This year’s documentary film festival shows its artistic side

By Max Hill

Documentary films aren’t always considered artistic or creative: they tend to be categorized as straightforward, didactic and anonymous, not unlike a news article. The Documentary Media Society, a non-profit organization based in Vancouver, would beg to differ. Now in its 12th year, the Society’s DOXA has become one of the foremost documentary film festivals in Canada, running from May 3–12 each year. Mixing short and feature-length films ranging from the politically charged to straightforwardly entertaining, the festival has aimed to redefine the typical definition of a documentary film.

This year’s festival was headlined by Occupy: The Movie (dir. Corey Ogilvie), which focuses on the Occupy movement, an international protest movement which took aim at social and economic inequality. Other notable films included Human Scale (dir. Andreas Dalsgaard), which explores the work of urban visionary and architect Jan Gehl; Good Ol’ Freda (dir. Ryan White), which focuses on Freda Kelly, former secretary for The Beatles; and The Mechanical Bride (dir. Allison de Fren), shedding light on the increasingly popular trend towards mechanical sex dolls and their effect on societal views of femininity.

The festival also offered several special programs, including their Rated Y For Youth program, which allows high-school age students a chance to attend the festival, and features films seeking to increase social awareness and inspire appreciation for art in young people. The Justice Forum program featured films which focus on issues of social justice, such as gentrification and racism. The aim of the program, according to the festival’s website, is “to facilitate active and critical engagement, create space for dialogue, and sow the seeds for social change.” The Philosopher’s Cafe program pairs selected films from the festival with philosophical discussion topics, and gives audiences a chance to actively engage with the subjects of a wide variety of featured documentaries.

A staple of film culture in Vancouver, the DOXA Film Festival is one of the most interesting and varied film festivals the city has to offer. Although many of the films require membership in the Documentary Media Society, the Rated Y For Youth program — which included the headliner, Occupy: The Movie — gave SFU students and other Vancouverites a chance to learn about a wide variety of subjects, and to expand their understanding of the documentary film format in the process.

Wrong Place Wrong Time

Documentary tells story of victims, not killer

By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by DOXA Festival

On July 22, 2011, the world was shaken by the news of the Norway shootings. The first of the two attacks, a car bomb explosion, claimed eight lives and resulted in another 209 injuries. The second target was a youth camp, where the gunman opened fire and killed 69 youth, injuring 110.

In the wake of several tragic shootings in the past several years, the question has emerged: why do we only look at the crimes and the killer? Why don’t we talk about the victims? In Wrong Time Wrong Place, director John Appel does just that.

Anders Breivik — the individual responsible for the crimes — is never mentioned, and his face is shown only once; even then, it is in the context of his trial and its effect on the father of one of the victims. The documentary focuses exclusively on weaving together the stories of the survivors and of the victims’ families.

There is the man who lost his son in a base-jumping accident and then suffered even further when he was in the first explosion. There is the man who worked in that same office building, but took the day off to go base-jumping — a decision that saved his life.

There is the young woman from Georgia who was the last victim in the second shooting. Her best friend — the two usually being inseparable — was, through a twist of fate, in the washroom hiding with two other youth attending the camp during the shooting . The film follows the victim’s parents at length: the mother, clad in black, weeps and speaks of Georgian prophecies, while the father, proud but with a quivering lip, angrily shakes his head and says: “If he had not done it, nothing could have killed my daughter.”

There is the political activist from Uganda — one of the three youth that survived by hiding in the bathroom — who was two months pregnant at the time. By the end of the documentary, she has given birth to baby Michael, named after the angel she is sure was watching over them.

The thread that strings all of these stories together is that of resilience: of the families that have been lost and of those that have survived. The human lives portrayed in the film — both those that remained intact and those that were taken away — were made to seem frail; a recurring theme was “what could have happened” had the person left two minutes earlier or had made some other seemingly small and meaningless decision.

As the credits rolled, I looked around the theatre at the faces of the other audience members: those people that weren’t wiping away tears were stunned and thoughtful. It makes you think about how closely intertwined our lives and choices are, and how fleeting every moment can be.

The film is framed by a violent and tragic shooting, but there is no trace of anger or retribution in the interviews; rather, it is a film about overcoming calamity and about staying strong, and guaranteed, you will leave it with the overwhelming urge to call the people in your life with words of love.

East Hastings Pharmacy

The reality of DTES pharmacists

By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by DOXA Festival

East Hastings Pharmacy is Antoine Bourges’ first feature film, focusing on a methadone pharmacy in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It combines professional actors — such as the one playing the pharmacist — and actual patients playing a sort of cameo role.

Methadone programs are prescribed as part of recovery from heroin addiction, and the province’s regulations of these pharmacies call for strict guidelines, including meticulous records of prescriptions and having pharmacists witness each and every patient drinking their methadone.

The film manages to successfully capture the monotony of the pharmacy’s daily routine, as well as the instances where individuals become irate.

The pharmacist gets to know the patients by their first name and dose of methadone, and they are usually friendly to one another; what Bourges portrays through the character of the pharmacist is the exhausting nature of helping professions, especially in an area as marginalized as the Downtown Eastside.

Yet, at under an hour, the film only seems to skim the interactions within the community — both between patients and with the pharmacist. There are several instances where we glimpse into interpersonal relationships and we see laughter or moments of bonding, but for the most part the audience is left with a framework and a mere hint at the atmosphere of this type of pharmacy — which is really all that a documentary of this length can hope for.

It illustrates BC’s regulations of the methadone pharmacies and some of the barriers and downfalls, but the director missed many opportunities to delve deeper into the heart of the community and the personal stories of the various people coming into or working at the pharmacy.

As far as an artistic analysis of the issues in the Downtown Eastside, it does not create dialogue. That being said, the specific issues surrounding regulations of methadone programs are not often looked at through this medium and the film is well-shot, and despite its downfalls, it’s worth a watch.