s behaviour is icky and inappropriate—but it is not, by itself, evidence that he’s a pedophile. “Clinically, pedophilia refers to attraction to prepubescent children,” Seto said, “though I know it’s still commonly used in public to refer to attraction to anyone underage.” Actually, the term pedophile gets tossed around so indiscriminately these days that some of my own readers have used it to describe (or condemn) people in their 40s or 50s who are attracted to (or fucking) grown men and women in their 20s and 30s. For the record: an attraction to younger/youngish adults does not make someone a pedophile. If that were the case, almost everyone on Earth could be described (and condemned) as a pedophile. Seto estimates that just one percent of men are, in fact, attracted to prepubescent children. So depending on your point of view—depending on whether you’re a glass-99-percent-empty or one-percent-full kind of guy—pedophilia is either exceedingly rare or alarmingly common. “Attraction to underage teens— boys or girls—is more common,” said Seto, “though it’s hard to estimate how common because it’s a taboo subject. We get hints from the popularity of certain porn genres like ‘schoolgirl’, ‘twink’, ‘barely legal’, and so on. We also have a hint from how so many fashion models begin working in their teens.” But Seto emphasizes that sexual
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attraction does not equal sexual behaviour. “The Instagram follows and likes may indeed suggest an attraction to underage boys,” Seto said. “And it may even be pedophilia if the models are that young. But that doesn’t mean his friend’s father is going to do anything beyond following or liking.” Understanding what separates pedophiles who’ve offended against children (read: pedophiles who’ve sexually abused children) from pedophiles who’ve never inappropriately touched a child is an important focus of Seto’s research, BFD, and his insights could inform your course of action. “One thing we know is that people who are low in self-control are more likely to act on sexual as well as nonsexual impulses,” Seto said. “That low self-control shows up in other ways, including addictions, problems holding down a job, problems in adult relationships, unreliability, and criminal behaviour. My hypothesis is that someone who doesn’t show these signs is unlikely to offend against a child. They might look at child pornography, though, which is illegal and problematic, or they might look at legal images of children—like on social media—as a sexual outlet.” Viewing child pornography is hugely problematic because it creates demand for more child pornography, which leads to more children being abused. But even if no new child porn were ever created, sharing images of the rape of a child is itself a violation of that child. And while it may not be pleasant to contemplate what might be going through a pedophile’s mind when they look at innocent images of children, it’s not against the law for someone with a
sexual interest in children to dink around on Instagram. “Returning to BFD’s question about whether to disclose, I don’t think it’s an easy yes-or-no answer,” Seto said. “It depends on what else BFD knows about the father. I’m required by law and professional ethics to report [someone] if I believe an identifiable child is at imminent risk. This mandatory-reporting requirement is not triggered simply by knowing whether someone is sexually attracted to children. Instead, I have to consider information like whether the person has ever expressed fantasies or urges about a specific child, whether they work with children regularly, whether they live with children who are in their attraction category, or whether they have ever engaged in suspicious behaviour like direct messaging with a child.” Does your friend’s dad work with underage boys? Does he sometimes look after underage boys—say, grandsons? Do they have sleepovers with friends at Grandpa’s house? Has he ever behaved in an inappropriate manner around underage boys—e.g., inventing reasons to be alone with them, offering them booze or drugs, or making suggestive comments offline or online? “In the absence of these kinds of red flags, what we have here is someone who might be sexually attracted to underage boys but who might not pose a serious risk to children,” Seto explained. “So while not disclosing might mean some risk of a child being harmed, disclosing could defi nitely cause harm to the best friend, to the father, and to their relationship.” You’re in an agonizing position, BFD. You essentially have to weigh
the chance—most likely very remote—that your friend’s dad would harm a child against the near certainty that telling your friend about his father’s behaviour would do irrevocable harm to their relationship. Your relationship with your friend would also be at risk; this is defi nitely one of those circumstances where the messenger risks being shot. Figuratively speaking. I hope. Personally, BFD, in your shoes, I would err on the side of protecting even a hypothetical child. I would say something to the dad, perhaps via direct message (you could create a throwaway account and reach out anonymously), and I would also say something to my friend. But I would emphasize what the best available research tells us about pedophilia: it’s not something a person chooses, and most pedophiles never sexually abuse children. (And not everyone who sexually abuses a child is a pedophile.) So even if your best friend’s father is attracted to prepubescent boys—if he’s looking at prepubescent children and not teenagers who happen to be just under the age of consent—that doesn’t mean he’s harmed a child or would ever harm a child. He may need help to avoid offending—if, worst-case scenario, he actually is attracted to children—and being held accountable by loved ones is one way pedophiles avoid offending. Seto is the author of Pedophilia and Sexual Offending Against Children: Theory, Assessment, and Intervention and more. Follow him on Twitter @MCSeto. g Listen to the Savage Lovecast every week at savagelovecast.com. Email: mail@ savagelove.net. Follow Dan on Twitter @ fakedansavage. ITMFA.org.
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