DOXA
Reconciliation in action amid operatic backdrop by Charlie Smith
DOXA REVIEW THE LAKE / N’-HA-A-ITK
A Telus Original featuring Delphine Derickson, Heather Pawsey, and Jordan Coble. Directed by John Bolton.
d FOR SOME, reconciliation with First Nations revolves around learning. If you just get the history right—and wrap your mind around how land was stolen and why Indigenous children were kidnapped and taken to church-run schools—you’re starting along a path to a more just future. For others, reconciliation goes much deeper. It’s a matter of the heart. This road entails forging relationships and understanding and appreciating another nation’s history, language, traditions. This can only be done through curiosity, compassion, empathy, and humility. It means leaving the cocoon of your own culture and venturing into others’ world, knowing that there may be mistakes along the way that can lead to uncomfortable conversations. This latter route is the foundation of director John Bolton’s remarkable film, The Lake / n’-ha-a-itk. Ostensibly, it’s a film about how Barbara Pentland and Dorothy Livesay’s 1952 opera, The Lake, was staged for the first time—incorporating syilx perspectives—at the Quails’ Gate Winery in 2014. This 2014 version included input from syilx traditional-knowledge keeper Delphine Derickson and heritage researcher Jordan
In The Lake / n’-ha-a-itk soprano Heather Pawsey and syilx knowledge keeper Delphine Derickson demonstrate how B.C. residents can learn from their difficult and often distorted history.
Coble in telling the story of two of the earliest 19th-century European settlers to the region, Susan and John Allison. Susan Allison’s role is performed by soprano Heather Pawsey. She points out early in the fi lm how open-minded her character was in real life. Allison grew up in Sri Lanka, then known as the British colony of Ceylon, and she had a keen interest in different types of spirituality. Her optimistic husband, John, performed by opera singer Angus Bell, has a more traditional outlook and can’t understand why his wife is so interested in Indigenous traditions. The two other characters in the opera are a Métis man named Johnny MacDougall and
a syilx woman named Marie, who each assist the new settlers to the Okanagan. They are performed by opera singers Kwangmin Brian Lee and Barbara Towell, respectively. MacDougall’s exchanges with Allison help her appreciate the existence of a serpentine creature in nearby Okanagan Lake, known as Ogopogo to settlers and tourists over the following decades. But on a much deeper level, The Lake / n’-ha-a-itk is a fi lm that explores cultural appropriation and how, even with the best of intentions, we can make mistakes in pursuing reconciliation. For instance, in the traditions of the syilx people, the lake actually houses a
sacred spirit, not a monster, according to Coble. “It’s more than a creature,” he explains in the fi lm. “It’s in us.” But this belief was sideswiped in history by the Métis man who cozied up to the settlers in the 19th century. At one point, Pawsey offers a frank assessment over whether she would even do the opera again in the same way, given that two Indigenous characters were performed by non-Indigenous opera singers. Composer Leslie Uyeda created an instrumental piece in which Derickson’s daughter Corinne performs a dance to the spirit of the lake. This beautiful moment takes place as her mother and Pawsey’s character look on. Derickson also performs her traditional music with Pawsey, melding the Indigenous with the operatic in front of the gorgeous lake. Derickson’s wisdom and willingness to engage, along with Pawsey’s open-minded curiosity and compassion, lead them to forge a deep bond. And this is what really makes The Lake / n’-ha-a-itk such a heartfelt and memorable fi lm. It’s truly what reconciliation should look like—for opera lovers, particularly, but also for anyone else with an interest in digging deeper into Indigenous traditions. g The DOXA Documentary Film Festival will screen The Lake / n’-ha-a-itk at 7:45 p.m. on Thursday (May 12) at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema in the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts at SFU Woodward’s The film can also be screened on the website until May 15.
Marginalized show ingenuity in Time of Fentanyl by Charlie Smith
DOXA REVIEW
LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL
Featuring Sarah Blyth, Ronnie Grigg, Trey Helten, Norma Vaillancourt, and Dana McInnis. Directed by Colin Askey.
d FOR MANY middle-class and upper-middle-class non–drug users living in swanky neighbourhoods, the overdose crisis can be mind-numbing. That’s because it involves other people—often, though not always, the down-and-out, whom they don’t know. It’s why documentaries like Love in the Time of Fentanyl are so very important. They put a human face on this horrific community tragedy while showcasing the resilience and sheer ingenuity of the marginalized who are saving lives on a daily basis. Colin Askey’s intimate film, which premiered at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival, takes viewers inside Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Society at 58 East Hast-
OPS supervisor Norma Vaillancourt saves lives even after losing many friends to overdoses.
ings Street. Its plucky staff and volunteers make the most of an exceedingly grim situation yet still carve out a little time for fun. There’s OPS founder Sarah Blyth, who finds it incomprehensible that six years after she and Ann Livingston opened a popup supervised injection site that drug users
still don’t have access to a clean supply. Then there’s Norma Vaillancourt, the Indigenous OPS supervisor. In the fi lm, she talks about how many friends she’s lost. The current OPS manager, Trey Helten, shares stories about a colourful memorial mural in the neighbourhood. This is cinéma vérité—capturing the essence of some very loving people, hence the title of the fi lm. Their voices are supplemented with compelling imagery of the gritty Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, including an opening sequence in which one drug-using resident is revived from the dead with naloxone and oxygen. “So often, drug users are outcast and not given credit for being able to, like, use their mind—to have solutions to major problems,” Ronnie Grigg, then the OPS general manager, says in the fi lm. In fact, the society’s staff and volunteers are exceedingly well-trained in keeping their neighbours and friends alive amid the constant roar of sirens.
But it also takes a toll, in some cases leading to burnout. Askey and cinematographer Eric D. Sanderson capture this most effectively through their haunting segments with Grigg, who discloses that he knew 130 people who died from poisoned drugs during the previous four years. It’s remarkable how comfortable everyone is in front of the cameras. One charming volunteer, Dana McInnis, offers up some awe-inspiring whistling just before injecting. In another scene, Helten discloses family traumas as he is filmed delivering a friend’s wheelchair, via a city bus, to a local hospital. These are real people coping with monumental challenges. They deserve to be heard and not judged. Love in the Time of Fentanyl gives them that. Now, if only policymakers would act on their recommendations. Only then will we be able to put an end to this madness. g The DOXA Documentary Film Festival is streaming Love in the Time of Fentanyl until May 15.
MAY 12 – 19 / 2022
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
15
