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It's Out There!

Canadiana heads to the Whistler Film Festival.

Dorothy Woodend 2 Dec 2005TheTyee.ca

Dorothy Woodend is the culture editor for The Tyee.

She has worked in many different cultural disciplines, including producing contemporary dance and new music concerts, running a small press, programming film festivals, and writing for newspapers and magazines across Canada and the U.S. She holds degrees in English from Simon Fraser University and film animation from Emily Carr University.

In 2020, she was awarded the Max Wyman Award for Critical Writing. She won the Silver Medal for Best Column at the Digital Publishing Awards in 2019 and 2020; and her work was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Best Column in 2020 and 2021.

Woodend is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Vancouver Film Critics Circle. She was raised on the East Shore of Kootenay Lake and lives in Vancouver. Find her on Twitter @DorothyWoodend.

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When one lives in Vancouver, one tends to forget that there are other interesting places just down the road, or in the case of Whistler, just up the highway. Although I have lived in this city for almost exactly 20 years, I have never been to Whistler, maybe because even thinking about skiing makes me wince, but also because it's easy to simply fall into the habit of never leaving the city. But the lure of films unseen is enough to do it. Eighty of them to be exact: 36 features and 54 shorts, running the gamut of documentaries, foreign art-house hits, even a number of premieres, such as Mrs. Henderson Presents, Breakfast on Pluto, and Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. I'm a-goin' to Whistler, baby!

The village of Whistler is a quaint little berg, home to ski bums, a few regular bums, and from December 1-4, 2005 during the Whistler Film Festival, bums in seats. The festival has grown in leaps and bounds, and in this, its fifth incarnation, it has almost ascended into the rare air of being a destination event. Although not quite in the realm of Park City, Utah, or Telluride, Colorado, just yet, it is definitely on its way.

As with most things in life, timing is everything. This is especially true in the world of film festivals, which, truly is, a world. From Pusan to Rotterdam, festivals in every nation on Earth are vying for premieres, as well as the opportunity to discover the next big, but hitherto, undiscovered thing.

Christmas film fling

The fall fests (Toronto and Vancouver) have wrapped, and the European behemoths (Berlin and Rotterdam) don't get started until mid-winter; even Sundance doesn't happen until the dog days of January, all of which leaves the slope wide open for a pre-Christmas film fling. Although organizers have downplayed any resemblance to Sundance, there are a few similarities that bear mentioning. Aside from the snow, and the skiing, Sundance's support of American independent film is echoed by Whistler's stated mandate to support Canadian film with the Phillip Borsos Award for Best New Canadian Film, a bounty of Canadian shorts, and a tribute to Robert Lantos.

The Borsos Prize (some $10,000) was established in the name of director Phillip Borsos (The Grey Fox, Cooperage, Spartree, and Nails) who died at the terribly young age of 41. Borsos' films were "conspicuously and unabashedly Canadian" and often possessive of a singular and spare beauty. Nails, which captured an Oscar nod, is a case in point. The idea of a film about how nails are made sounds like it might be as entertaining as, well, nails on a chalkboard, but it's a lovely film.

C.R.A.Z.Y.

BC film hasn't always lived up to that level of grace, although offerings like C.R.A.Z.Y. and Eve and the Firehorse (currently on its way to Sundance) this winter, may help bolster the idea that Canadian films are entertaining, thought provoking and even fun to watch. This year's nominees for the Borsos prize are: End of Silence (Anita Doron), Exiles in Lotusland (Ilan Saragosti), Fetching Cody (David Ray), Love is Work (Johnny Kalangis), Six Figures (David Christensen) and Zero Sum (Raphael Assaf) -- all of them either world or BC premieres.

C.R.A.Z.Y. starts things off with a bang. Having just started its wide release, and been tapped as Canada's entry to the Oscar race, this may be one of its final festival bows.

C.R.A.Z.Y. is the story of five brothers whose initials spell out the Patsy Cline hit. Our hero is Z, one, Zachary Beaulieu, who is born on Christmas Eve, 1960, an event that marks his life, along with the small patch of white hair at the nape of his neck. "It's a sign of his specialness," says his mother, not merely the consequence of being dropped on his head.

But young Zach would like nothing else but to be less special, a sentiment he shares with his father. Familiar to anyone with a family, this is also a lovely portrait of a time and place and the music: 1970s Quebec. There is a bit of shaggy dog quality to the film, it meanders all over the damn place, but it has charm to boot, and a marvelous soundtrack, that director Jean-Marc Vallée secured through pure bloody-minded tenaciousness. Having seen it at the VIFF in a packed theatre, it is well worth watching again. There is a collectivity in seeing a film like this with a packed house, everyone laughs, everyone screams, and everyone cries, usually at the exact same moment, and you may find yourself thinking, "Oh, we humans are really all the same." It is a strangely comforting thought.

Escape to Canada

Of course, some of us are more human that others. Some of us might actually be David Icke's giant lizard people. How else to explain the asinine policy makers in both the US and Canada? Filmmaker Albert Nerenberg summed it up simply as "stupidity" in his last film.

His most recent, (Escape to Canada) packs a similar punch. If you love this country, you might want to pay special attention to recent happenings around political and social changes. Escape to Canada focuses principally on the summer of 2003, when everything and anything appeared possible, legalization of marijuana, gay marriage and open defiance of US imperatives. Seemingly overnight, Canada went from beige and boring to rainbow-hued gonzo freedom-fighter: a change that roused the giant next door into paying more attention.

"Too wide to invade, too close to ignore," is how University of Toronto law professor Alan Young describes the US take on Canada. The popularity of BC bud, and Vancouver's Vanderstam rep, prompted the DEA to open an office in our fair city. Ironically, one of the most well spoken critics of the US war on drugs is Larry Campbell. Less well spoken, but even more influential, perhaps, is Tommy Chong (Chong's own experience as dealer in drug paraphernalia was recently detailed in the documentary a/k/a Tommy Chong). Almost three years later, the more things change the more they stay the same, gay marriage is currently legal, toking up is not, and the shadow of the US grows deeper everyday.

Nerenberg's film is jammed with both ephemera and critical ideas -- American draft dodgers, Marc Emery and his giant bonger, Watermelon girl arrested for selling Ginger snap cookies -- but one of the things that stands out most clearly is the high cost of courage. Martha McCarthy, the lawyer who argued for the "Michaels" (the affectionate term given Michael Leshner and Michael Stark who were the first gay couple to marry in Canada on June 10, 2003) states simply "I challenge anyone who thinks gay and lesbians shouldn't have the freedom to marry to simply go to a wedding."

Ms. McCarthy is exactly right. You can't help but be struck by the sweetness apparent in such unions. In one scene, two women are getting married, while one partner's young son holds the rings; his is the face that sticks with you -- brave, sweet, honest and full of love. How anyone could be against same sex marriage after witnessing this, I do not know.

Same sex marriage

Same sex marriage and legalizing marijuana are examined by another pair of documentaries: God Only Knows: Same Sex Marriage, and Waiting to Inhale. Jed Riffe's Waiting to Inhale looks at the ongoing and increasingly strange state of medical marijuana in the US. Despite its ability to aid in pain relief for patients suffering from cancer, HIV, and M.S., little old innocent bud continues to be a hot button issue.

The director interviewed a number of participants in a groundbreaking study currently being undertaken in California by Dr. Donald Abrams at the University of California in San Francisco. In a supplement to an article called Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Abrams recounts his introduction to the use of medical marijuana by an elderly volunteer named Brownie Mary, who, like her moniker suggests, was known for the brownies which she baked and distributed to AIDS patients. Despite winning volunteer of the year twice at the hospital, Mary was arrested at age 71 for possession.

While a number of US states have passed legislation permitting medical marijuana, proponents of the war on drugs maintain such legislation is merely the thin edge of the wedge, leading to full scale societal breakdown and drug-crazed hippies running wild in the streets. As in any war, truth is usually the first casualty.

The Great Outdoors?

In keeping with Whistler being what it is: a place where people slide down mountainsides at unsafe speeds on pieces of wood, there are a number of outdoor-themed films. In preparation for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the Whistler Film Festival legacy program and commission competition will select a number of projects each year to receive a $5,000 award. This year's crop includes First to Go Down from Rebecca Wood Barrett, Sandra Goes to Whistler from Tracy D. Smith, and Sojourn from Feet Banks.

If you'd prefer a different take on the great outdoors, something with a little sex and zombies, there is a late night pairing of Carl Bessai's Severed and Dylan Akio Smith's Cabin Movie; these two really ought to be combined; although perhaps, any number of Friday the Thirteenths have already done so.

There is also a little something called White Air from someone called U. Wolfgang Wagenknecht, about the travails of an extremely x-treme snow-boarder named Alex Crow. Don't let the presence of Tom Sizemore in this film scare you off. Or maybe do.

World Cinema

There are the big art-house hits (L'Enfant, Caché) as well as premieres (Tristam Shandy, Breakfast on Pluto), and some perhaps, more dubious choices, such as the spectacle that is Justin Timberlake acting (?) in Edison. If you're a sucker for punishment though, please, be my guest. With a $37 million dollar budget, most of which appears to spent on keeping Kevin Spacey's hair extra pouffy, this is one very expensive piece of poo. But into every life a little poo must fall, fortunately, there are also some far better films, and if I had to pick one, that would drag me up a big hill, it is Takashi Miike's, The Great Yokai War. Miike has been responsible for some of the most disturbing films of the Japan scary invasion (Audition, Ichi the Killer). The Great Yokai War, is, in fact, a children's movie. Just this idea alone is enough to make one curious. Goblins, monsters and a demented grandfather are just icing on the cake.

Love your Country

Usually, snow+Canada+film=a flashback to an old SCTV skit starring John Candy as Billy Stanpovolichski. Billy is an old fashioned NHL enforcer who must choose between fighting as a goon, or another way of life. At the critical moment, just as he must make his ultimate choice, to fight or not to fight, with his coach screaming, "Kill! Kill!" and his girlfriend crying, "NO!!" in the stands.

The film cuts to Billy tramping through the endless snowy landscape, and the theme swells up. "Oh, Billy, my Billy Boy, you were just a symbol of the troubled times in our society..." Oh Canada. You get the picture -- clichés become clichés because they have some amount of truth in them, and the Ballad of Billy Stompovolichski bears an uncanny resemblance to many Canadian films features you may have stumbled across on CBC TV in the middle of the day.

Lately, changes like Maude Barlow warning us of the creeping notion of deep integration, plus the grinning skull that is Steven Harper promising anything, suddenly everything Canadian seems a little more precious. The US may be going down in a great big ball of fire and brimstone, but don't let her take dear, sweet Canada with her. Love your country, its cold, its ice, its movies, just don't get all mushy about it. We are still, after all, reserved, polite, and cooly Canadian.

Dorothy Woodend reviews films for The Tyee every Friday.  [Tyee]

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