Kayak to Klemtu - Victoria Film Festival 2018

What do our ancestors want from us?  How can we reconcile family disagreements? What is our purpose on this planet, at this time, in this place?  An epic kayak journey along BC's breathtaking inside passage from Vancouver to Klemtu offers plenty of time to ponder all this and much more.

Kayak to Klemtu is a feature film rather than a documentary, although anyone who's followed young Ta'Kaiya Blaney's impressive songwriting/activist career will recognize that her passion for the wilderness, her experience speaking truth to power, is very real.  Lorne Cardinal, perhaps best known as the goofy cop from the popular Corner Gas TV show, adds some comic relief.  And there are "white" characters too, connected by heart and marriage.  We're all in this together!

In a sadly ironic twist of fate, filmmaker Zoe Hopkins returned to her birthplace Bella Bella shortly after completing the filming of Kayak to Klemtu, to begin a documentary short titled Impossible to Contain.  In 2016 the Nathan E. Stewart, operating in BC waters with an exemption from Canada Shipping Act regulations, ran aground near Bella Bella and dropped 200,000 litres of diesel and heavy fuels.  Clean up went on for a full month, and exposed the potential for further devastation if industry gets its way.* 

Much of the kayak journey was filmed near Bella Bella, so it's not exactly a full coastline experience.  From personal experience I can attest that the area is amazingly beautiful, as the film portrays, and it's easy to imagine whales and sea lions and untouched wilderness exists all the way north to Klemtu and beyond.  Let's keep it that way.

Kayak to Klemtu screens Sunday February 4th 3:30 pm, and Tuesday February 6th 9 pm at SilverCity 3.  Get your tickets HERE. 

* Since 2015 a northern coast based Facebook page, 10,000 Ton Tanker, continues to monitor Articulated Tanker Barges (ATBs) passing through the Inside Passage.

Cesna?em, the city before the city - Victoria Film Festival 2018

Reconciliation.  It's a word charged with political fervour, a promise from the powers on high that finally the relationship between First Nations and Settler peoples will be resolved.  It's another promise broken, as plans for dirty bitumen pipeline expansion and increased tanker traffic charge ahead, threatening the health of these magnificent waters and shorelines. 

It's time to take the idea of Reconciliation into our own hands.  We can start by wondering, as we walk along beaches or through whatever remains of the ancient forests, who lived here?  Which of the many thousands of distinct languages did they speak?  Where did they harvest their medicines?  Does evidence of their lives exist under this earth where I am right now?  What happened to their villages, were they burned or bulldozed?  Why aren't archaeological excavations required before every development project is approved?

Cesna?em, the city before the city offers a step towards Reconciliation.  We can't change the story of colonisation, but we can learn about and from the people who have survived the attempted genocide.  And maybe from there we can build better relationships, and support the neo-colonialist resistance, and begin do things differently.

Cesna?em, the city before the city screens Saturday February 3 at 4:00 pm at the Vic Theatre.   Don't miss it.

Unarmed Verses - Victoria Film Festival 2018

Since we are expected to live under an economic agenda that keeps most of us poor, isn't it logical we at least have the right to create and live in communities of our peers?

If you haven't yet realized it ... the answer is a loud and unequivocal NO.   

Unarmed Verses offers one glimpse into one family living in one community in one city ruled by the capitalist forces of me and mine and damn the rest.  We're invited to see from the perspective of one Francine Valentine, a 12 year old immigrant from Antigua, brought to Canada by her father.  He wanted Francine to have access to a better system of education.  It's doubtful whether he, or any immigrant, completely understands the challenges facing all Canadians as we struggle to maintain our kinder, more socialistic heritage (First Nations genocide aside).

Despite its sombre message, the film is lovely portrayal of a community that offers solidarity, and opportunities for music and art we all ought to be entitled to.

Is the "Revitalization Project" going to make these peoples' lives any better?  And if not, why are projects like it able to move forward?  Who really benefits?  Where is Francine now? 

Unarmed Verses screens at 6:30 pm Friday February 2nd at Capitol 6, and 1:30 pm February 11th at The Vic.  Get your tickets now.  

  

Unarmed Verses (Trailer) from NFB/marketing on Vimeo.

2018 Victoria Film Festival

The 24th annual Victoria Film Festival (#VFF18) will launch February 2nd and run through until February 11th.    

Donovan Aikman, longtime programmer with the festival, speaks to this and much more in a recent interview with CFUV Radio's Chris Cook.  It's a short 15 minute chat, starting half way through the weekly Gorilla Radio program, click here to listen online.

In this era of YouTube and Netflix style streaming, are film festivals still relevant?  The answers will perhaps surprise you.  It's about so much more than films, there's an entire community going on here!

Click and LISTEN