UNDERCOVER BOSS COMES TO TOWN
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BCTF IS INDOCTRINATING KIDS
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BUILDER FLOUTED CITY BYLAWS
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WEDNESDAY
MARCH 7 2012 www.burnabynewsleader.com
A heck eck of a nightt at the South Burnaby urnaby Neighbourhood urhood House’s ouse’s Diamond Ball. See Page A12
Students stay busy during strike Wanda Chow burnabynewsleader.com
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Through the magic of Àlm, Itai Erdal interacts with his mother Mery Erdal in his documentary, How to Disappear Completely.
A journey through a mother’s final days Mario Bartel photo@burnabynewsleader.com
Itai Erdal had recently graduated from Vancouver Film School in 1999 when he got a call that his mother, Mery, was dying. He did as any good son would, traveling home to Israel to care for her. And as a newly minted ¿lmmaker just embarking on his career, he brought his camera. The footage he shot during those nine months of her terminal illness is the centrepiece to his one-man multimedia presentation, How to Disappear Completely, which will be
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at the Shadbolt Centre March 7-10. For Erdal, bringing his show to the Shadbolt is a physical journey to his professional home. He was a lighting technician there from 2002 to 2006. But when the lights dim and the screen at the back of the stage glows with the face of beloved mother, he embarks on a spiritual journey that changes every night. “It’s de¿nitely emotional,” says Erdal, 37. “I feel like I get to spend time with my mother. Sometimes I’m choking up. It always hits me at different places, at different times.” His mother encouraged his
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documentary efforts, says Erdal. “It was the most natural thing—she said ‘why don’t you make a documentary?’ ” And as his camera started rolling, it quickly became apparent this would not be a story about death, but of life. “She was the strong person,” says Erdal. “She was very eloquent, very funny. She was a hedonist, she loved life, eating and dancing. The show is sad, but it also has a lot of humour and hope.” While the camera helped Erdal cope with his mother’s decline, its presence through those dif¿cult months did
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cause some family friction. When she died he had to put the footage he’d shot aside for a few years. “It was too close and personal to edit.” Five years ago, while workshopping at a theatre company, he offered up some of his footage. With all the dialogue in his native Hebrew, he started translating it into English. “I felt like I was talking to my mother,” he says. “I was interacting with her, reliving my time with her.” Please see ‘YOU’VE GOT TO TALK’, A4
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Despite some parents bringing their children to school, the ¿rst of three days of a teachers’ walkout went without incident in Burnaby, says Burnaby school district Supt. Claudio Morelli. “I don’t have any speci¿c numbers but we did have some parents bring their children to school,” said Morelli, “but after consultation with the principals at the schools, they took their children home.” Some students did drop in to their schools to pick up books and homework or visit their lockers for items they forgot last week. Also showing up at school were a couple of specialneeds students whose parents were unable to make other arrangements. “They’re students that would normally have a teaching assistant with them, and so they have stayed at the schools ... The EA (education assistant) is there to do their regular job as they’re assigned to do.” Otherwise, it’s been relatively quiet at Burnaby schools, with non-teaching staff doing their regular jobs. see ACTIVITIES, A3