Dam it all! FILMS WORTH WATCHING Robert Alstead

Dam it all!

FILMS WORTH WATCHING Robert Alstead

In October, I attended the Planet in Focus Film Festival in Toronto for a screening of my film You Never Bike Alone. One of the other BC films I caught was 49 Megawatts, made by Bryan Smith, a kayaker who discovered that a dam was going to be built on one of his favourite paddling places, the Ashlu River near Squamish. His response, after initially being incredulous that anybody would want to develop such a beautiful, natural setting, was to make a film. His 30-minute documentary 49 Megawatts, completed earlier this year, shows just how easy it to turn a healthy, attractive ecosystem into a gravel pit in the name of “green energy.”

Regular readers of this magazine will know something of the trouble at the Ashlu. (Stolen Rivers, a special feature on independent power projects, was first published in Common Ground in October 2006 and again in October 2007). The independent power project (IPP) pro posed for the Ashlu is one of potentially hundreds that the BC Liberals are pushing to implement on rivers across the province. With a brazenness that’s become a hallmark of the province’s dealings with local communities, when local government voted against Ledcor’s IPP permit for the Ashlu, the province introduced Bill 30 to override its decision.

Smith brings together a commendable range of voices – industry experts, professionals, mayors Whistler and Squamish), academics, energy specialists and locals – to grapple with the issues. The film points out that the IPP in question, which involves boring a tunnel through

49 Megawatts tells the story of Ashlu River’s destruction. Kayaking photos by Stephen Hunt.

a mountain, is clearly not “small” – defined as under 50 megawatts by law – and should have undergone a more rig orous public planning process.

Conspicuously absent are spokespersons from Ledcor, the provincial government and the Squamish Nation, who after initially opposing the project came out in support of it. Smith says they declined to do interviews. The 30- minute Quicktime movie can be downloaded for free from www.Ashlu.info. The direct link is: http://www.downstreammedia.net/TheRangeLife/Video/ 49megawattsweb.mov

If you are very quick you can catch Jia Zhang-Ke’s Still Life (Sanxia Haoren), a moody drama set against the construction of Three Gorges megadam project in China. The film captures the surreal atmosphere of a rapidly transforming landscape and the plight of its displaced townspeople with an artful eye and a dry humour. (Opens December 1, Vancity.)

Doris Dörrie’s How to Cook Your Life (out now) follows Edward Espe Brown, a Bay Area chef and Zen priest who, since writing the popular The Tas sajara Bread Book, published in 1970, has been putting the Zen into food, reminding us that we need to reconnect with our food, waste less and take more time for a deeper, more present appreciation of cooking. Food, Brown reiterates, should be treated as essential as eyesight instead of as “… just fuel for the human machine.”

Brown appears at workshops in Buddhist centres in Austria and California and in formal interviews.

Dörrie is respectful of her subject, but she is not afraid to show us his human shortcomings, such as his angry outburst when he can’t remove the plastic cap from a bottle of oil. Brown also recalls his personal struggles and breakthroughs, seasoning stories with self-deprecating humour and regret. The message is a nourishing one, although, at 94 minutes, the film would have ben efited from being shorter.

After a 10-year absence, Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) returns behind the camera with Youth Without Youth, a World War Two era fantasy that blends ideas about the transmigration of souls with philosophy, spirituality, love and the cruelty of time. Tim Roth plays a 70-year-old professor who is struck by lightning and miraculously finds he has returned to his youthful self. The film, based on Romanian author Mircea Eliade’s novella, explores its metaphysical themes as the prof flees the Nazis across Europe. The early reviews have not been favourable, but this is Coppola so you can be sure that you will take something away from it.

Two of the best actors around, Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, play 40-something siblings who find themselves caring for their dementiastruck father in The Savages (due out December 26). The film, directed by Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills), has been praised for its intimate slice-oflife portrait and smart writing, showing there’s humour and optimism even in life’s darkest moments.

Robert Alstead made the Vancouverbased bicycle documentary You Never Bike Alone, available on DVD at www. youneverbikealone.co m