The Vancouver Latin American Film Festival
This festival runs until Sept. 8 and is sure to heat up your first week of classes. Featuring over 40 films coming out of Latin America, this last week you can still catch The Bella Vista, a restaging of the happenings that led a medley of tenants to occupy the same building at different points in time in the small Uruguayan village of Garbanzo; She Doesn’t Want to Sleep Alone is about how a woman’s melancholy life is drastically altered when she is forced to help her alcoholic grandmother; and The Bastard Sings the Sweetest Song is about a troubled family living in Georgetown, Guyana. You can catch these and more at vlaff.org.
New Forms Contemporary Music and Art Festival
The festival returns for another year of innovative music and art this Sept. 12–15. This year, a variety of venues and galleries are inhabited by local artists working in different mediums. There’s a performance by Evy Jane, the two-headed machine that is Evelyn Jane Mason and Jeremiah Klein creating a weaving of sensual R&B and dark trip-hop (think Portishead and Burial with a dash of Mariah Carey). Scenes of an Unsound Mind is taking place at The Equinox Gallery and is a video installation touching on themes of mutation and dichotomy. Check out 2013.newformsfestival.com for full artist details and event schedules.
Yin Yeung Express
Presented by In the House Festival, this event taking place Sept. 13–15 brings together food and storytelling. Inspired by the open air eateries of Hong Kong, stories surrounding food are paired with four traditional Hong Kong dishes. Rain City Chronicles (Vancouver’s storytelling champs) will be dishing out stories of Chinese food nostalgia, and Ricepaper Magazine and Kevin Chong will also be contributing on alternating nights. Plus, there’s a bit of mystery to the evening: the event location will only be revealed a few days before, and only to those holding tickets. Check out inthehousefestival.com for more.
‘Marcel Duchamp’ A show by Guillaume Désanges & Frédéric Cherboeuf
This one night only, North American premiere of the play Marcel Duchamp is taking place at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU Woodwards on Sept. 22. Desanges is a curator and art critic, and this work, created with Cherbouf, is an artistic exploration of the man and artist behind the infamous Fountain. The play is an experimental work, with an almost poetic, mantra-like script: “Because Marcel Duchamp is the freest man of the 20st century. Because he made this fundamental liberty flourish, he would feed it, all the time, with every breath, every gesture. Because this liberty is his artwork.” Check out sfuwoodwards.ca for more details.
A Brief History of Gentrification in Vancouver
The event, taking place Oct. 7 at the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Woodwards, touches on a hot topic in Vancouver right now. Author and artist Michael Kluckner will present an illustrated historical overview, discussing historical events like the eviction of the houseboat community in Coal Harbour in the 50s, the housing battle in Kitsilano in the 70s, the Expo 86 evictions, and more. He will also explore possible causes of these movements, with the hopes of following the lecture with a symposium on the subject this coming spring. Go to sfuwoodwards.ca for more.
