The Georgia Straight - Film Festival - Sept 26, 2019

FREE | SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

Volume 53 | Number 2697

RIDINGS TO WATCH

Councillors identify the close races

HERRINGBONE HILARITY

Double-cast musical

LANA DEL REY

Patron saint of troubled times

Film Festival

Rising Canadian star Deragh Campbell wins global acclaim on a minimal budget; plus, plenty of VIFF features and reviews

SOUTH AFRICAN WINE

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ORGANIC CANNABIS

2 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

Colours shown: Benjamin Moore’s Jet Black (2120-10) and Limelight (2025-40)

Eating by Design.

A powerhouse panel of food & design experts, Chef Bruno Feldeisen, Judge on The Great Canadian Baking Show, Zach Berman of The Juice Truck, and food designer Amanda Huynh discuss the important role design plays in the future of food. Join us Sat, Sept 28th (3 pm) at IDS on the Caesarstone Stage.

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SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 3

CONTENTS

September 26 – October 3 / 2019

12 COVER

VIFF fans will get a chance to catch rising star Deragh Campbell in two shorts and two features.

By Adrian Mack Cover photo by Galit Rodan

5

NEWS

Local politicians identify which riding contests interest them the most in the upcoming federal election.

By Carlito Pablo

N OW – N OV 3 0

8

URBAN LIVING

Adrian Ocneanu and Britta Evans-Fenton enable others to convert prescored paper puzzles into works of art.

By Janet Smith

SPELL PARQ FOR

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19 MUSIC

All is not what it seems with Lana Del Rey, whose Norman Fucking Rockwell is the greatest album of the year.

By Mike Usinger

23 ARTS

Tongue-tying lyrics, manic tap-dancing numbers, and more make Herringbone more than just another musical.

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e Start Here 11 THE BOTTLE 9 CANNABIS 21 CONFESSIONS 28 DANCE 10 HOROSCOPES 11 I SAW YOU 7 REAL ESTATE 31 SAVAGE LOVE 27 THEATRE

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e Services 29 CLASSIFIEDS

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Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly Volume 53 | Number 2697

EARN BALLOTS DAILY FROM SEPTEMBER 1 – 29 BY PLAYING SLOTS AND TABLE GAMES. MUST PRESENT VALID GOVERNMENT ISSUED PHOTO I.D. TO PARTICIPATE. ACTIVATE BALLOTS BEGINNING 1 HOUR PRIOR. RULES APPLY. VISIT PLAYERS CLUB FOR DETAILS.

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1 2 3 4 5

Emily Carr University cancels classes for climate strike.

Martyn Brown: Forgive Trudeau? Not on your progressive life.

Mass extinctions only merit passing mention on newscasts.

Proposed VPL rental policy values intellectual freedom.

All you need to know about Elton John’s farewell tour.

GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight

The Georgia Straight is published every Thursday by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. Copies are distributed free every week throughout Vancouver, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver, New Westminster, and Richmond. International Standard Serial Number ISSN 0709-8995. Subscription rates in Canada $182.00/52 issues (includes GST), $92.00/26 issues (includes GST); United States $379.00/52 issues, $205.00/26 issues; foreign $715.00/52 issues, $365.00/26 issues. Contact 604-730-7087 if you wish to distribute free copies of the Georgia Straight at your place of business. Entire contents copyright © 2019 Vancouver Free Press, Best Of Vancouver, Bov And Golden Plates Are Trade-Marks Of Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. SUBMISSIONS The Straight accepts no responsibility for, and will not necessarily respond to, any submitted materials. All submissions should be addressed to contact@straight.com.

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4 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

Here’s what people are reading this week on Straight.com.

NEWS

Politicos eye hotly contested ridings

T

by Carlito Pablo

hey’re not in the game, but some local politicians are watching the federal election campaign carefully.

A Georgia Straight survey of several municipal politicians reveals one riding of particular interest: Burnaby North–Seymour. It’s held by Liberal MP Terry Beech, who is facing a challenge from the NDP’s Svend Robinson.

“I’m hoping for Svend,” Vancouver councillor Jean Swanson said by phone. “I think he’d be really good in there, because he always does right, regardless of what the party wants.”

Burnaby North–Seymour was also mentioned by Burnaby councillor Nick Volkow. He predicted that the Liberal government’s purchase of and decision to allow the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, whose Westridge Marine Terminal is located in the riding, will turn voters against Beech. “Mr. Robinson has earned the right to regain the seat,” Volkow said by phone about the former MP. Robinson, an opponent of the $9.3-billion pipeline-expansion project, was the only candidate of interest to Richmond councillor Harold Steves. “He and I have similar environmental concerns, and that’s been lacking in the NDP for a long time,” Steves said.

That same riding was also brought up by Vancouver councillor Adriane Carr, although not in an endorsement for a specific candidate. Carr said that riding and two others are interesting to observe because support for both the Liberal and New Democratic parties in Western Canada is in decline.

One of the two other ridings cited

by Carr was Vancouver Centre, where she twice lost to now eight-term Liberal MP Hedy Fry. “Hedy Fry has been an institution, but, you know, right now her party is more shaky than it’s ever been,” Carr

The NDP’s Svend Robinson is battling Liberal Terry Beech in Burnaby North–Seymour.

said by phone. She speculated that the riding may be up for a “game changer”.

Carr is also interested to see how the NDP fares in Vancouver East, an NDP bastion held by Jenny Kwan.

“The federal NDP has got their leader out west right now, but the NDP vote is just not as solid in the polls,” she said in reference to Jagmeet Singh.

Singh won a seat in the House of Commons through a by-election in Burnaby South in February 2019.

For Burnaby councillor Sav Dhaliwal, a New Democrat, Singh’s riding is very important. “We want to make sure that Jagmeet Singh is reasonably secure in that riding,” Dhaliwal said by phone.

Dhaliwal asserted that although voters across Canada seem to be leaning mostly toward either Liberal leader Justin Trudeau or Conservative top man Andrew Scheer, Singh’s national campaign has “gained momentum”.

For his part, Richmond councillor Michael Wolfe said that he is following Steveston–Richmond East “more than anything else”.

Wolfe, who previously ran as a federal Green, related that he and his young family recently moved

into the riding, which is held by Joe Peschisolido, a Liberal backbencher.

Peschisolido’s toughest challenge is expected to come from Conservative candidate Kenny Chiu, a former colleague of Wolfe’s in the municipal Richmond Independent Team of Electors. However, Wolfe is interested in two other candidates.

One is 18-year-old Jaeden Dela Torre of the NDP, whom Wolfe described as probably the youngest candidate in the country. The other is Nicole Iaci, an Indigenous lawyer running for the Greens.

Meanwhile, New West mayor and TransLink Mayors’ Council chair Jonathan Cote is eyeing Surrey and other ridings south of the Fraser River.

According to him, TransLink’s ability to proceed with investments in public transit will depend on its partnership with the federal government.

“Some ridings that could be very crucial to that are actually south of the Fraser River,” Cote said by phone.

“We’ve got a lot of transit investments that we’re hoping to invest and roll out into south of the Fraser River, including taking the next phase with the SkyTrain and getting it to Langley.” g

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Experience VCC opens up career paths

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nyone who is unsure of which direction to take their career path should be sure to attend Vancouver Community College’s (VCC) upcoming open house. On Wednesday (October 16), from 3 to 6 p.m., the school is opening the doors of its Broadway campus (1120 East 7th Avenue) and giving prospective students the opportunity to understand some of the possibilities available to them.

The biannual event, called Experience VCC, is open to the public, free to attend, and will showcase more than 120 of the school’s programs.

Visitors will be able to enjoy an afternoon of tours, demonstrations, and entertainment while they explore the campus, meet students, and talk to faculty from university transfer, health sciences, trades, arts, and more—all in one go.

In addition to getting a real sense of school life, attendees will have the chance to win $1,000 toward tuition, and anyone who applies to a program at the event doesn’t pay the $35 application fee (limited to one per person).

There will be free street and lot parking available, but the school is also easily accessible via public transit because it’s located just steps away from the VCC-Clark SkyTrain station and an even shorter walk from the 9 or 99 bus stop.

Monique Paassen, VCC’s hospitality management department head, advises anyone who is interested in the programs or finds themselves at a tricky juncture in their career journey to come to the open house so they can learn more about their options.

“At Experience VCC, people get to meet the students, see what they’ll really learn, and the career opportunities if you opt for a

The free open house gives prospective students a real sense of school life and their options at VCC, including its four industry-recognized hospitality programs.

diploma in, say, hospitality management,” she says.

VCC has four industry-recognized hospitality programs—hospitality management, culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and Asian culinary arts—all of which will be highlighted at the open house. The “Passport to Hospitality” action stations will give visitors the chance to learn more while trying some fun and interactive activities.

There are lots of career prospects for someone with a degree in hospitality, thanks to a high demand for skilled employees. But Paassen also credits VCC’s close relationship with the industry in ensuring that 95 percent of its graduates go on to find jobs. In February, the school hosts an interview week when prospective employers can meet with and hire some of the best and brightest new talent.

“I think that’s really something that makes VCC stand out,” Paassen says. “We have such a strong connection with the industry, so we

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are always up to date on whether something needs to be changed in the curriculum.”

VCC prides itself on offering academic, cultural, and social environments that inspire relevant, real-world training. The on-campus facilities, including gourmet restaurants, an auto shop, and the state-of-the-art salon and spa, allow students to hone their skills while also providing high-quality, lowcost services to the Downtown and East Vancouver communities.

“We really train our students and we set them up for success with the goal of becoming a manager within the industry,” Paassen adds.

“And it’s not just through theory; it’s hands-on.” g

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HOUSING

Community hub planned at Kingsway and Windsor

A

by Carlito Pablo

new development on a City of Vancouver property is expected to produce not only social-housing units but a new community hub in its neighbourhood.

A document containing the design rationale for the housing project at the northeast corner of Kingsway and Windsor Street states that the potential hub acknowledges both the “urban nature” of Kingsway and the “bike and pedestrian” orientation of Windsor.

According to the file, Windsor Street is also now known as Windsor Way, and it emerged as a grassroots initiative in the early 2000s.

“Residents along Windsor Street began the Blooming Boulevards Project, taking it on themselves to garden the city owned boulevards in front of their homes,” the submission recalls. The document relates that artist Karen Kazmer later had her “Windsor Way—Moments, Memories and Objects” banners installed on streetlight poles.

“The banners outline the hands of members of the community reinforcing the neighbourhood identity,” the submission notes. It adds that Windsor Way is a 4.3-kilometre route linking four parks and three elementary schools.

The document also says that the “success of the Blooming Boulevards project led to the formal designation of Windsor Street as a bike route in 2003”.

“Since then community book swap libraries have sprung up along Windsor Way and across the neighbourhood,” the file continues. “The streets have been further activated with communal herb gardens and

An artist’s rendering of the proposed 12-storey building at 1001 Kingsway.

regular block parties.”

The project involves the construction of a 12-storey building with 88 social-housing units above retail spaces to be located on the ground floor.

According to the design-rationale document, the building is “envisioned as a series of connected gardens”. The gardens start on the ground level, and the vegetation is “carried up” to the sixth-floor amenity space.

All the homes will be rented at, or below, the low end of market rates.

The 1001 Kingsway property is one of seven sites dedicated by the city to nonmarket housing, with the Community Land Trust, a nonprofit developer, as its partner.

An open house for the project will be held on Monday (September 30) at the First Church of the Nazarene (998 East 19th Avenue) from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. g

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URBAN LIVING

Paper designs have hands-on appeal

F

by Janet Smith

rom turquoise deer heads with bright orange antlers to desktop foxes, snails, and raccoons, Low Poly Crafts’ sleek geometric sculptures and wall art are the height of home design right now.

But the Canadian-made pieces also work on a purely therapeutic level. That’s because customers order their paper kits precut, then assemble and glue them together.

Cocreator Adrian Ocneanu landed on the projects as a way to destress a few years back, while he was a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering.

“At first it was just a hobby to make long winter days go by and get rid of the stress of doing a PhD, and I was going through a bad breakup at the time,” he says, speaking with his life and business partner, Britta Evans-Fenton, from home in Ottawa before heading to IDS Vancouver’s District, a design marketplace that runs as part of the show Thursday to Sunday (September 26 to 29) at the Vancouver Convention Centre West.

“I found some things to do online, but I gravitated most toward 3-D models. It took me about a week to do my first model, and it was such an engaging and relaxing project.

I liked that it was detail-oriented and self-taught, and I liked the debugging—the ‘How do I deal with this particular technical issue?’

“So that’s where I was dabbling in the darkness, and then Britta came along and said, ‘This would be amazing for other people to make, and not just for yourself.’”

Evans-Fenton, who’s patched onto the line from Carleton University,

At IDS Vancouver’s District, Low Poly Crafts’ wall hangings and desk-size sculptures come in easy-to-navigate kits.

where the visual-arts grad is now pursuing a computer-science degree, brought experience in both lasercutting and the DIY movement to the table; she had helped to organize Ottawa’s Mini Maker Faire for three years. “I understand the joy of people who want to make things,” she explains, adding she also shared knowledge of how the general public wants to approach a puzzle. “Adrian, being the genius, sometimes doesn’t understand why people can’t just pick it up,” she says with a laugh.

“I’ve done a lot of workshops for kids and the public, and I knew it had to make sense.”

She also emphasized the high-

Having the fine-arts background, for me it was important for the object to feel like an artwork.

– Britta Evans-Fenton

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8 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

design aesthetics of the kits. “Having the fine-arts background, for me it was very important for the object to feel like an artwork. I didn’t just want it to be craft, so something as simple as having a nice texture to the paper can push that boundary. A lot of people think they’re made of wood, and that comes from texture. It doesn’t look like every triangle [within the multifaceted figure] has the same colour, but that’s because of how the light bounces around. It’s something you want to hang on your wall.”

And thus, after much trial and error, Low Poly Crafts was born in

2016. The duo’s collection of kits has expanded from stylized deer heads to desk-size sculptures of armadillos, bears, beavers, and the best-selling fox. Animal offerings now include the Safari, Marine Life, and Canadiana subcollections; you can hang a multifaceted elephant, rhinoceros, panda, buffalo, or polar bear over your mantle. They’ve also pushed into fine-art territory, with a Pixel Statue collection that conjures everyone from David to The Thinker and Nefertiti. Colours are often customizable, with everything from pimento reds to turquoise and sleek greys to mix and match. (A pink-and-white giraffe head or light-blue elephant head, anyone?)

An ever-more-popular collection is Low Poly’s dog kits—corgis, pugs, French bulldogs, and more.

Meanwhile, everyone from design-conscious and detailoriented kids to mental-health nurses and the overworked has been buying the kits; EvansFenton compares their destressing effects to those of puzzles or adult colouring books—with the bonus that you have something cool and aesthetically pleasing to hang on your condo’s white wall afterward.

As for Ocneanu, ever the engineeer, he finds, through his constant experiments with the software and the construction, that the possibilities are endless.

“I wish I didn’t have to sleep,” he says, adding he’d love to start working with cardboard so he can design bigger creations. “I love playing with new models and tools that I have.” g

CANNABIS

2009 W.18th Ave.

Living soil plays vital role in growing first-rate buds

A

by Adolfo Gonzalez

revolution is happening right under our noses, and even many of those who are “in the biz� seem to be sleeping right through it. As the Canadian cannabis market matures, it is becoming clear to many that cannabis is in many ways more like wine or coffee than, say, cucumbers.

Sure, one can appreciate a good cucumber, but cucumbers have not inspired the same type of global obsession to which cultivars of wine or coffee have given rise. There is no shortage of wine or coffee geeks willing to rant about aroma, flavour, “body�, and how the “terroir� becomes reflected in the consumption experience.

But nobody would ever dream of trying to produce the world’s best wine or coffee using hydroponic methods, because that is simply not how the best wine or coffee is made. And today, many of the world’s major cannabis companies are waking up to the fact that cannabis may not be so different.

If you are into hunting for the best cannabis that money can buy, the term organic living soil is probably one that you’ve encountered. Before the late 1980s—when “hydro� became popular in underground growing circles— pretty much all cannabis was grown in organic living soil, but back then we just called it soil. The “living� part refers to the endophytes, or symbiotic life forms, that live in and around plants. Endophytes are much easier to produce and maintain in a stable soil base and are essential to plant health.

But today, feeding plants with hydroponic liquid feed (whether salt-based, synthetic, or organic)—and using pesticides and fungicides and more sterile growing media, like soilless or rock wool—has become the industry standard, because it tends to reliably produce higher plant weight. However, it turns out that bud size is not really all it’s cracked up to be; today’s connoisseur is more focused on aroma, oiliness, and taste. Beyond this, it is important to remember that basing the success of any crop on how much plant weight is produced is a rookie mistake. Cannabis production should always be quantified in terms of the amount of active ingredients a particular cultivar has produced, as it is actually the quantity of those biochemicals that determines value, not the plant weight itself (so make sure to revise that business plan you have been working on).

Think hothouse hydroponic tomato versus organic-soil grown tomato: hydroponic tomatoes, although typically much larger than organic tomatoes, often compare unfavourably in terms of colour, flavour, and nutritional content to those grown in organic soil. As it turns out, cannabis can be similar in this sense, as beneficial microbes and fungi can play a vital role in producing high-quality buds.

The reason is simple: a healthy colony

of the right kinds of microbes and fungi keeps detrimental moulds, bugs, and bacteria away while also breaking down nutrients so they can be more readily ingested by the root system.

This tends to boost resin production and maximize the content of terpenes (the compounds that provide aroma).

If Canadian flowers are to compete on the world stage, they need to compete on quality

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This realization is a big wake-up call for the Canadian cannabis industry and, in particular, for Health Canada, which has set microbiological-contaminant standards so low that cannabis is essentially treated as a sterile pharma product rather than as a plant. Nevertheless, several licensed producers are making the change despite the difficulty in applying these organic methods under such tight regulation. Those with foresight know that if Canadian flowers are to compete on the world stage, they need to compete on quality—because our neighbours to the south will most certainly outstrip us in terms of production quantity and, hence, price point.

I want to finish this article with a disclaimer: if you read this and feel that I have not done justice to the value of hydro methods in the cannabis sector, allow me to add that I do believe that producing high-quality buds in hydroponic or soilless-medium systems is possible (as many craft growers have proven). However, the high level of skill and attention required, together with the expense of adding organic liquid additives, means that very few hydro growers can rival the quality produced by a simple soil mix.

My argument is that soil allows farmers to more cheaply and easily produce high-quality cannabis and that this educational and regulative gap is primarily responsible for the quality crisis that our legal sector is experiencing. Grow any way you want to grow, but keep in mind that without a cultural foundation and laws that support farmers in growing the plant the way it evolved to grow for thousands of years, we will not have a marketplace that boasts the world’s best bud. g

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HOROSCOPES

A

by Rose Marcus

SEPTEMBER 26 TO OCTOBER 2, 2019

s of Thursday, the sun in Libra shines its fullest light on Chiron in Aries, the healing crisis archetype. This transit continues to call to attention that which is in most need of revaluation and reconciliation.

Hypocrisy, racism, inequality, injustice, and moral decay are in existence everywhere. We can fight against it— and we should, but more importantly we need to learn from it. It is no new revelation to see that the world is an imperfect place, and our social norms and systems are incredibly flawed. In Chiron’s mythology, he was accidentally struck with a poison arrow that he himself had created. The result was an incurable wound from which he could find no relief. Eventually, Chiron’s healing came from trading places with Prometheus, whose crime was that of stealing fire from the gods for the benefit of humanity. Chiron’s recruitment as wounded healer comes first unwittingly by circumstance and later by a sacrificial choice. To cure a wound, it must first be exposed.

Like Chiron, we must recognize that, personally and collectively, we have already also signed up to crack open what is in need of healing. Let’s not get caught up in the blame, shame, and victimization game; it is but a distraction. Let’s work on the healing end instead.

Saturday delivers a super new moon in Libra. It’s a good weekend to ease up and socialize, sharing your time or your heart. It’s also one for observing yourself in action. A natural evolution can be underway regarding a fresh perspective, conversation, or evaluation process. Backto-work Monday could be somewhat demanding or stressful. Tuesday/ Wednesday can be a smoother go.

Even so, watch for a subtle undercurrent or a building undertow.

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www.aarm-dental.com 10 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

TAURUS

April 20–May 21

Progressively, the future is becoming more well defined. As this outer evolution takes place, you are gaining a better sense of how to better navigate the ropes. That’s a matter of cooperating with the reality by not sitting back. Change is not so much a matter of a sacrifice but of creating space in preparation for something better to top you up.

C

604-699 -1901

March 20–April 20

What’s next and what do you need to do in order to get yourself better set up for it? Venus, Mercury, and Saturday’s new moon in Libra keep your attention focused beyond the here and now. Venus shifts the way you feel and respond.

Mercury shifts the inner dialogue and outer conversation. Relationships are evolving; reality is too. The process is well underway.

B

(between Dunsmuir & Pender St.)

Dr. Farnaz Kamran, DDS

A

ARIES

GEMINI

May 21–June 21

Considering a change of plan or tactic? A revision or modification is a step in the right direction.

Not quite sure how to play it next?

Step one is to put your expertise at listening and observing into action.

Sunday onward, you’ll get a better fix on how it is shaping up. Let intuition or gut instincts take over from there.

D

CANCER

June 21–July 22

It can be up to you to break the ice and/or make the first move.

All it takes is a simple gesture, a nod, or an extra prod to launch onto a more lucrative or effective track. Saturday’s new moon marks the launch of a new living-with-yourself cycle.

Do everything you can to get yourself repositioned/to create a leg up for yourself.

E

LEO

July 22–August 23

A new approach or routine can spell improvement. Another

conversation, a second opinion, or expert advice could be to your advantage. Now through next week, you are likely to see it, hear it, or feel it in some added, redirected, or undercurrent way. Saturday’s super new moon in Libra can bring a sense that you are on your way to someplace good or better.

F

VIRGO

G

LIBRA

H

SCORPIO

I

SAGITTARIUS

J

CAPRICORN

K

AQUARIUS

L

PISCES

August 23–September 23

Thursday/Friday, the moon in Virgo keeps you on the go. Planned or not, things have a way of working out the way they should. Regarding a relationship, a financial matter, or a health issue, Saturday’s super new moon in Libra can bring something into your awareness that requires added consideration, investment, or time. Despite no pain, no gain, there is value in the act.

September 23–October 23

You have been working through a lengthy process. There have been a number of components and steps to work through. One thing hinges on another. Saturday’s super new moon in Libra moves you through yet another checkpoint.

You are further along than may be obvious, and in better shape than you may judge. Get ready for the next wave (Thursday onward).

October 23–November 22

Progressively, you are gaining a better feel for how to play it next. Mercury and Venus keep your radar sharp and help you to move through a roadblock or mindset (yours or theirs). Clear quality time this weekend for socializing, personal entertainment, or one you love.

Even so, Saturday to Monday could expose something in need of repair or healing. You’ll have a great knack for asking the right questions, for spotting an advantage or a bargain.

November 22–December 21

Time is moving forward, and as it does, you’ll come to realize that you have turned yet another corner and are already onto a next chapter. Saturday’s new moon in Libra can act as something of a mixed-bag fresh start. Some things don’t have a clear-cut resolution or answer. It’s as good as it gets. Next Wednesday/Thursday, you’ll hit a next wave.

December 21–January 20

Reward yourself this weekend. You deserve it. Saturday’s super new moon in Libra and the end of Pluto retrograde next week launch a next chapter regarding your career, material status, or home life. Now through the end of the year, destiny dictates the game plan, but know it will make full use of your input and effort.

January 20–February 18

Feel like you have just turned a corner? That’s Mercury and Venus doing you some good. Friday can be productive, but if you can’t get to it all, don’t sweat it. Saturday/ Sunday, the super new moon can see you make good headway, perhaps unexpectedly so. Monday through Wednesday, you’re deep into it. Tuesday is best for study or research.

February 18–March 20

You may have a lot of little things to take care of on Friday, but mostly the going is good. Take the weekend for yourself or spend time with one you love. Easy does it best.

Monday/Tuesday calls for a full dive.

Pluto ends retrograde late Wednesday. Allow extra time to feel your way along. g

Book a reading or sign up for Rose’s free monthly newsletter at rosemarcus.com.

DRINK

South African wines have serious heft

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so full of cheer. Look no further than Ken Forrester Old Vine Reserve Chenin Blanc 2018 from Stellenbosch ($21.99, B.C. Liquor Stores) to get a good idea of the heights this grape can hit. Jasmine blooms in the aromatics, while the palate enjoys a

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his week’s column is being filed from the Western Cape wine region in South Africa, about five days into my current trip, which marks my first time setting foot on the continent.

Along with a small handful of wine writers from Quebec and Ontario, I’ve been brought here by the Wines of South Africa promotional organization to get a close look at what’s happening here.

So. Let’s set the scene.

The landscape is lush, with rolling hills covered in vineyards and multicoloured flowers and foliage that are mostly alien to me. Each region I’ve visited is noisy with the whistles, warbles, and calls of various birds, and the skittering of insects, all of them unrecognizable as well. There has been drought for years, straining vineyards and all aspects of life, and the sociopolitical climate I’ve witnessed seems far removed from apartheid-era grief, with many cultures intertwining merrily in business and pleasure.

The Dutch and British colonial influences are still strong, in architecture and language (the Afrikaans language borrows heavily from Dutch), and also in the cuisine, where hearty meats and stews are often accompanied by strong cheeses and rich sauces.

With this kind of food being common, wines with heft are often expected, and there are certainly plenty of them to be had here. That said, what I’ve encountered during the past few days is an energy among winery proprietors and winemakers to make pristine wines with freshness and elegance and to distance themselves from the rich and gloopy cheap wines that made waves around the globe a couple decades back.

At the forefront of premium South African wine is Anthony Hamilton Russell, who took over his father’s Hemel-en-Aarde Valley Hamilton Russell Vineyards winery in the 1990s, taking it from a multivarietal portfolio to one specifically focusing on (squint and it could be Burgundy) Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. An elegant and classy gent, he’s kinda the James Bond of the industry here, with a keen sense of quality, a boatload of charisma, and—as he mentioned while giving a tour of his cellar—a penchant for “wines of relevance and consequence”.

Extensive soil research, low yields, and the precise hand of winemaker Emul Ross have resulted in wines that are sophisticated odes to this breezy, cool-climate region. Sure, they’re pricey (we’re looking at $60 to $80 and above at private stores like Everything Wine and Marquis Wine Cellars), but wines of their quality and stature would run in the hundreds were they originating from Burgundy.

That punching above one’s weight class doesn’t just happen at the higher tier of pricing. I was absolutely smitten during my visit to DeMorgenzon in Stellenbosch, where biodiversity, a variety of distinct soil types, a focus on sustainability, and quirky touches like baroque and classical music playing throughout the vineyard and cellars make for wines of lovely nuance and quality.

Take DeMorgenzon DMZ Chardonnay 2017 from Stellenbosch, a mere $22.49 at B.C. Liquor Stores.

Seriously, it’s such a killer value.

From vines steeped in granite and sandstone soils, the wine comes from various lots, individually fermented, then blended and aged in a mix of stainless steel and French oak. The fruit is citrus-driven, with light tropical edges bringing forward guava and star fruit, and a generous acid and mineral core making things nice and juicy. A hell of a charmer.

And the Chenin Blanc. Oh, the Chenin Blancs of South Africa! It’s one of the only countries seriously focusing on the pear-and-honeyladen white variety, and they’re often

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Ru nne r- up Be st I ndi an

36 t h A N N I V ER SA R Y

> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < WE SHARED A BRIEF MOMENT

r

s

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 22, 2019 WHERE: B-Line Buses are awkward. Your smile is beautiful. And if you reply, it could be more plentiful. I felt a little bit sad when I saw the back of your brown coat disembarking at Fraser. But not overly so. Enough to write a cheesy poem and give you a second chance to connect anyways.

Hope you are well.

SOFIA @ THE KETTLE METTLE

r

s

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 WHERE: East Kelowna We both did the 50k gravel fondo bike race from Chute Lake to Kelowna. The view was spectacular from the KVR yet, meeting you at the finish line was the highlight! We chatted briefly until your ride came. You took a sip from your beer and offered me the rest as you were leaving. What I really wanted was to spend a little more time getting to know you. Let me know if you feel the same?

TIME FOR EVERYTHING (KITS/NEW WEST)

r

s

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 WHERE: West Broadway and Trutch 22NDAnnual

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I was your first client at your new job. I felt a connection, if you did too then please reply with what you remember about me.

246 TO D-TOWN

s

r

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 WHERE: 246 Downtown You were on the 246 to D-town at 5pm. Yup. I said D-town.

You: denim jacket and Blundstones w/funky socks and a twinkle in your eye. You were reading a book. Me: Dressed in scrubs. Purple pants, grey shirt and a denim over shirt. Let's grab coffee?

Or better yet, a hazy IPA.

TORI. THERE’S A FIRST BEAUTIFUL SMILE ON THE 240

r

s

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 WHERE: 240 to North Vancouver I didn’t notice you until we were across the bridge where it was standing room only and still pretty crowded. When a couple people got up and we were about to sit across from each other, you shot me an unexpectedly huge smile -- the kind of smile you’d give to a friend that you haven’t seen in forever.

I was trying to figure out whether we’ve met before, so I might have looked a bit confused when I smiled back. Even if you were just happy to take a seat, you have a wonderful and bright smile and it really made my day!

VITAL ENCOUNTER ON THE 99

s

r

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 18, 2019 WHERE: On the Eastbound 99 Bus from UBC We were sitting on the bus.

You in the back row, facing forward, reading The Straight.

My friend and I were sitting to your left, conversing loudly.

We glanced at each other a few times. You have long hair and knitted socks. I was looking 90s Gap in a white sweatshirt and khakis. I lamented my dry spell to my friend. As you got off, somewhere in Kitsilano, you reassured me of my lasting vitality. Want to talk about sex with me?

#16 ARBUTUS BUS

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 18, 2019 WHERE: Arbutus Street We traded glances and then you stared at me intently from the front of the bus. You saw me fiddling with my light blue shirt. You then walked past me and I smiled at you as you left the bus. If you happen to see this, specify at which street you got off the bus. I wish we could have chatted, but I had an event to catch.

ALTERED STATES AT THE FOX CABARET

r

s

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 WHERE: Fox Cabaret Your mastery of top 40 lyrics was equal parts cringey and adorable. It’d be cool to see you again. Text me?

I SAW YOU WALK INTO SUNRISE MARKET TODAY

r

s

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 WHERE: Sunrise Market Cashier Line Up Powell St I was standing in line with my order, then you walked in around 1:00-1:15 pm abouts.

We exchanged glances after a few moments and I smiled a bit.

The lady you were with was asking if they had any pepperoni for sale, unfortunately they did not. You have long black hair and were wearing a purple top. I was the tall guy with a mohawk wearing a leather jacket, blue jeans and brown shoes. I would like to take you out on a date one day because there is something about you that intrigued my interest. :)

WINNERS DOWNTOWN MONDAY SEPT 16

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 WHERE: Winners - Granville Street You are an Asian woman, under 30 I think - We locked eyes briefly as you completed your purchase at Winners on Monday night around 8pm - I was the white guy, black hair in the blue trench coat - drop me a line if you want to chat and see if there is something here...

LAKERS HAT LAX

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r

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 WHERE: LAX Near Terminal 68A Hello Beautiful! I passed you by the small kiosk; it was brief but there were sparks. I looked for you by the baggage carousel and wish I had said something earlier. Can I take you out?

Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _ SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 11

viff ’19

The daring Ms. Campbell takes a leap d THE GUARDIAN wrapped its coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival with a few of critic Wendy Ide’s personal raves.

Among those singled out for best performance was Deragh Campbell, who might not have the marquee value of Ide’s other choices—Adam Sandler, Riz Ahmed, and Lesley Manville—but whose towering work in the micro-budgeted Anne at 13,000 ft proves her to be every bit their equal.

TIFF itself extended an honourable mention to Campbell in its own slate of awards. For her part, the constitutionally modest 30-year-old tells the Straight, “I’m a tiny bit overwhelmed by the attention,” although it’s been a long time coming for Campbell and the loose collection of young Canadian filmmakers she collaborates with.

With Anne, shot piecemeal over 20 months (for pennies), director Kazik Radwanski gets the perfect foil for his pitiless style of character interrogation, which places the unstable child-care worker played

by Campbell in relentless medium close-up. Aligned with her gradual unravelling, the effect is so powerful that the film’s bookend skydiving sequences, which Campbell did for real with a GoPro, register as the least perilous aspects of her performance.

“I think most of the movies I’ve been in, the focus has been a bit more on formal concerns,” she suggests, during a call from Toronto. “In this, the performance and the filmmaking are kind of in dialogue with each other, so suddenly people are giving my performance attention. And it’s really exciting!”

Those formal concerns were undeniably present in Antoine Bourges’s Fail to Appear, an indelible feature screened at VIFF 2017 in which Campbell’s social worker is indistinguishable from the film’s doggedly prosaic aesthetic. The same goes for Sofia Bohdanowicz’s remarkable Never Eat Alone, seen at VIFF 2016. This was Campbell’s first appearance as Audrey, a surrogate inside Bohdanowicz’s intensely personal cinema, now returning in MS Slavic 7—the second of the two Campbell-led features (and two shorts) coming to VIFF this year.

This time, their intimate process yields a codirecting credit for Campbell, while Audrey is allowed a tad more emotional exposure than before, as if Campbell/Bohdanowicz are gradually learning to trust their audience. Along with Anne at 13,000 ft, it offers strong evidence that VIFF’s Future//Present program is locked in to the most exciting work being done on the booming margins of Canadian cinema.

“It sounds so utopian, but I’m happy to say it’s true: what has been so incredible about the Toronto film scene is that were all coming to visibility at the same time,” says Campbell. “We’re all going to the Cinematheque together, we’re all going out after the movie and talking about it together, we’re all seeing each other’s movies, we’re all giving each other notes on each other’s movies. Rather than this competitive thing, it’s actually people pulling each other up— together. Which makes us so much stronger and more undeniable when it comes to the industry.”

Campbell audibly winces through that last word—industry. “We’re not being acknowledged in a boardroom,” she says. “We’re being acknowledged through actual filmmaking.”

Acclaimed actor Deragh Campbell skydives into VIFF with two shorts and two features, including TIFF fave Anne at 13,000 ft. at Cinematheque on Saturday and Tuesday (September 28 and October 1), with Deragh Campbell in attendance for all four.

ASH MAKES PRIVATE HELL OUT OF BURNING OKANAGAN

d WHEN VIFF wraps on October 11, Ash is the film people will be talking about. Andrew Huculiak’s latest is both an astonishing technical feat and, thematically, a potentially explosive act of daring. It’s hard to know which was more dangerous.

“It is crazy,” Huculiak tells the Georgia Straight. “But that’s the kind of movie I like to make: something that feels almost impossible. That’s where the exciting things happen.”

Despite being advised against it “at every turn”, the Vancouver-based filmmaker and his partners at Amazing Factory Productions began their second feature by flying into the Okanagan and amassing an extraordinary library of footage from 2016’s raging-wildfire season. Next, actors Chelah Horsdal and Tim Guinee were shipped into Peachland while its hills still burned ferociously in the near distance. Guinee’s jittery, fully embodied performance as small-town reporter Stan Hurst was yet another gamble that turned into a miracle—he was hired 48 hours before shooting. Guinee told Huculiak: “I feel like it’s the kind of movie people are going to have arguments about, and that’s why I want to do it.”

And how. Those arguments will revolve around what Huculiak calls “an exploration of the edges of empathy”, timed serendipitously to coincide with the era of “cancel culture” and its tendencies toward mob behaviour. To put it another way: platitudes about “empathy” are easy until we’re asked to consider a man charged with creating and disseminating child pornography. This is where Ash takes the viewer. To say more would rob the film of its power, in which our assumptions about Stan are tested and overturned more than once.

The screenplay was inspired by a childhood friend whose family experiences were described in Dave Preston’s book Truth Be Told: A Journey From the Dark Side of OCD. “I understood why people would become so violently irate, but I saw the human side of Dave,” says Huculiak, who subsequently found himself pondering the relative hypocrisies of “normalized evil”. The sanctioned

by Adrian Mack killings of war, the rabid pursuit of status and wealth—it all gets a pass, Anne at 13,000 ft screens at the “and then you have this man who’s International Village on Friday and Sunday suffering a mental illness, who com(September 27 and 29); MS Slavic 7 screens mitted a crime where the victims were 12 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

himself and his family, but that type of person is vilified, ostracized, excluded from the community.

“I don’t know if people are ready to talk about these types of things with nuance,” continues the 29-year-old filmmaker. “But maybe in 10 years this movie will be looked back on as a worthwhile addition to the dialogue.

‘Why are people behaving in these ways?’ It extends to any wrongdoing.

I think for us to understand where people are coming from is the best way to stop these things from happening.”

by Adrian Mack

Ash screens at the Playhouse on Monday (September 30) and at SFU Woodward’s on Wednesday (October 2).

VANCOUVER TALENT GOES FOR THE HEAVY WITH DAUGHTER d ANTHONY SHIM’S drama Daughter is so much a product of Vancouver that the Georgia Straight’s escort ads are featured in one of its earliest scenes. Less glaringly, the film grew out of the Railtown Actors Studio, where former student Shim was working as an instructor when he handed a script to studio cofounder and movie-TV veteran John Cassini.

Relates Cassini: “He literally said to me, ‘I’ve written a lot in my life; I think it’s all been shit. This might be good—will you read it?’ ” It was only a few hours later, according to Shim, that he received a text insisting, “We could just shoot this thing as written, tomorrow, and it would work.” Some months later, Shim is the writerdirector of the film tapped for VIFF 2019’s B.C. Spotlight gala.

Daughter begins with Cassini’s character, Jim, setting up headquarters in a luxury penthouse suite for a nightly routine of booze, sex, and oblivion. Flashbacks clue us in to his situation: successful in commercial real estate but divorced, with a barely teenage daughter (Jordyn Ashley Olson) whose own unhappy situation is established in the film’s prologue.

“It’s not like I was trying to make the most likable character,” Cassini says in a call to the Georgia Straight.

“A lot of times, the characters we play, it’s before they go to therapy. It’s before they’ve worked shit out. And what he’s doing is trying to fill a void, trying to fill a hole that is so painful, and he’s not prepared on how to do it.”

Gradually, new escort Nikki (Teagan Vincze) shows up and triggers some self-awareness in her dissipated client, whereupon the film gambles on a largely uninterrupted, 22-minute, psychological pas de

deux between the two characters. It comes as no surprise that both actor and director mention John Cassavetes as an influence on the production.

“Carrying a long scene is not something out of John or Teagan’s element. It’s what they excel at,” Shim notes in a separate call. “To me, that’s the film. If that doesn’t work, the film doesn’t work. There was no Plan B.” With that, Daughter hurtles toward its cathartic finish. What lingers is the film’s benevolent reading of a lost middle-aged man and the 26-year-old woman who helps him rediscover his humanity, planted inside a low-key critique of patriarchal violence and male self-loathing. Cassini recalls sobbing over one of the screenplay’s more emotionally truthful moments and wondering: “Where does this guy get the maturity?” Shim thinks that Daughter—which was speed-blurted onto the page when writer’s block stalled an entirely different project—simply taps into the most universal impulses.

“I’m not a middle-aged white male, I had a Korean father; I grew up as an immigrant,” the 33-year-old filmmaker says, “but these are just the questions and challenges all men should have.”

by Adrian Mack

Daughter screens at the B.C. Spotlight gala at the Playhouse next Saturday (October 5) and at the Rio Theatre next Tuesday (October 8).

ROBERT DAVIDSON CREATES A HAIDA MODERN WORLD d HAVING ENCHANTED viewers with his 2015 VIFF award winner Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World, it follows that filmmaker Charles Wilkinson would turn his camera on Robert Davidson. The influence of the world-renowned artist on Haida Gwaii is incalculable.

In 1969, when the first totem pole in living memory was raised in Masset, the youthful Davidson’s mission was to revive a culture that had been consigned to the museum.

“If anybody pitched that idea, you’d say ‘It’s crazy; it’s not gonna happen,’ ” Wilkinson tells the Georgia Straight. “But it happened.”

Indeed, the film, Haida Modern, starts with a visit to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the robust septuagenarian is received by reverent Manhattanites. Meanwhile, Karen Duffek of Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology discusses Davidson’s critical break from modernism. “He experienced the absence of this art from the community,” she

says. “He had a different ambition: to bring it back home and not only create for the art world.”

“That’s something that attracted me to Robert early on,” Wilkinson says, “that sense that he has a foot in two worlds, and that he’s not binary.

He doesn’t say everything white is bad, everything Indigenous is good.

He picks and chooses. And he performs his obligation as a human to discern between things and not just take it by rote, by dogma.”

Davidson himself is a warm and generous presence in the film, discussing the shame he felt as a child when told he was “Indian”, and offering candid insights into his own sometimes painful growth as a father. While paying attention to the concurrent progress of Indigenous rights, Haida Modern focuses largely on Davidson’s artistic evolution, his mastery of technique, his wedding of the natural with the supernatural, and the advent of the luminous new work that lends the film its title (a sequence alone worth the price of admission.)

As expected, environmental concerns dominate. “Nature keeps being the victim,” Davidson laments, wondering: “How can we try to imagine our future? Can we create an image to start changing the direction?” Anyone familiar with Wilkinson’s recent ecominded work will sense an equivalent anxiety about his own effectiveness.

“Of course I wonder,” he says. In Haida Modern, national Green Leader Elizabeth May comments that “art comes first.” To which Wilkinson adds: “You can write a big brief, but if you give people an image they can relate to, they’re much more likely to act, and I think that’s what I see as the key power of what Robert does… and a little bit in what I try to do.”

by Adrian Mack

Haida Modern screens at the Playhouse on October 1 and 11.

A CHINESE STUDENT IS LOST IN A WORLD OF MIGRATION d OF THE 10 years that Vancouver director Ying Wang has spent making her documentary The World Is Bright, the last two have been the most challenging.

That’s because she’s had to weave together the complex threads of the death of a young man named Shi Ming—a story that has morphed into a mystery-thriller; a portrait of immigration’s painful toll on mental health; an intimate family tragedy; and a microcosm of globalism and mass societal change in China. She had gathered multiple interviews with family members, experts, and officials, not to mention haunting dramatizations, archival photos, and mountains of legal documents.

“Because we still have a lot of work to finish the final cut, I feel really stressed and I don’t believe I can actually finish it,” says Wang, who also cofounded the Cinevolution Media Arts Society in Richmond. “The two years of editing, that was very full of frustrations and self-doubts…and also there was all the financial stress, because we ran out of all the grant money a long time ago.

There were a lot of moments where I would wonder why I took on this terrible monster work. But I think, now, definitely it’s worthwhile.”

The film follows Qian Hui Deng and Xue Mei Li, after they receive notice from the Canadian government that their son, Shi Ming, has committed suicide and has already been buried. Wang follows them through mountains of red tape, and back and forth to China, to find out what happened. Along the way, there are revelations and twists that Wang never see next page

could have predicted.

The filmmaker found herself drawn into the tale because she saw similarities to her own experience: like Shi Ming, she grew up in Beijing amid massive progress. She, too, had come here as a foreign student, and she had witnessed her own sibling fall victim to mental illness after immigrating to North America (the focus of her first feature, Sisters).

As the ambitious and artful work comes together for VIFF, Wang feels assured the momentous task was worth it, building a multilayered story that goes far beyond today’s headlines about Chinese immigration. “I hope this film can provide a deeper understanding and a full picture—especially about foreign students,” she says.

“You see so many of them everywhere in Vancouver. But who are they? And why did they come here?

“Migration is not one direction, it’s back and forth and people can get caught in between,” she adds before heading back to her final cut. “I still feel there’s not enough films about these new complex stories about immigration.”

by Janet Smith

The World Is Bright screens at SFU Woodward’s on Sunday and next Thursday (September 29 and October 3), and at the Vancity Theatre on October 9.

WOMEN KILLERS SHOWN A MEASURE OF MERCY d ARNAUD DESPLECHIN’S Oh Mercy! isn’t a whodunit; it’s a whydunit—without an answer. Set in povertyblighted Roubaix, near northern France’s Belgian border, the film observes local police as they grapple with a number of crimes, led by the soulful, Algerian-born Commissaire Daoud (Roschdy Zem). Eventually, the film’s diffuse narrative rounds on two young women suspected of murdering their elderly neighbour.

Desplechin, a native of Roubaix, extracted his story from a Mosco Boucault documentary about the depressed city, where the killing

The mystery of a student’s death is unravelled in The World Is Bright (left); Sara Forestier faces the music in Oh Mercy! (right).

actually took place. The filmmaker found himself sympathizing with the young women. “I couldn’t stop liking them, even though they did the worst,” he tells the Georgia Straight during a Skype call from Paris. “It reminded me of Dostoyevsky. When you start to like Raskolnikov, it’s too late. He’s killing the old lady, and you think, ‘Moron, stop doing that!’ ” Oh Mercy! is otherwise distinguished from the common policier by the imperturbable presence of Daoud, “a superhero”, in Desplechin’s words, with an unusually intuitive approach to detective work and a philosophical apprehension of the troubled world around him. Cast against type, Roschdy Zem was told by his director: “You will have to find inside you the answer to the question ‘Why is Daoud going through all these terrible events but smiling and accepting and embracing the world?’ ” Meanwhile, Desplechin saw Léa Seydoux’s defiant Claude as a thematic descendant of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, while Sara Forestier accepted the role of Marie by simply sending the director—to his great delight—an image of Renée Jeanne Falconetti in Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. “An audience is harsher with a female character than with a male

character,” Desplechin remarks. “I think you accept everything from a man. When you are looking at a Clint Eastwood movie, the meaner he is, the more you love him. And I would love to give that kind of freedom to a female character.”

As a work of radical compassion, Oh Mercy! does more than that. It’s perhaps significant that Desplechin— a consistent favourite of VIFF’s Panorama/Spotlight on France program— is eager to visit the Downtown Eastside when he brings the new film to Vancouver for his first-ever visit. “What I wanted to do,” he says, “was to take the very humble words which were said in this documentary and make them as precious and as full of grandeur as a Shakespeare line or a Chekhov line.

To take this very humble material and treat it as if it was a sacred text.”

by Adrian Mack

Oh Mercy! screens at the Playhouse next Friday (October 4) with Arnaud Desplechin in attendance, and at SFU on Saturday (October 5).

SOME FEMINISTS LIKE THEIR GENDER TAKES HOT d ON FIRST glance, Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot is a light and silly affair built on cross-

dressing gags and peak sex bomb Marilyn Monroe.

But 60 years from its debut, this subversive black-and-white classic seems more topical than ever. No wonder, two years ago, a BBC poll of critics around the world ranked it the best comedy of all time.

The film is as groundbreakingly fluid about its genre as it is about gender—opening as a mafia chase movie before Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon go undercover as women to hide with an all-female jazz orchestra led by Sugar Kane (Marilyn herself).

And now audiences get a chance to see it in an even newer light, with even more gender twists, at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Feminist Live Reads finds women reading all the parts in a fundraiser for the rape crisis centre WAVAW. “Some Like It Hot is one of my favourite movies, actually,” says Vancouver actor Katie Findlay (bestknown for the ABC series How to Get Away With Murder), speaking to the Straight over the phone from her Vancouver home. “My dad only watches movies made before 1960.

“I’ve always wanted to be handsome and dashing and morally questionable,” she enthuses about reading the part of Tony Curtis, who essentially plays three parts: Joe, the

jazz musician who witnesses a mafia shootout with his buddy; Josephine, a female jazz musician in disguise; and Junior, a faux millionaire who woos Sugar and sounds an awful lot like Cary Grant. “People seem to have trouble with women being more than one thing. And I get to do a Cary Grant impression!”

It helps that her bestie Kacey Rohl (who stars in VIFF 2019 movie White Lie) is reading Jack Lemmon’s role; they’ve watched Some Like It Hot many times together.

In this era of #MeToo and talk of consent, Findlay sees the ongoing relevance of Wilder’s film.

When Curtis and Lemmon become women, they’re suddenly the target of a lot of unwanted attention.

“As a movie I think it has female consciousness; it’s aware of how a woman feels,” Findlay observes of the male characters facing constant harrassment once they take on female personas.

Filmmaker and critic Chandler Levack found out immediately that having women read traditional male scripts could raise fascinating questions when she launched Feminist Live Reads in Toronto in 2015, with a charity presentation of an Entourage script. Since then she’s organized readings of everything from Almost Famous to Reservoir Dogs.

“It was really fascinating to see women read a script never intended for them to play,” she tells the Straight over the phone from Toronto. “It was funny and ironic and kind of really uncomfortable. And it raised the question, ‘Why couldn’t women have played those roles before?’”

Adding to the experience, Levack reads stage directions on-stage while local songstress Jill Barber brings to life some of Monroe’s iconic songs from Some Like It Hot ( “I Wanna Be Loved By You” ).

“It’s a really cool way to engage with a movie you love,” says Levack.

by Janet Smith

Feminist Live Reads presents Some Like It Hot at the Rio Theatre on Tuesday (October 1).

EXCLUSIVE GIVEAWAY

ENTER

for a chance to win a Double Pass to the Advance Screening of

~ Wednesday, October 9 • 7:30pm ~ Scotiabank Theatre IIN THEATRES OCTOBER 11 Visit

for your chance to Win! SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 13

VIFF’19

One thousand nights at the movies

Among your choices at VIFF week one: the NFB theorizes about Assholes (left); a pioneering photographer is celebrated in Martha: A Picture Story (middle); student stands too close to teacher in Scarborough (right).

d OVERAMPED A-HOLES, undervalued artists, and the enduring madness of Winnipeg—you’ll find all this and more in our latest round of raves, faves, and pans from the 38th Vancouver International Film Festival. Be sure to visit Straight.com for even more.

fashioned the VHS diary into this memorable feature, which is poignant not only for Danny’s candid insights into his own alienation—such sensitivity challenges our prejudices about a man so plain that he verges on invisible—but also for the glimpse of an unglamorous Vancouver also ASSHOLES: A THEORY (Canada) gone too soon. Cinematheque, SepHey, it’s no theory. They’re everywhere tember 29 (6:30 p.m.) and October 4 in this era of uncorked boorishness, as (8:45 p.m.) by Adrian Mack documented in veteran John Walker’s NFB take on the book of the same DWELLING IN THE FUCHUN MOUNname. The film is less interested in the TAINS (China) The title, which reways we all a-hole out at times than in fers to a 14th-century scroll painting, the particulars of dominant-culture suggests a docile pastorale. But this types (white, straight males, for start- beautiful film is actually a complicated ers) who feel threatened as a group look at China’s overwhelming chanand take permission from, let’s say, ges, with one family in a formerly rural certain leaders to bully anyone in front province standing in for a country of them. John Cleese and a variety of contemplating its own past and future. talking heads enliven this overview, Gu Xiaogang spent two years capturwhich is more of a discussion starter ing all four seasons in the far-eastern, than a definitive study. International river-based region of Hangzhou, and Village, October 2 (9 p.m.); SFU, Octo- he uses long, painterly tracking shots to follow the mostly quiet travails of ber 4 (4 p.m.) by Ken Eisner four unlike brothers, their offspring, BAIT (U.K.) Every fish lands with a and their ailing matriarch. The effect loud thwack in this aggressively ex- can be emotionally distant, but the perimental effort, shot on black-and- film never drags, even at 150 minutes, white 16mm and processed to show and the cumulative effect is like watchevery nick and scratch. The tale of a ing swimmers head doggedly toward Cornish fisherman who has lost his faraway shores, each wanting to call boat, and way of life, is told with the that place “home”. SFU, September 26 grammar of expressionist silent cin- (6 p.m.); International Village, October ema. That includes relentless close- 4 (11 a.m.) by KE ups, lots of shock cuts, some notable overacting, and postsynchronized FOURTEEN (USA) Although it can sound. Young doc veteran Mark Jen- resemble an extended episode of Girls kin’s feature debut isn’t a smartass as directed by Nicole Holofcener, this Guy Maddin affair but an innovative study of errant, increasingly one-way way to reframe fading cultural his- friendship has its own vibe going. tory. It’s also a guaranteed audience The actual writer-director, NYC indie divider. International Village, Sep- scenester Dan Sallitt, has a flair for tember 30 (8:30 p.m.) and October 4 creating low-key, believable conflict, mostly through smart dialogue rather (12:45 p.m.) by KE than big gestures. The flick’s main BEYOND THE VISIBLE—HILMA AF click is in the chemistry between Tallie KLINT (Germany) What if experts Medel and Norma Kuhling as lifelong discovered a vast collection of works pals, now in their 20s, whose bond is by an unknown artist who would tested by the latter character’s mental completely rewrite modernist art instability—something that probably history? That’s exactly what’s hap- began, we eventually learn, when she pened—with the added significance was 14. The most audacious thing here that the artist was a woman. Sweden’s is Sallitt’s willingness to jump through Hilma af Klint is now largely credited time without warning, although he with painting the western world’s first slows the momentum with quiet visual abstract work, in 1906, several years beats that sometimes drag on too long. before Wassily Kandinsky took that International Village, October 4 (9:15 credit. This exquisitely crafted and p.m.) and October 5 (3:30 p.m.) by KE engaging documentary celebrates af Klint’s expressive, and unabashedly IT WAS ALL SO WONDERFUL: THE feminine, masterpieces—which look EVERYDAY MAGIC OF MARY PRATT like they come straight out of today’s (Canada) Maritimer Mary Pratt was galleries, with their blend of the mys- a painter who could turn something tical and the natural worlds. Interviews as mundane as a jelly mould into an are interspersed with reenactments of exquisite object, erotically charged. Her af Klint painting the huge, swirling hyperrealism was once dissed by gallery pieces laid out on a floor, as she was snobs; only later were her domestic still known to do. Vancity, September 27 lifes appreciated for the light-playing (3:45 p.m.) and October 2 (3:45 p.m.); masterpieces they really were. What’s International Village, October 9 (6:15 so great about Kenneth J. Harvey’s definitive bio of the late artist is that it rep.m.) by Janet Smith veals her subversive spirit and cheeky DANNY (Canada) Middle-aged and sense of humour in the face of a socisingle, Danny Zeghers treated his ety bent on turning her into a proper video camera as confidant while he housewife. Rich with in-depth archivbattled leukemia in mid-’90s Vancou- al finds and interviews with family, ver. Filmmakers Lewis Bennett and friends, historians, and the droll Pratt Aaron Zeghers (Danny’s nephew) herself, Wonderful is one of several 14 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

strong docs about pioneering women artists at this year’s VIFF. SFU, September 28 (10:30 a.m.); Cinematheque, October 4 (6:30 p.m.) by JS

exploitation-thriller territory, climaxing with a nightmarish reimagining of The Raid: Redemption. The switch-up might induce vertigo, but either one of these two movies is well MARTHA: A PICTURE STORY (Aus- worth your time. Playhouse, October tralia/USA) The understated title of 2 (6:30 p.m.); International Village, this buzzy little doc could not fit the October 10 (4 p.m.) by AM film’s subject better: Martha Cooper, who looks a bit like your petite grand- “OFF SEASON” (Germany) Here’s a ma if she wore sneakers and a hoodie, prickly little item, only 43 minutes is a long-unsung hero of the graf- long, that puts one wealthy couple fiti and early hip-hop scene. Martha under a magnifying glass—dangeropens with OSGEMEOS—the Bra- ous, since they are vacationing in the zilian twins and street-art icons who hot Sicilian sun. Her dad runs the turned the cement towers on Granville company they both work for, and she’s Island into snappily dressed Giants— unhappily pregnant, but their probpulling out a dog-eared copy of Sub- lems—never fully explained—seem way Art, a pirated, Xeroxed edition of to run deeper than who has control the 1984 publication that they pains- over what. Somewhat confounding, takingly coloured and used as their but Transit’s Godehard Giese and sleek bible. Director Selina Miles tracks up-and-comer Franziska Petri make down the unlikely genius behind the it work. Screening with the shorts “I, book: the septuagenarian Cooper, a Wretched Man” and “Subject to Reonetime New York Post photographer view”. Vancity, October 1 (3:30 p.m.); who became fascinated with the bub- International Village, October 4 (9 ble letters and other “writing” she saw p.m.) by KE popping up in the hard-knocks Bronx of the 1970s. She immersed herself in SCARBOROUGH (U.K.) Two stuthe culture, following early legends dent-teacher affairs take place in the like Dondi over barbed wire to get same once-glamorous hotel in the her shots. At the same time, she was U.K. seaside town of the title, with unknowingly capturing a now myth- mysterious parallels that resolve unical era that would quickly be painted comfortably in the last reel. Direcover by business-improvement squads. tor Barnaby Southcombe aims for Cooper now enjoys godmother status the pervy, time-splintered Nic Roeg among global hip-hop fans, and finally effect, with the addition of mandasees her work hung in galleries. Best tory 21st-century gender-ideology part: she still gets her kicks donning fixation. Jessica Barden is a long way all-black and racing around Berlin’s from her role in last year’s VIFF fave, 1UP graffiti crew as they descend on a The New Romantic, but as firecracker nighttime train yard. You’ll get a simi- teen sexpot Beth, she makes the trip lar rush watching her. Cinematheque, to Scarborough worthwhile. InterSeptember 26 (6:30 p.m.); International national Village, October 1 (6:45 p.m.)

Village, September 30 (11 a.m.); and and October 3 (1:30 p.m.) by AM SFU, October 11 (6:45 p.m.) by JS Hangdog TAPEWORM (Canada) MIEL-EMILE (Netherlands) Em- Adam Brooks (The Editor) takes a blematic of VIFF’s Vanguard series of bloody shit in a field, viewed in lovparticularly challenging films, Miel- ing close-up before the credits roll Emile focuses on the now elderly son on this shaggily amusing effort from of Dutch artist Pierre Raaijmakers, Winnipeg. While he frets over his who had 12 children in a desolate spot health and his depressed wife’s loyalty, in the French Pyrenees, where the a couple of stoners buy a cheap canwhite-haired Emile still lives. Veteran nabis flag between bouts of outdoor provocateur Peter van Houten (who rutting on a dirty mattress, a standup made an earlier film about this family) comedian weathers tough rooms and mixes film stocks and shooting ratio even tougher health issues, and a sulwith intense close-ups of his thorny len lardass (played by codirector Milos subject, plus readings of old letters Mitrovic) makes life generally unfrom his mother, who tried to protect pleasant for his partner. (Or maybe it’s the youngster from her dictatorial his mom?) These stories kinda interhusband. It’s fitfully engaging but ul- sect, but it doesn’t really matter when timately wearying fare, mainly due Tapeworm’s deadpan tone is the real to extreme length. Vancity, October 1 attraction here, climaxing with a cos(8:15 p.m.) and October 3 (4 p.m.) by KE mically cruel punch line at the expense of that poor comedian. Cinematheque, LES MISÉRABLES (France) Cruising September 30 (6:30 p.m.) and October 2 the impoverished Montfermeil com- (6:30 p.m.) by AM mune of Paris, newly arrived cop Stéphane gets a new nickname (Greaser) THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (Canada) and a bellyful of the suburb’s ethnic Mackenzie King—what a wanker, politics. Ditto the semicorrupt bully- right? Not only that, Canada’s 10th ing practised by veteran copper Chris prime minister (played by Fargo’s Dan to keep an unstable peace. The first Beirne) was a chinless, slope-shoulhalf of this feature outlines these ten- dered coward and a chronic onanist sions with surgical skill and a clear with a fetish for boot-sniffing. And he sense that filmmaker Ladj Li is native probably fucked his mom, played here to Montfermeil’s streets. The second by Guy Maddin regular Louis Negin half tips matters into hysterical as a bedridden clairvoyant. These are

among the least revisionist ideas in Matthew Rankin’s gleeful 16mm attack on Canadian historical propriety, shot in a style you might call Winnipeg expressionism. Of course, craziest of all is the notion that our elected leaders might be groomed and manipulated by some sort of untouchable genocidal elite, represented by scenestealing Seán Cullen’s corpulent governor general, Lord Muto. As a dark theory of the colonial impulse, Wilhelm Reich would approve (through tears of laughter). International Village, September 28 (9:30 p.m.); Rio, September 30 (6:30 p.m.) by AM URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD: INTO HER OWN (USA) The story of Polish-

American artist Ursula von Rydingsvard is as monumental and dramatic as her haunting sculptures. Born in Germany to Ukrainian-Polish parents, she faced the traumas of Nazi rule, displaced-persons camps, physical abuse, and finally immigration to an artless American town. But she persevered, following what one art critic calls here a “deep, deep need to make art”—often with chain saws, hazmatstyle masks, and granite dust, among other items. She recalls it all in hushed tones in a mesmerizingly shot doc that celebrates her resilience as much as the colossal beauty of her jutting, bulbous, tactile cedar forms. Vancity, October 2 (6 p.m.) and October 4 (noon) by JS VARDA BY AGNÈS (France) Cinema

buffs should flock to this reflection on 60 years of moviemaking by the godmother of the nouvelle vague—and feminism in film. The through line is an illustrated lecture by the late nonagenarian director, a diminutive firecracker ever bedecked in purple, as is her signature bob. But it soon morphs into a playful, clip-by-clip excavation of her pioneering work, including 1962’s realtime experiment Cléo de 5 à 7. What you grow to appreciate is that the egofree, articulate Varda, who made 2017’s whimsical Faces Places, never filmed a single shot without deep consideration or, as she puts it, “empathy and love”.

Centre, September 29 (6 p.m.); Playhouse, October 1 (3:45 p.m.) by JS

WHO YOU THINK I AM (France) That

clunky title belies a powerhouse performance from Juliette Binoche as a newly divorced Parisian who just hit 50. She strikes back by assuming the identity of a pretty young model on Facebook and luring in the roommate of the new boyfriend who just dumped her. Got all that? Honestly, the social-media angle already feels dated, and the story itself—being told to a therapist (the great Nicole Garcia) for no good reason—is maybe three twists short of those I Met a Psycho Online things on Lifetime. But the acting is terrific, obviously, and there are enough flashes of urbane wit to make it worthwhile. “What do you call a male cougar?” someone at a dinner party asks. The answer: “A man.” Playhouse, September 27 (3:45 p.m.); Centre, October 3 (6 p.m.) by KE

Expand the Frame

Edition 38

Discover viff.org

Vancouver International Film Festival September 26 – October 11, 2019

Guest of Honour

Guest

Atom Egoyan, Canada, 105 min.

THU. SEP 26 MON. SEP 30

Bong Joon Ho, South Korea, 131 min.

7:00 PM 6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS CENTRE FOR ARTS

Jim (David Thewlis) spends his days inspecting family-owned restaurants and wielding the power to shutter dreams. But this public service can’t begin to ease his deeply conflicted conscience. His adult daughter, Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), is incarcerated for a crime she clearly didn’t commit. And, yet, she insists that she deserves to remain imprisoned for transgressions she was in fact responsible for – and that Jim instigated. Atom Egoyan’s latest is a masterful piece of sophisticated filmmaking.

Deerskin

Quentin Dupieux France, 77 min.

THU. SEP 26 MON. SEP 30

RIO INTL VILLAGE 10

Iconoclast Quentin Dupieux (remember Rubber’s avenging tire at VIFF 10?) teams up with French megastars Jean Dujardin and Adèle Haenel for this blackly comic look at one man’s love affair with… his fringed buckskin jacket? The purchase of said vintage jacket leads Georges (Dujardin) to throw his previous life in the bin, declare himself a filmmaker, and begin a descent into obsession that has had critics invoking everything from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer to Barton Fink to Peeping Tom. Singular.

Marriage Story THU. OCT 10

FRI. SEP 27 MON. OCT 7 WED. OCT 9

SAT. OCT 5

8:45 PM

4:45 PM 10:30 AM 9:00 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10 VANCITY SFU-GCA

Few fine artists of the 20th century have the popular appeal of M.C. Escher. This entertaining, eye-opening film gives us the man through his own words and images: diary passages and more are voiced by master British actor Stephen Fry, and we see Escher’s works in both original and playfully altered form. Director Robin Lutz has the spirit of a showman but the scruples of a careful biographer; his portrait of the man who tried to portray infinity is equal parts history, psychology, and psychedelia.

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. SEP 27 SAT. OCT 5

9:30 PM 3:45 PM

A highly unusual and very original take on the prison picture, Frederikke Aspöck’s dark dramatic comedy follows imprisoned narcissistic celebrity financier Markus (Jacob Hauberg Lohmann), who is transferred to the solitary confinement wing and then manipulates everyone in sight in order to dethrone the leader of the men’s choir.

Razor sharp, thoughtful, and very entertaining, Aspöck’s discomfiting film also poses some smart moral questions. “Cleverly executed, perfectly performed.”—Variety

Box Office

Information

Online at viff.org In-person: at Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, at Davie (Mon–Sat: Noon – 7pm, Sun: 2pm–7pm)

Online at viff.org Film Infoline: 604-683-3456

3:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman’s (Cynthia Erivo) escape from slavery and transformation into one of America’s greatest heroes.

Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.

FRI. SEP 27 SUN. OCT 6 TUE. OCT 8

Guest

Mohsen Makhmalbaf Italy/UK, 101 min.

Guest

Marie Clements Canada, 100 min.

PLAYHOUSE INTL VILLAGE 9

CENTRE FOR ARTS CENTRE FOR ARTS CENTRE FOR ARTS

Marghe and her mother

Kasi Lemmons USA, 125 min.

Red Snow

Frederikke Aspöck Denmark, 93 min.

Now more devoted to their respective creative callings than they are to their marriage, Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) have arrived at a crossroads.

As a playwright, he finds himself poised for success in New York City, their current home.

However, a move to Los Angeles might just vault her acting career to the next level. Balancing Bergman-indebted drama with warm comedy, Noah Baumbach entices us into falling in love with this pair and, in turn, mourning what they have lost.

9:00 PM 3:00 PM 9:00 PM

After the international spectacles of Snowpiercer and Okja, master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho returns to his Korean roots with this suspenseful, satirical, black comedy, which functions both as a devastating social critique and a brilliantly executed exercise in Hitchcockian pure cinema. Ki-taek (Bong regular Song Kang Ho) and his family of miscreants insinuate themselves into the rich Park family’s lives – and home – with brilliantly unpredictable, ingeniously conceived, and gorgeously designed results.

Harriet

Out of Tune

Noah Baumbach USA, 136 min.

FRI. SEP 27 SUN. SEP 29 SUN. OCT 6

Escher: Journey Into Infinity Robin Lutz Netherlands, 90 min.

9:00 PM 7:30 PM

Parasite

FRI. SEP 27 SAT. SEP 28

6:00 PM 12:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9 SFU-GCA

Riffing nimbly on Pasolini’s Arabian Nights, Mohsen Makhmalbaf startles and stuns with his Italian debut. Our protagonist is Claudia (Ylenia Galtieri), an unemployed single mother who gets caught in a maelstrom of whimsy and discontent as she searches for work in Southern Italy. Instead of chronicling her trials through the trappings that stories of the economically downtrodden usually employ, the Iranian master strives for something far more spectacular and unclassifiable: call it a dolce vita.

Who You Think I Am Safy Nebbou France, 101 min.

6:15 PM 11:00 AM 6:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE INTL VILLAGE 10 INTL VILLAGE 8

When captured by the Taliban, a Gwich’in soldier (Asivak Koostachin) must confront tormenting memories he believed he’d left behind in the Canadian north. In turn, when he strikes up an alliance with a Pashtun family, he discovers an affinity with these ethnic Afghans beyond their shared bid for survival. Shifting between striking arctic and arid landscapes, and tapping into a universal need for belonging, Marie Clements delivers an enthralling thriller that’s as poignant as it is pulse-quickening.

Premier Partner

FRI. SEP 27 THU. OCT 3

3:45 PM 6:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE CENTRE FOR ARTS

An acting tour de force from Juliette Binoche anchors Safy Nebbou’s twisty, near-Hitchcockian combination of romantic drama and dark comedy. Binoche is a 50-year-old prof who constructs a 24-yearold avatar online and becomes involved with a younger man (François Civil). Be prepared to be wrong-footed repeatedly: this fascinating film is not going where you think it’s going... “A compulsively watchable drama [that] taps into some genuinely intriguing themes... Binoche is terrific throughout.”

—Screen

Premier Supporters

Schedule subject to change, visit viff.org for updates.

SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 15

Creator Talks Michael Moore Presents:

Totally Indie Day

A 30th Anniversary Screening of Roger & Me

Presented by

SAT. OCT 5

DGC Master Class Series

11:30 AM

PLAYHOUSE SAT. SEP 28

9:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Atom Egoyan

VANCITY THEATRE

Director, Guest of Honour Totally Indie Day, presented by STORYHIVE, is an opportunity for independent content creators to learn more about the art and business of motion pictures. The event will feature experienced industry professionals and rising new talents alike, with session highlights including a behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, with directors Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn, a workshop with Blade Runner 2049 Storyboard Artist Sam Hudecki and filmmakers Phillip Youmans (Burning Cane), Andrew Huculiak (Ash), Heather Young (Murmur) sharing lessons learned making and debuting their early features.

FRI. SEP 27

6:00 PM

VANCITY THEATRE

Michael Apted Director, 63 Up SUN. SEP 29

3:30 PM

VANCITY THEATRE

Holly Dale

Director, Batwoman SAT. OCT 5

Totally Indie Day Passes

Arianne Phillips

$98 Regular | $50 Student/Senior Info & Passes: goviff.org/totallyindieday

2:00 PM

VANCITY THEATRE

Costume Designer, Once Upon a Time in…

Hollywood SAT. SEP 28

6:30 PM

VANCITY THEATRE ACFC WEST, LOCAL 2020 UNIFOR

VIFF Immersed Exhibition SAT. SEP 28 – WED. OCT 2

1:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Keynote: Cliff Martinez October 3, 6:00 PM, The Annex

THE ANNEX

Experience some of the best in immersive storytelling from leading VR, AR and MR creators from across the world. This 5-day public exhibition features the finalists of this year’s International VIFF Immersed Competition and special features from the creative nexus that is British Columbia.

Masterclass: Jeff Russo October 4, 5:30 PM, The Pyatt Hall

Music BC’s SOUNDOFF October 4, 8:00 PM, The Annex Presented by

VIFF AMP OCT 3-5

Funded by

Sponsored by

PYATT HALL/THE ANNEX

Local and international supervisors, composers and post-production experts to engage in panels, workshops and networking events that explore the essential role music plays in film and television.

In partnership with

AMP Summit Passes

$149 Regular | $98 Student/Senior Select Individual Session Tickets Available Info & Passes: https://goviff.org/amp

Tickets: $15 90 minute session. Pre-registration required.

Info and Tickets: goviff.org/immersed-exhibition

A celebration of genredefining work with a contemporary twist, bringing together some of theatre, comedy and music’s brightest performers for memorable live events at VIFF, all with a cinematic connection.

Media Partners

Premier Partner

Song Exploder Live with Chuck D MON. OCT 7

7:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

On Cinema at the Cinema Live!

SUN. OCT 6 PLAYHOUSE

8:00 PM

Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin Plays Deep Red Live

This is Spinal Tap: Anniversary Live Score

Feminist Live Reads Some Like It Hot

THU. OCT 3

SUN. SEP 29

TUE. OCT 1

RIO THEATRE

6:00 PM

RIO THEATRE

7:00 PM

RIO THEATRE

Premier Supporters

Signature Partners

Festival Partners /

Supporting Partners

ACFC WEST, LOCAL 2020 UNIFOR

Media Partners

18 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

6:30 PM

MUSIC

Del Rey is a patron saint of our times

by Mike Usinger

POP EYE

A

s patron saints go, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect one for our endlessly troubled times. And the inspirational beauty of Lana Del Rey is that she’s living proof that sometimes there’s a swimming pool of gold at the end of a tar-black rainbow.

Let’s start in the present—a time when the woman once known as Elizabeth Woolridge Grant has established herself as one of the most fascinatingly complex artists of her generation. To immerse yourself in her masterful new album Norman Fucking Rockwell! is to enter a world where nothing—with the possible exception of a Sublime summertime—is easy.

Del Rey sets the table right away with the best opening lines of the year: “Goddamn, man-child/You fucked me so good that I almost said ‘I love you.’ ” Against all odds, things get even greater from there, as the singer sums up the dynamics of every relationship ever with “But you don’t know the half of the shit that you put me through,” and then drives things home with “Why wait for the best when I could have you?”

What gets lost if you’re not paying attention is that Del Rey gets the joke.

There’s plenty of sadness on Norman Fucking Rockwell!—the record’s very title operates as a commentary on where America once was (see the paintings of Norman Rockwell) and where it is today. From the burntorange clown sitting in the White House right down to the Kardashians, the USA is currently fucked, the days of white picket fences and idyllic

small towns a time-faded memory.

Still, it’s all somehow funny once you get past the surrealness.

And so is Del Rey on Norman Fucking Rockwell!, whether she’s announcing “Fresh out of fucks forever” in “Venice Bitch” or wondering “If he’s a serial killer, then what’s the worst/That can happen to a girl who’s already hurt?/I’m already hurt,” in “Happiness Is a Butterfly”.

The brilliance of Lana Del Rey is the mystique around her—whether by design, or entirely unintentional.

Figuring out what’s fact and what’s fiction has been nearly impossible.

Start with her essential breakthrough, Born to Die. The cover shows Del Rey in a crisp white, admirably classy button-up shirt, her retro hairdo and makeup every bit as perfect as Jackie O’s during the Kennedy years. But while the singer looks born to summer on the shores of 1950s Cape Cod, the lyrics on Born to Die suggest that something darker is going on inside.

Want an invaluable perspective on the crazy and often harrowing journey that is life? Turn to the title track for the strangely comforting lyrics “Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough/I don’t know why.”

Del Rey—who once described herself as a “gangster Nancy Sinatra”— could have made a cottage industry out of playing the Eternal Queen of Sadness, but that would have been taking the easy route.

Instead, the most telling lyrics on Born to Die came from the breakthrough single, “Video Games”. With “Tell me all the things you wanna do/I heard that you like the bad girls/ Honey, is that true?” Del Rey made it crystal clear that her Vogue vintage-

Lana Del Rey’s vibe is equal parts sad and funny. Photo by Pamela Cochrane

My mother told me that I had a chameleon soul/ No moral compass pointing due north.

– Lana Del Rey, “Ride”

chic look on the cover was deceiving.

And that’s a message she’s come back to over and over again as her career has progressed, whether in the selfexplanatory “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” off 2014’s daring Ultraviolence, or in the opening line “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola” from “Cola”, off 2012’s breezy Paradise.

Should you need further proof

that she’s not always the model of runway-ready togetherness she seems on the covers of Born to Die, Honeymoon, and Lust for Life, recall the monologue at the beginning of her early song “Ride”. That’s where she reveals “I was always an unusual girl/My mother told me that I had a chameleon soul/No moral compass pointing due north,” and then goes on to proclaim “I am fucking crazy, but I am free.” Or consult the darkly angelic Norman Fucking Rockwell! song “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have—But I Have It” and its lyrics “I’ve been tearing around in my fucking nightgown/24/7 Sylvia Plath/Writing in blood on my walls.”

To be even passingly familiar with her back story is to think that Del Rey has every reason to be just as tortured and therapy-ready as the rest of us. There was the drinking problem that came to a head when she was forced to get sober at age 14, as the singer told GQ in 2012: “When I write about the thing that I’ve lost I feel like I’m writing about alcohol because that was the first love of my life. Sure, there have been people, but it’s really alcohol.”

There was the difficult earlycareer appearance on Saturday Night Live, when Del Rey was pilloried for an uneven, clearly-not-ready-forprime-time showing one should have expected from someone rushed into the limelight with Born to Die. And most difficult of all, there was the entirely unfounded rumour, early in her career, that she was somehow a record-industry construct—that everything from her image to her music had been carefully shaped in a boardroom. Stop and think about the idiocy of that for a quick second. As if

a major-label suit would have dreamed up a hyperintrospective, dark-hearted romantic working in a genre best described as cinematic torch-pop.

And the genius of it all is that the person you get on record isn’t necessarily the person you get at home—unless she’s in a Twitter scrap with Azealia Banks. Del Rey isn’t overly wild about doing interviews, but when she does— and especially recently—she comes across as not only well-adjusted and funny, but anything but tortured.

That might explain why, on Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s “Mariners Apartment Complex”, Del Rey starts with “You took my sadness out of context.”

In an interview with the BBC, she noted that the track was inspired by a date on which a guy told her “I think we are together because we’re both similar, like we’re both really messed up.” Her response was “I’m not sad.…

I’m actually doing pretty good.” And then she went home and wrote “Mariners Apartment Complex”, which is one of 14 reasons that Normal Fucking Rockwell! is the greatest, most rewarding record you’ll hear this year.

What’s real and what’s exaggerated for dramatic effect with Lana Del Rey? She’s probably the only one who’ll ever know. What’s important is that pop’s patron saint of the perpetually troubled is there for you when the road gets tough. And if you ever doubt that, look no further than “Mariners Apartment Complex”, where she offers the following: “Maybe I could save you from your sins/So kiss the sky and whisper to Jesus/My, my, my, you found this, you need this/Take a deep breath, baby, let me in.” g Lana Del Rey plays Rogers Arena on Monday (September 30).

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MUSIC

Amon Amarth inspired by Viking life

d AMON AMARTH’S current tour marks a veritable Swedish invasion: all four bands on the bill—including Grand Magus, At the Gates, and Arch Enemy—are from Sweden.

That’s by design, Amon Amarth’s vocalist Johan Hegg explains to the Straight by cellphone from L.A. “Everyone knows there are tons of fuckin’ awesome bands coming out of Sweden, so when the idea came up to do a tour together with Arch Enemy, we thought we should see if we could get one more Swedish band on there. We ended up with two!”

Amon Amarth is touring a new LP, Berserker, which, true to form, has songs drawn from Norse myth, like “Fafner’s Gold”, as well as from history, like “The Berserker at Stamford Bridge”, and Viking life, like “Shield Wall”.

While Hegg often consults ancient texts like the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, and Njal’s Saga to get details correct, “Shield Wall”—about “one of the main Viking fighting tactics”—is a good example of how he sometimes takes poetic liberties.

“You can make up your own stories,” he says, “as long as you have the facts about how Vikings behaved and what they did.”

While the chorus—“Vikings!/Raise the shield wall!/Hold the front line!/ Fight ’til death!”—has an anthemic, martial simplicity, there’s also a richness to the gravel-throated singer’s lyrics that can get lost in the fistpumping.

“Shield Wall” shows how Vikings “were often very tight-knit in their fighting”, Hegg says. “People often tend to think of Vikings as very brutal and savage, but they were actually very disciplined in battle, they had tactics, they thought out different ways of winning, even if they

The songs of Swedish metal band Amon Amarth draw from Viking lore, but their messages often carry contemporary relevance. Photo by Jonathan Weiner

were outnumbered. It wasn’t just sheer brutal force.”

Besides using storytelling to shed light on aspects of Viking culture, Hegg will also “use history and mythology as a metaphor for something else I want to discuss, even though I may not want to be super obvious about everything”. “Fafner’s Gold”, for example—another album highlight—recounts a tale of dragonslaying and treachery, drawn from the Poetic Edda.

“It’s a bit like The Hobbit, a story about greed and what it does to people,” Hegg says. “Fafner murders someone and steals a treasure. The treasure is cursed, and he turns into a dragon, and to protect the treasure, he lies on top of it all the time; and he lives in Gnita plains, which is like a wasteland. I think it’s really very contemporary, because this person gets a treasure and becomes a hideous creature that destroys the earth around him. It’s basically what we as people are doing to the earth right now, because of profit, because of greed.”

A point of curiosity: for all his

admiration of Vikings and their lore, does Hegg identify as a pagan?

“I’m an atheist,” he replies, “so it depends on what you mean by ‘pagan’.

I think a pagan technically would be someone who holds to the old gods.

I don’t. I guess technically I’m more of a heathen, then. But I identify with the mentality and the philosophy of the whole thing—maybe not so much with the religious aspects. And I mean, we’re modern people, we don’t walk around with swords and stuff.”

Hegg pauses. “Well, I do occasionally, but that’s more for fun.”

by Allan MacInnis

Amon Amarth plays the PNE Forum on Saturday (September 28).

CRUMB’S INDIE ROCK WAS BUILT ON JAZZ FOUNDATION d AS ONE MIGHT suspect from Crumb’s debut disc, Jinx, singerguitarist Lila Ramani and keyboardist Brian Aronow took a different path to indie rock than many of their contemporaries. Forget crashing around

rewards close listening. Consider the way “Nina” drifts along lazily until the Bristol-issue drum-and-bass outro, or the way “M.R.” subtly flips the switch from paisley soft-psych to quietly menacing art-pop.

It’s a formula that’s led to an almost instant fan base for Crumb, with the group having clocked over 70 million streams on Spotify, including 16.5 million for the title track of 2017’s Locket EP. Sometimes it’s all been a bit overwhelming, which explains the opening lyrics on Jinx: “How you keep yourself from cracking it’s not easy need to/Practice night time day don’t let it get the best of you girl.”

“That was one of the first songs that we wrote in the album cycle, and it’s funny because sometimes I don’t know that I’m talking about until way later,” Ramani says. “It’s like I’ll look back and go, ‘Oh, that’s where I was at and what I was talking about.’ ” Still, no one in Crumb has any regrets about the way that things have turned out.

“We were all doing full-time jobs or school until about a year and a half ago,” Ramani notes. “And then we made the decision to do the band full-time.”

Aronow adds: “There was maybe a little bit of anxiety about it. I was the last one to graduate school, in 2017, which was the year we made Locket. Once I graduated, we started touring a lot but keeping it super low-key with basement shows and things. And then things really started to happen. It’s been super exciting—we’ve been lucky that there’s a lot going on.”

in punk bands or stumbling through the White Stripes’ back catalogue in high school, the two bandmates were into a genre that doesn’t resonate with most folks until later in life.

“Brian and I both met by being in a jazz group,” Ramani says, on a conference call with Aronow from an Austin, Texas, tour stop. “So that’s definitely our initial background.

I played a lot of jazz in high school, mainly jazz guitar. That’s the world that we started in.”

Aronow continues: “Saxophone was actually my main instrument until Crumb. But even though we loved jazz, we both knew that we weren’t interested in being in jazz quartets or big bands. There’s so much jazz that I love listening to, but we also knew that we wanted to journey through other musical worlds.”

Crumb came together in 2016 when its members hit university in Boston to study things like computer and cognitive sciences and psychology, and eventually answered the call when Ramani needed help fleshing out songs she’d been writing since high school. (Rounding out the band are bassist Jesse Brotter and drummer Jonathan Gilad.)

As is often the case, what had been played around the house when the members of Crumb were kids shaped the sound of the group, which is why Ramani cites Brazilian legend Arthur Verocai and Cape Verde icon Cesária Évora as important influences.

Not surprisingly, given where the members of Crumb come from musically, Jinx isn’t a record that’s going to guarantee inclusion on the next Vans Warped Tour. Adjectives like dreamy and meditative are often applied to the group, but they don’t completely capture what Crumb is about. Entirely by design, the album

by Mike Usinger

Crumb plays Fortune Sound Club on Saturday (September 28).

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MUSIC LISTINGS

Music TIP SHEET

CONCERTS JUST ANNOUNCED CHRISTONE “KINGFISH” INGRAM The Canadian Pacific Blues Society presents blues artist from Mississippi, with guests the Cerny Brothers. Oct 10, 7:30 pm, Fox Cabaret. $30.

JOHNNY REID Canadian country artist performs on his My Kind of Christmas Tour. Dec 14, Abbotsford Centre. Tix on sale Sep 27, 10 am.

CHADWICK STOKES & THE PINTOS Boston musician and human-rights activist, frontman for Dispatch and State Radio. Jan 18, 7:30 pm, Fox Cabaret. Tix on sale Sep 27, 10 am, $33.50.

REX ORANGE COUNTY Indie-pop singersongwriter from England. Jan 20, 8 pm, PNE Forum. Tix on sale Sep 27, 10 am, $35.

TEMPLES Rock band from England, with guests Art d’Ecco. Feb 4, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret.

REFUSED Swedish punk-rock band, with guests Metz and Youth Code. Mar 4, 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Sep 27, 10 am, $35.

GRACE POTTER Rock singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Vermont. Mar 12, 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Sep 27, 10 am, $34.50.

THE ZOMBIES British psych-pop legends.

Apr 24, 7:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Sep 27, 10 am, $45.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 VAMPIRE WEEKEND Indie-rockers from New York City. Sep 25, 5:30 pm, Deer Lake Park.

DAVE MASON BAND WITH STEVE CROPPER Former member of Traffic performs on his Feelin’ Alright Tour, with guest guitarist Steve Cropper. Sep 25, 7 pm, Vogue Theatre.

MATTHEW AND THE ATLAS English alt-folk band. Sep 25, 9 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $15.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 POLO & PAN Electro duo from France. Sep 26, Vogue Theatre. $29.50.

HUUN HUUR TU Tuvan throat-singers, with local guests naad. Sep 26, 8 pm, Christ Church Cathedral. $25-40.

SARAH SLEAN Canadian pop vocalist and pianist, with guest Kevin Fox. Sep 26, 8 pm, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. $23-36.

CIGARETTES AFTER SEX Brooklyn-based ambient pop group led by songwriter Greg Gonzalez. Sep 26, 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $27.50.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 ANTHONY WONG Cantopop artist. Sep 27, Vogue Theatre.

MAHALIA Singer-songwriter and actor from England, with guest Jvck James. Sep 27, 7 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $15.

DANIEL WESLEY Vancouver reggae-pop singer-songwriter. Sep 27, 7:30-10 pm, Chief Sepass Theatre. $45.

STEVE HILL Juno-winning blues rocker. Sep 27, 7:30-10:30 pm, ANZA Club. $35-40.

KGBD Jazz-rock filled with groove and improvisation. Sep 27, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $10.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 OF MONSTERS AND MEN Icelandic pop band on their Fever Dream Tour. Sep 28, 7 pm, Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre. $39.75.

AMON AMARTH Melodic death-metal band from Sweden, with guests Arch Enemy, At the Gates, and Grand Magus. Sep 28, 7 pm, PNE Forum. $49.50.

FACE TO FACE AND LAGWAGON American punk-rock bands play a coheadlining bill, with guests Makewar. Sep 28, 7:30 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $35.

ROSANNE CASH American roots singersongwriter. Sep 28, 8 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. From $46.

c CIGARETTES AFTER SEX (September 26 at the Commodore Ballroom) We don’t endorse smoking cigarettes, whether it’s before, during, or after sex. Don’t vape either— word is it’s just as bad for you.

Do go see Greg Gonzalez and his band, though, because anyone who can make us reassess REO Speedwagon deserves your support.

c THE EARLY NOVEMBER (October 1 at the Biltmore Cabaret) Early November has got to be the saddest part of the calendar: Halloween is over, Christmas is still too far away, and the days are uniformly grey.

It’s the perfect time of year to name an emo band after, as this veteran New Jersey mope-rock act realized long ago.

c FACE TO FACE & LAGWAGON (September 28 at the Rickshaw Theatre) The Warped Tour is a distant memory now, but if a coheadlining bill of Fat Wreck Chords bands doesn’t bring back those hallowed days of baggy shorts and wallet chains, nothing will. Opening act MakeWar is also carrying the pop-punk torch.

c SABRINA CLAUDIO (October 1 at the Vogue Theatre) SoundCloud star Claudio seems to be gunning to become the queen of slow jams with her whispersoft crooning and gauzy alt-R&B production. Basically, she’s Sade for a generation that probably has no idea who Sade is.

CHRISTIAN FRENCH Pop singer-songwriter from Indiana, with guest ASTN. Sep 28, 8 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $15.

CRUMB Brooklyn-based psych-rock/jazz band, with guests Divino Niño. Sep 28, 8 pm, Fortune Sound Club. $21.

BENJAMIN FRANCIS LEFTWICH Indie-folk singer-songwriter from York, England. Sep 28, 9 pm, Imperial Vancouver. $22.50.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 BEAR CALL Psych-rockers from San Francisco, with local guests Tanglers, Re/gen, and Brother 12. Sep 29, 8 pm, Astoria Pub. $10.

LEO KOTTKE Fingerpicking acoustic guitarist.

Sep 29, 8 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts. $48/45.

ROGUE FOLK PRESENTS CHRISTINE TASSAN ET LES IMPOSTEURES Sixteen years have passed since this awardwinning Montreal ensemble began and they are definitely here to stay. Pioneers in a domain usually reserved for men and precursors of the Gypsy wave that swept across Québec, this all-woman sextet continues to reinvent this timeless music while integrating new ideas with originality and flair. Sep 29, 8 pm, Performance Works. $30 general/$26 members.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 ELIANE ELIAS: LOVE STORIES TOUR Brazilian jazz pianist and singer. Sep 30, 7:30-10 pm, Kay Meek Arts Centre. $29-59.

LANA DEL REY American singer comes to Vancouver on her Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Tour. Sep 30, 8 pm, Rogers Arena.

BAND OF SKULLS Rock band from Southhampton, England. Sep 30, 9 pm, Venue.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1 SABRINA CLAUDIO American R&B/pop singer-songwriter. Oct 1, Vogue Theatre. $42.50.

THE EARLY NOVEMBER Alt-rock band from New Jersey. Oct 1, Biltmore Cabaret. $17.50.

SNARKY PUPPY Fusion-influenced jam band from Brooklyn plays two shows. Oct 1, 7:30 pm, 10:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $55.

RISING APPALACHIA New Orleans worldfolk band led by multi-instrumentalist sisters Leah and Chloe Smith. Oct 2, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $25.

BOY & BEAR Indie folk-rock quintet from Australia. Oct 2, 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $30.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3 MALLRAT & ALLDAY Rappers from Australia.

Oct 3, Fox Cabaret. $15.

DODIE Singer-songwriter, author, and YouTuber from England. Oct 3, Vogue Theatre. $27.50.

CLAUDIO SIMONETTI’S GOBLIN PLAYS DEEP RED LIVE Italian prog-rock band performs a live scoring of Dario Argento’s horror classic Deep Red. Oct 3, 6-7:30 pm, Rio Theatre. $40.

NF Rapper from Michigan. Oct 3, 8 pm, PNE Forum. $39.50.

CROOKED COLOURS Electronic-music trio from Australia. Oct 3, 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $22.50-27.50.

ROBERT ELLIS Singer-songwriter from Texas, with guest Ian O’Neil. Oct 3, 9 pm, WISE Hall. $15.

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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5 TEGAN AND SARA Canadian indie-pop band, composed of identical twin sisters Tegan Rain Quin and Sara Keirsten Quin. Oct 5, Vogue Theatre. $39.50-79.50.

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NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS Southern blues-rock band from Mississippi, featuring brothers Luther Dickinson and Cody Dickinson. Oct 6, 8 pm, Imperial Vancouver. $25.

JONTAVIOUS WILLIS A protégé of iconic bluesman Taj Mahal, the future of the blues is in great hands. Oct 6, 8 pm, St. James Hall. $25 adv / $30 door - cash only.

DAMIEN JURADO Indie-rock singer-songwriter from Seattle. Oct 2, Fox Cabaret. $24.99.

DON BROCO Rock quartet from Bedford, England. Oct 2, Biltmore Cabaret. $19.99.

CORNELIUS Japanese alt-pop artist. Oct 2, Imperial Vancouver. $35.

MUSIC LISTINGSare a public service provided free of charge. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight. com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

Scan to confess I Ride My bicycle to work all year round. This time of year there is always an increase of riders heading off to school or work and it’s not fun. Today I made a right turn (After signaling) and nearly collided with another cyclist, going really fast, who decided to pass me on my right side, there wasn’t room to pass on the left and he didn’t want to slow down... (con’t @straight.com)

Intrusive negative memories I can’t stop them from popping up. Memories of exes from relationships that hurt me. Not always positive, but sometimes positive; not always negatives, but sometimes negative. Times I felt lost and alone and utterly confused. Times I just didn’t understand why they... (con’t @straight.com)

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arts

Duo delivers a weird, wild Herringbone

H

by Andrea Warner

erringbone is a strange musical, complete with one performer playing 12 characters and a story focused on a possessed eight-yearold in the 1920s vaudeville scene.

It’s being billed as “delightfully upsetting”. But it is also actor Luisa Jojic’s destiny. After all, the late playwright, librettist, and longtime Vancouverite Tom Cone essentially called for her to be cast.

“I have a little personal history with Herringbone, which is kind of cool,” Jojic says. “I was workshopping some of Tom Cone’s later plays before he passed away. During a break, I went to a secondhand bookstore and I was looking around and I found a copy of Herringbone.” She brought it back to rehearsal and asked Cone to sign it. “I looked at it after and it said, ‘Dear Luisa, I can’t wait to see you play Herringbone.’ I was intrigued by it, but put it away, and fastforward to now and the first thing I did was pull it out, and look at the inscription!”

“We decided not to argue [about casting Jojic], especially since this is a play about spirits who have been dead coming back and possessing people,” Peter Jorgensen jokes. He and Katey Wright are producing Herringbone through their company Patrick Street Productions. Jorgensen, who alternates the role with Jojic, even wrote to Karen Matthews, Cone’s widow, to tell her about their plans and Jojic’s connection. “She was so happy. She said, ‘Well, it’s been predestined.’ ” Jojic and Jorgensen both laugh.

It’s the perfect bit of kismet for something like Herringbone. They are sitting in the basement rehearsal space of Centennial Lodge in Queen’s Park in New Westminster, eager to share the story of this production. Herringbone premiered in 1975 and became an offBroadway hit.

A few years later, it evolved into a one-person musical, with a book

by Cone, lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh, and music by Skip Kennon. Set in Alabama in 1929, it tells the story of young George, who, after bonding with a vaudeville veteran, becomes the target of possession by the vengeful spirit of the vaudevillian’s deceased mentor and former partner.

The projects that I love the most are the ones that ask you to stretch and grow.

– Peter Jorgensen

“I was f lip-f lopping about being in it and… It’s terrifying,” Jorgensen says. “That’s ultimately the reason that I decided I want to do it. It’s such a challenge as an actor, and I’ve been mostly directing things for the last 10 years, getting on-stage only every two years or so.

The projects that I love the most are the ones that ask you to stretch and grow and, you know, bust out of what you usually do. And this piece demands everything you have, and Luisa Jojic and Peter Jorgensen alternate in the absurdly inspired solo musical Herringbone. Photo by Mark Halliday that’s a thrill.”

“I would read it and go, ‘It’s so choreography. Today is one of Jor- tap-dance number, while singing a “I love to sing and I love to dance, weird,’ ” Jorgensen says, laugh- gensen’s rehearsals, and he’s just song with lyrics that would tongue- but I’m not first and foremost a ing and shaking his head. “It’s so spent 30 minutes learning a difficult tie Dr. Seuss. musical theatre performer,” Jojic wild. Why are we doing it? And adds. “It’s something that I’ve been then we started talking with Kayla cultivating gradually over time, so [Dunbar] about directing it and I am in a kind of heaven. It’s a kind somewhere in that conversation, of hell because the amount of work Gramophone’s 2016 artist of the I think we collectively went, ‘What is incredible. But I’m just in total year, and he’s receiving raves if we double-cast it? And not joy. To work as an actor like this— around the world; the Guardian two men.’ ” it’s using every muscle of my artishas called him “one of the finest He recalls how when he and tic being, and I’m just thrilled.” pianists in the world today”.

Wright first approached the play, The pair are consciously avoidtheir default thinking was a male ing seeing each other’s rehearsals d VETTA STRING QUARTET (September 26 and 27 at West actor. “Then we went, ‘Why are we so as not to be unduly inf luenced Point Grey United Church) The assuming that? It’s an actor in a by the other.

String Quartet No. 4 in C Minor one-person show playing multiple “Of course, there’s moments was one of the first quartets genders and ages and heights!’ So where I’m going, like, ‘What is

by Ludwig van Beethoven, and that’s one of the coolest things for Peter doing with this?’ ” Jojic says. it’s an eccentric, sometimes us as producers of the piece. And “I have that question too: ‘What manic little masterpiece. The we might be asking a lot, but we is Peter doing?’ ” Jorgensen jokes.

Vetta String Quartet kicks off do hope that a lot of people come “During the technical rehearsits season with a rendition of back and see both performances, d DANIIL TRIFONOV (September als, we’re both going to be in the 27 and 28 at the Orpheum) the work, with Maria Larionoff because that’s the conversation I’m building, kind of tagging off, beCelebrated young Russian and Joan Blackman on violins, really interested in.” cause they’ll be long days. But pianist Daniil Trifonov will put his David Harding on viola, and The double casting, though an I might still be in the dressing fingers to the music of Sergei Eugene Osadchy on cello. Just innovative idea, has resulted in room going ‘Lalalalalala’ until it’s Rachmaninoff in a performance for fun, they’ve added Dmitri more work for almost everybody my turn,” Jorgensen says, plugging of the master’s roilingly dark Shostakovich’s first quartet (No. involved, and only half the rehis ears. g Isle of the Dead with the 1 in C Major) to the program, as hearsal time for each performer to Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. well as Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s Herringbone runs until October 6 at New master all 12 characters, plus the last one (No. 3 in B Minor). g The superstar was named Westminster’s Anvil Centre Theatre. complicated songs and intricate

Arts TIP SHEET

Turunen crafts his chamber choir debut

K

by Alexander Varty

ari Turunen has a ready answer when asked why he’d give up his comfortable life in Helsinki to move to the wild West Coast: “The Vancouver Chamber Choir!”

That’s also an obvious answer: the august ensemble has just hired the 57-year-old Finn as only the second artistic director in its history, replacing founder and 48-year veteran Jon Washburn, who remains in an emeritus position.

But Turunen sounds genuinely excited by what he’s found here, in terms of both the VCC’s overall health and the bigger musical picture.

“I haven’t got a sense of the grassroots yet, but I would say that at the top level, with four extremely good chamber choirs, a good male choir, a good female choir, and a wonderful youth choir, there’s a lot going on in the choral scene, which I think is lovely,” he tells the Straight in a telephone interview from his Fairview home. “And, you know, this is early days, but I’ve found that people seem really open and willing to look at new

There’s a lot going on in the choral scene, which I think is lovely.

– Kari Turunen

Kari Turunen has taken the helm at the Vancouver Chamber Choir, with ambitious plans to explore early music, contemporary work, and much more.

things and develop. So as a starting point, that seems really good to me.”

Beginnings, Turunen’s inaugural concert as leader of the VCC, carries its thesis in its title. Three of the seven works in the program deal with taking flight—Michael Dellaira’s The Campers at Kitty Hawk, Chris Sivak’s Alouette Meets Her Maker, and Kristopher Fulton’s Icarus.

There’s also Heinrich Isaac’s 1507

coronation anthem for Emperor Maximilian I, Virgo Prudentissima, which suggests that Turunen has a sly sense of humour about his own ascent to the VCC podium: “That’s a little bit grandiose for me, I guess,” the conductor notes, laughing.

“I’m showing my hand a little,” he continues. “This is music I like, and I believe it is quite different to a lot of the repertoire that is heard here on a

regular basis. Of course it shows my roots in northern Europe, so in a way it’s a hello for me, kind of. That’s probably the most important tying element to it.”

As for what will come next in Turunen’s tenure with the VCC, the former theology student stresses that he’s very interested in collaboration—with the choir’s extant partners in Early Music Vancouver and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra,

of course, but with others, too. He’ll also draw on his expertise in early music—“Anything from the baroque back,” he says—and the emphasis on relatively new music in his debut will be no aberration.

“That’s sort of a no-brainer, because there’s so much of it being written in Canada, but also everywhere else, and there’s so much of it that we haven’t heard,” he points out. “And when I think about contemporary music, the thing I want to do above all is to create a polyphony of voices and styles, because I think this is so typical of this world now. There is no one correct style and one way to go. People are writing choral music which has roots in very different musical languages, so I think that whole spectrum is something I’m interested in—anything from fairly angular modernism to almost poplike effects. I’m not afraid of any of that; it’s all part of the picture of our time.” g The Vancouver Chamber Choir presents Beginnings at Pacific Spirit United Church on Friday (September 27).

SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 23

ARTS

Brazilian troupe dances ode to Steve Reich

A

by Janet Smith

lex Neoral’s Focus Cia de Dança makes cutting-edge, fluidly sculpted dance that doesn’t immediately feel “Brazilian”. For that side of him, you need to see what he choreographs, separately, for Carnaval do Rio de Janeiro. But more on that later.

When he comes to Vancouver’s Scotiabank Dance Centre, his company will stage works set not to percussive sambas or to tropicália, but to the stark, propulsive rhythms of American minimalism pioneer Steve Reich—a long-time fascination for Neoral.

“My Brazilian influences, I think, come in the rhythm,” he begins, speaking to the Straight from a tour stop in Halifax. “I believe my work is a mixture of what I am, what I see, and what I think, so, yes, you can identify things like jazz, contemporary, carnaval, and capoeira in my work. I have Brazil in my body and in my eyes.

“The thing I like—and what I really look for—is not to be identified in one style or one kind of music,” he adds. “I have a really big repertoire of a lot of different music. I love when someone says, ‘Oh, this work is really different than the other one.’ ” You’ll get a feel for that range and sophistication when you see Still Reich, four works Neoral set to the composer’s music.

“For me, Reich’s compositions create an atmosphere, a really abstract world—and you can introduce the movements of dancers in this universe,” Neoral says. “In 2008 I made two of these pieces, and now in 2018 I made two more—he’s still inspiring me in these 10 years. And it’s really nice to see this trajectory of my language over 10 years.”

It’s been almost two decades since Neoral launched his company. Before that, it wasn’t easy to become a dance

The Brazilian influences are subtle in Focus Cia de Dança’s fluidly contemporary Still Reich, which hits the Scotiabank Dance Centre. Photo by Fernanda Vallois

artist in Brazil. At 15, he discovered dance, beginning with tap and jazz and settling into the then burgeoning world of contemporary. His family and friends were not always supportive of what they saw as an unprofitable career, but Neoral has had the last laugh.

“With dancing I know more than 30 countries, I have my own studio, I have my own car and my own apartment,” he says. “Every day I make dance I am happy.”

Of course, he worries about the situation in his home country today.

Just as Brazil was becoming a redhot centre for contemporary dance, a financial and political crisis hit.

Neoral is now sad to see some talented Brazilian dancers having to head abroad for work. “We are still resisting and making art, but I see professional dancers leaving,” he laments.

Still, Neoral is proud to be Brazilian,

and never more so than when he’s choreographing for Rio’s annual Carnaval.

“Carnaval is really different work because it’s a competition and a really specific way you choreograph— a parade that travels the avenue, always travelling,” he enthuses. “So it has to be like a machine with everything working. It’s difficult, it’s fun, and you have all this emotion and competition.

“And it’s really nice to have everybody together and singing and dancing and being Brazilian, especially these days,” he adds, then says with a small laugh: “You always wish you’re somewhere else except when it’s Carnaval.” g Focus Cia de Dança presents Still Reich at the Scotiabank Dance Centre next Wednesday to Friday (October 2 to 4).

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24 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

MUSIC VHINE UND SZONG: FANTASTIC FEMMES OCT 04, 7PM | Historic Theatre Veda Hille’s intermittent song series returns with a cabaret festival twist.

LEELA GILDAY

FEAT. SANDY SCOFIELD & M’GIRL

OCT 10, 7:30PM | York Theatre An evening of powerful music from some of our country’s most gifted female musicians.

SILLA AND RISE

FEAT. JB THE FIRST LADY

OCT 10, 9:15PM | Historic Theatre Inuit throat-singing and futuristic dancefloor beats from Silla and Rise, featuring hip hop and spoken word artist, JB the First Lady.

LEELA GILDAY: INTIMATE & UNPLUGGED OCT 11, 7PM | Historic Theatre Get up close and personal with the one and only Leela Gilday.

COREY PAYETTE MUSICAL SONGBOOK OCT 12, 7:00PM | Historic Theatre A transformative evening of music from Corey Payette’s award-winning and criticallyacclaimed musicals.

DRAG THE DARLINGS OCT 04, 9:15PM | Historic Theatre Provocative and imaginative drag theatre!

FAMILY DRAG BRUNCH & DRESS UP OCT 06, 11AM | Vancity Culture Lab Stories, laughter, and play at a family cabaret!

DRAG TRANSFORMING OCT 12, 7:30PM | York Theatre The Queens of East Van, Peach Cobblah and Isolde N Barron, host a drag spectacular!

COMEDY

STORYTELLING

THE WOMEN OF COMEDY OCT 04 & 05, 7:30PM | York Theatre

THE FLAME: CABARET EDITION OCT 09, 7:30PM | York Theatre

Some of the funniest women we know are taking over the York in a side-splitting night of comedy.

Featuring Martha Chaves, Steph Tisdell, Nour Hadidi, Erica Sigurdson. Hosted by Katey Hoff man and Cheyenne Rouleau.

Vancouver’s own Storytelling Series brings together Indigenous and non-indigenous storytellers!

STEPH TISDELL: IDENTITY STEFT OCT 05, 4PM & OCT 06, 2PM | Historic Theatre

THEATRE WHERE THE TWOSPIRIT LIVES OCT 10, 7PM & OCT 12, 9:15PM | Historic Theatre

Indigenous comedian Steph Tisdell delves into issues of identity and colonialism. A riproariously hilarious show with insightful lessons interwoven throughout.

A whimsical and moving exploration of what it means to identify as a Two-Spirit person in a contemporary society.

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CIRCUS

VIRAGO NATION: STRIPPING FOR SOVEREIGNTY OCT 05, 8PM & OCT 11, 9:15PM | Historic Theatre

CIRQUE TRANSFORMING OCT 11, 7:30PM | York Theatre A variety of circus artists come together for a deluge of whirling wheels, flying sparks, and so much more.

Vancouver’s very own all Indigenous Burlesque troupe!

PARTY OPENING NIGHT BASH OCT 02 & 03, 7:30PM | York Theatre

DIWALI JOURNEY TO SOUTH ASIA & BEYOND OCT 09, 7PM | Historic Theatre

The festival kicks off with two spectacular Opening Night celebrations!

Celebrate Diwali in BC! Explore the parallels between Diwali and Indigenous culture through dance and music.

CLUB TRANSFORM OCT 02-05 & 09-12, 9:30PM | Vancity Culture Lab

AFRICAN VILLAGE EXPERIENCE OCT 09, 9:15PM | Historic Theatre

FREE EVENT Featuring dance beats from DJ Kookum (Oct 2-5) and DJ Skylar Love (Oct 9-12)

Hosted by Jacky A Yenga. An interactive event that involves storytelling, singing, and dancing with participants.

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SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 25

ARTS

September eptember 113—29, 2019

Away With Home captures youths’ “optimistic nihilism”

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he five young people selected to star in the hip-hop– inspired revue Away With Home have got it pretty good.

After all, they’ve just spent the summer working with professionals such as choreographer Amber Funk Barton, singer Dawn Pemberton, and taiko musicians Bonnie Soon and Jason Overy. Now, they’ll get to bask in the spotlight at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, working as an ensemble but each also getting to write and deliver a monologue in which they’ll detail some of their most pressing concerns.

And when they do, it’ll become clear that maybe they don’t have it so good, after all.

“The focus of the show is really looking at some of the more complex issues in the youths’ lives,” says Miscellaneous Productions cofounder Elaine Carol, reached at home in East Vancouver. “Issues of belonging and issues related to mental health really feature in all of their pieces—along with stability, instability, connection, disconnection, and alienation.”

And then, she continues, there’s the even more pressing issue of existential dread, fuelled by climate change but also by an increasingly authoritarian culture. “There’s a kind of cynicism that’s been bred into these youth, because they feel they have no clear future or no real opportunities for a future. They’re terrified,” says Carol, who’ll direct the show. “And at the same time, they have an attitude about things that they call optimistic nihilism. So they know the world is coming to an end, but let’s dance anyway.”

If this bleak prospect seems at odds with the sunny public face presented by the oldest member of Away With Home’s cast, that might be testament

Miscellaneous Productions presents Away With Home at the Scotiabank Dance Centre on Friday and Saturday (September 27 and 28).

VETTA CHAMBER MUSIC

Joan Blackman

presents

Artistic Director

Reading the Bones Choreography: Barbara Bourget & Jay Hirabayashi Music: Josepth Hirabayashi Lighting: Gerald King Assisted by: Jessica Han

to how earlier Miscellaneous shows have empowered their young stars.

Arjun Panesar, a 22-year-old Surrey resident, first hooked up with the company in 2015, for a performance of Haunted House. Now he’s back—as a performer, but also as something of a mentor to the rest of the cast, some of whom are as young as 14.

Away With Home, Panesar says, is a piece he’s been longing for, especially as his monologue will allow him to address a topic close to his heart: the stigmatizing of mental illness within the South Asian community. “There’s almost a distance between our parents and ourselves, and I find that that’s partly due to the lack of communication in both personal matters and more direct matters, like mental health and love and such,” he explains in a separate telephone interview. “And the culture reinforces that in some ways. Men are supposed to be strong like a rock, like a diamond almost.”

Theatre, the actor and bhangra dancer adds, allows him a welcome chance to express his own vulnerability, while helping him to overcome his anxiety.

“Being on-stage, being able to open up—not only just as myself, but as a character who I can relate to— there’s some sort of therapeutic feeling coming from it,” Panesar says.

“As well, performing on-stage makes me ecstatic. Being on-stage is just something I live for, you know. How can I put this? I wouldn’t rather be anywhere than to be on-stage, with the lights in my face.” g

2019-2020 34

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Performed by: Barbara Bourget, Katie Cassady, Molly McDermott, Salomé Nieto, Deanna Peters

BEETHOVEN

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String Quartet No.1, in C major TCHAIKOVSKY

String Quartet No.3, in B minor Maria Larionoff violin Joan Blackman violin David Harding viola Eugene Osadchy cello

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26 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

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ARTS

Splendid Suns puts too much gloss on trauma

by Alexander Varty

THEATRE

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

By Ursula Rani Sarma. Based on the book by Khaled Hosseini.

Directed by Haysam Kadri. An Arts Club Theatre Company and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre coproduction. At the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage on Wednesday, September 18.

Continues until October 13

d IN TODAY’S NEWS, analysts continue to parse the fallout from last weekend’s attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq petroleum-processing facility, with defence specialists postulating a rise in low-tech, drone-based warfare. Israel is in political gridlock, as scandal-plagued prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line tactics seem to have provoked a liberal backlash. And in Afghanistan, the statistics for August indicate that an average of 74 people were killed every day, victims of that country’s longrunning armed conflict.

On the surface, it would seem a propitious time for the Arts Club to launch its theatrical take on AfghanAmerican novelist Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, coproduced for the Canadian market by the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. It’s hard to see what debuted on the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage last Wednesday, however, as anything less than a missed opportunity.

If you’re looking for genuine insight into an often-demonized culture, you won’t find it here. If you’re looking for a theatrical experience that shares some of the poignant power of Hosseini’s book, you might be somewhat more satisfied, but not very. And if you’re looking for art to put an engagingly human face on the horrors of war, you’ll find stereotypes—and a happy ending.

If only life reached such neat conclusions! A Thousand Splendid Suns begins with brutality, when teenage Laila’s parents are obliterated by a bomb. In flashback, we see the spark of her romance with kindly, crippled Tariq, before she agrees to marry her rescuer, Rasheed. What he doesn’t know, but eventually suspects, is that she’s pregnant with Tariq’s child.

Horror and unkindness ensue, including a suicide, a haunting, a murder, an execution, and the aforementioned happy ending, in which Tariq returns from the dead and all is well, except for the people who have died.

The questioning mind will find holes in this plot, and in other aspects of this production. Why, in a script with a supposedly feminist slant, do the central characters use the absence of a man as the basis for

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their inaction and the presence of one as the source of their salvation?

Why, in a play about a country first undermined and then invaded by the United States, is American impact reduced to a happy Hollywood fantasy? (The film Titanic is referenced, but so sunnily that the looming irony fails to land.) How do a beaten woman and a broken man overcome 20 years of physical and psychological trauma to rekindle teen love with a glance?

The only answer is that A Thousand Splendid Suns is not reportage but a feel-good story—and making a feel-good story out of tragedy is perhaps not morally advisable. The play treats the Afghan War as an Arabian Nights fable, and does little to illuminate how the North American Taliban—and you know who they are—might bring similar misogynistic woes here.

There are some pleasures in this production. David Coulter’s score, and in particular the eerie tones of his musical saw, add texture where there would otherwise be little nuance. Ken MacDonald’s simple set effectively combines beauty and threat, aided by Robert Wierzel’s poetic lighting design. Deena Aziz and Anita Majumdar—as Rasheed’s abused first wife, Mariam, and teen orphan Laila, respectively—give credible performances; Majumdar is more consistently on-point, but there’s a scene in which Aziz morphs from 40 to 14 in a way that suggests she’s got more technique than she has occasion to use. Anousha Alamian, as their husband Rasheed, is less successful, but has less to work with: after an initial flash of humanity he quickly becomes a monster, with very little exposition to explain the transformation. Men in general do not fare well here; there is much shouting and many laughably fake beards.

Most of the problems stem from playwright Ursula Rani Sarma, whose treatment of Hosseini’s book turns the author’s ability to engage into something far more manipulative—a quality exaggerated by this production’s torpid pacing. Tighten up the action and it wouldn’t be so easy to feel the strings being pulled.

Granted, the production team introduces some short but effective movement sequences; this play is at its best when it veers towards dance.

One last point: on opening night the houselights came up less than 30 seconds after the last character left the stage, and the whole cast came bouncing on to bask in the obligatory standing O. If the Arts Club would like us to believe that we’ve witnessed something deeply moving, it should at least give us a minute to sit with our thoughts. g

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THE BIRDS & THE BEES

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Sep 26–Oct 26 SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 27

ARTS

Patrick Street Productions presents Luisa Jojic or Peter Jorgensen in

Deep resilience resonates in Reading the Bones

Herringbone

by Alexander Varty

A Delightfully Upsetting One-Person Musical

Kokoro Dance quilts together its past in Reading the Bones. Photo by Téa Mei

DANCE

READING THE BONES

Choreographed by Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi. A Kokoro Dance production. At the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre on Thursday, September 19. Continues until September 28

Book by Tom Cone Lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh Music by Skip Kennon Based on the one-act play by Tom

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Info 604.606.6400 | thedancecentre.ca Jennifer Tong. Photo: David Cooper.

28 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 3 / 2019

d TWO THINGS WE learned at the Roundhouse: Reading the Bones is an assemblage of repurposed choreographic moves taken from Kokoro Dance repertoire dating back to 1990, and founding choreographer-dancers Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi are highly accomplished quilters. So accomplished, in fact, that they’ve developed a kind of invisible stitchery.

The company’s latest is a retrospective, but it presents as a new, challenging, and occasionally very lovely piece.

In a postshow talkback session, the pair—a couple in life as well as in art—explained how they have successfully woven old threads into fresh fabric. For Bourget, her aim was to “reinvent this movement in a way that brings it forward”. One way to do that, she elaborated, was to give the dancers more autonomy. Rather than having to adhere to a strict time line, they’re free to start and stop movement sequences at will—a kind of “aleatory” play reminiscent of the way improvising musicians often work.

Granted, this wasn’t always easy to see. The intergenerational cast—Kokoro veteran Salomé Nieto, relative newcomers Katie Cassady, Molly McDermott, and Deanna Peters, and the 68-year-old Bourget herself—was so dialled in to the needs of the work that many passages looked as tightly ordered as ballet. Even when the dancers were each obviously moving to their own pulse the effect was one of unity.

All five dancers remained on-stage for the duration of the hourlong, physically demanding piece, which began with a passage that both alluded to the title—as Bourget later noted, it “warmed up their bones”—and displayed the company’s knack for simple yet disturbing images. On their hands and knees, dressed in asymmetrical black tunics that slowly rose over their hips, the women shook and spasmed, arced their backs, and lowered their heads between their shoulder blades— an image of resilience under duress that might also serve as a metaphor for what it takes to keep a dance company alive for more than 30 years.

In another telling image, Bourget stood in the centre of a rectangle formed by the other performers, gesticulating in a somewhat ceremonial manner as they synchronized their arm movements around her—paying homage to their elder, perhaps, or making votive offerings to a small and wiry goddess. (I had a flash of Kali for a moment, but Bourget’s a creator, not a destroyer.)

Reading the Bones, perhaps uncharacteristically, ended with pure beauty, as the performers shed their tunics, wrapped their arms around their torsos, and slowly rotated to Joseph Hirabayashi’s meditative score. In a darker butoh context this shared gesture could be seen as a way of hiding from horror, but here it read as a warm display of ego-free self-love.

The feeling resonated nicely into the room. g

ARTS LISTINGS ONGOING BACK TO SCHOOL THEATRESPORTS Backto-school-themed improv. To Oct 12, 7:30 pm, The Improv Centre. From $10.75.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS Two women’s lives intersect through fate in a sweeping tale set in Afghanistan. To Oct 13, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. From $29.

READING THE BONES Kokoro performs butoh-inspired dance. To Sep 28, 8-9:30 pm, Roundhouse Community Centre. $25-30.

VANCOUVER IMPROV FESTIVAL Improvcomedy performances and public improv workshops. Sep 24-29, The Cultch. $18-22.

HERRINGBONE Off-Broadway hit set in 1929 in the heart of the Great Depression. Sep 24– Oct 6, Anvil Centre Theatre. $24-36.

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NEW FORMS FESTIVAL Audio-visual festival showcasing independent and groundbreaking artists and musicians. Sep 25-29, Japanese Hall.

THE SHIPMENT A subversive modern minstrel show about black identity. Sep 25–Oct 5, Firehall Arts Centre. From $20.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 THE BIRDS & THE BEES Play about a turkey farmer who splits up with her husband and moves in with her beekeeper mom. Sep 26– Oct 26, Granville Island Stage. From $29.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 RICHARD CLAYDERMAN French pianist in concert. Sep 27, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. $58.

PENN & TELLER Comedy-magic duo from the States. Sep 27, 8 pm, River Rock Show Theatre. $119.50.

AWAY WITH HOME Five youth share their experiences coping with mental health, racism, connection, and disconnection. Sep 27-28, 8 pm, Scotiabank Dance Centre. $12/15.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 TEATRO INTIMO DEL FLAMENCO Karen Flamenco presents a one-hour show. Sep 28, 3 & 5 pm, The Improv Centre. $12.

LIVE 2019 Vancouver’s LIVE International Performance Art Biennale features performance art from Vancouver and around the world. Sep 28–Oct 6, VIVO Media Arts. $10.

RECTO VRSO @VANCOUVER To celebrate its 115-year anniversary, the Alliance Française Vancouver, along with its partners, invites Vancouver into a unique, artistic, and immersive journey. A digital arts and virtual reality exhibiton featuring 12 artworks and artists selected by Recto VRso by Laval Virtual, an international exhibition created in France. Sep 28-29, 2-6 pm, Centre for Digital Media. Free.

6TH ANNUAL TRIGEMINAL NEURALGIA AWARENESS WALK Join us for a dusky 4km walk along False Creek, carrying lanterns lit up in teal to raise awareness of the world’s most painful disease, Trigeminal Neuralgia.

5 pm: meet and greet social at the Picnic Pavilion, 267 Old Bridge Walk on Granville Island. 6 pm: collect lanterns—first come first served. 6:30 pm: walk begins. Sep 28, 5-8 pm, Granville Island Picnic Pavilion. Free.

POP-UP MAGAZINE: THE ESCAPE ISSUE Multimedia stories accompanied by illustration, animation, photography, and an original score. Sep 28, 7:30 pm, Vogue Theatre. $29.

CATEGORY 5 COMEDY SHOW: BAHAMAS HURRICANE BENEFIT

(September 29 at Yuk Yuk’s) Hurricane Dorian was no laughing matter, obliterating whole communities on the whitesand islands of the Bahamas.

But standup headliners like Dino Archie, Graham Clark, and Darryl Lenox are joining forces to raise funds for the affected families. Kevin Foxx hosts, and has a personal connection to the Bahamas: he’s called it home.

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(September 27 to 29 around town) CBC Vancouver’s plaza and Studio 700 become one of the event’s main hubs, with an all-ages weekend of free performances, workshops, and demos. Make sure to head down Saturday to the plaza, when Culture Days ambassador Olivier Salvas explores the maker movement using arts, math, and science for hands-on inventions and creations. g

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1 FEMINIST LIVE READS SOME LIKE IT HOT Female cast brings Billy Wilder’s romantic comedy to life. Oct 1, 6:30-8 pm, Rio Theatre. $20.

OPENING NIGHT BASH TRANSFORM: A Cabaret Festival celebrations hosted by Quelemia Sparrow and Australian cabaret artist Lisa Fa’alafi. Oct 2, 3, 7:30 pm, York Theatre. $26.

BECKETT 19: OR SOME SUCH SEMBLANCE UBC Theatre & Film presents Samuel Beckett’s play, directed by Gerald

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KNIT CITY VANCOUVER Knit City Vancouver is a modern fibre-arts festival featuring more than 100 vendors specializing in knitting, weaving, and dyeing supplies, pattern and notion makers, free demonstrations, food trucks, and more. Oct 5-6, 9 am, PNE Forum. $12.

VANCOUVER HORROR SHOW FILM FESTIVAL 2019 Join us at the York Theatre for a blood-red carpet night of horror films. After a sold-out inaugural year, the Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival is returning for the sequel on October 25-26, 2019, with three blocks of short horror

films (32 films from 9 different countries), and the Canadian premiere of the feature film Puppet Killer. Oct 25-26, York Theatre. $17.50-22.50.

ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight. com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper will appear on the website.

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SAVAGE LOVE

Give cross-dressing dad his privacy

by Dan Savage

b I’M A 35-YEAR-OLD bisexual man in a LTR with a man. My question, however, has to do with my parents. As an adolescent/teen, I was a snoop (as I think most of us are, looking for Dad’s porn stash, et cetera). I was probably 12 or so when I found evidence of my dad being a cross-dresser. There were pictures of him in makeup and women’s clothing, and correspondence (under an alias and to a separate PO box) with other men interested in cross-dressing.

As far as I could tell, he did this alone in hotel rooms while on work trips. Two years ago while on vacation, it came up while my mom and I were at dinner.

She had recently found evidence, and she needed to take a short break to visit a friend out of state to process. She suggested I bring it up with him (I guess) because I’m queer and she knows I used to help host pansexual play parties. My dad is a devout Republican and comes off as very masculine.

I see them only a couple times a year.

Should I try to bring this up with my dad and let him know that I’ve known about his cross-dressing for more than 20 years and offer my knowledge about kink and alternative sexuality? Or just let him do his thing and we all retain the illusion of ignorance? My parents are still happily married—and whether it is more companionate than lusty, they love each other and have been married for more than 40 years. Your take would be appreciated.

- Son Of A Cross-Dresser

Why does your mother want you to talk to your dad about his cross-dressing?

Does she want you to talk him out of

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it? Does she want you to convince him to include her on his cross-dressing trips? Does she think he would benefit from attending a pansexual play party with his adult bisexual son?

Unless your father is in some sort of emotional distress or your mother is in some sort of danger, I really don’t see the point of this conversation, SOACD. It doesn’t sound like your dad is struggling with shame. If your dad had to abuse alcohol or smoke a crate of meth in order to give himself permission to cross-dress alone in a hotel room, you surely would have mentioned that fact. And if your father was having unprotected sex with the other straight male cross-dressers he corresponded with, you surely would have mentioned that, too.

From the details you included in your letter, SOACD, it sounds like your dad has successfully integrated crossdressing into his life without harming himself or neglecting and endangering your mom. You could say your parents had a long and loving marriage despite the cross-dressing…or you could say it’s possible your parents’ marriage is an ongoing success not despite the crossdressing but because of it. If dressing up in women’s clothes and occasionally escaping the confines of masculine performance helped your dad feel centred and emotionally whole, having this escape and having some people he could be open with about it—some straight male cross-dressing peers— could have made him a better husband and father. (It’s too bad it didn’t make him a better person politically, but you can’t have everything.) And while it

might have been better for everyone if your dad had been open about his cross-dressing with his wife and kid(s), that ship sailed a long time ago.

I don’t see what this convo—coming 20 years after you discovered his cross-dressing and two years after your mother discovered it—will achieve other than embarrassing and humiliating your father. Even a married person has a right to some small degree of privacy, and each of us has a right to a small zone of erotic autonomy.

Your parents’ long, loving, successful marriage coexisted with your father’s cross-dressing for four decades, and I don’t see why it can’t continue to coexist with it now. And if your mother is sad that your dad never shared this with her and wants to reassure him that he didn’t need to hide this part of himself from her and that she loves him just the same, she doesn’t need to deputize her bisexual son to initiate that conversation. If she thinks it would be a relief and not a torment for her husband to know she knows and that knowing hasn’t changed how she feels about him, she should tell him. b I’M 25 YEARS old and polyamorous.

I’m in a relationship with a 28-yearold man since August 2018. It was just him and me when we first started dating, and then his old flame came into the picture. This whole time he had said he was not interested in having kids and a home and a primary partner. Since he got surgery in June and is now unemployed, he’s had a lot of time to think, he says, and now he’s decided he wants kids and a home and

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a primary partner. He knows I do not want any of these things, so he says his old flame is the person he’s going to do this with. He has made jokes about being an “alcoholic” since I first met him, and I thought it was just a joke. But now he’s spending money he simply does not have on alcohol.

It worries me. Do I hang in there? Do I throw in the towel? I love this man very much, but I’m so confused.

face. I warned him that the Internet is forever, and facial-recognition software is a thing, and people who don’t understand the role-play aspect of his use of hate speech will think he’s a bigot. This could come back to haunt him socially or professionally. Complicating matters somewhat, my little brother is a straight boy and I’m gay. He’s not making a ton of money doing this, but he’s making enough that my par- Previously The Primary ents are wondering how he’s buying all those super-expensive shoes. What do I’m so sorry, PTP, but it would appear I tell him? What do I tell them? you’ve lost the unemployed guy with - Falling Into Nefarious Doings Of Male Sibling the drinking problem to another. But take heart: you’re young enough to meet P.S. I know about this because he someone else, someone who wants what told me—I didn’t stumble over his you want and doesn’t want what you Twitter account. don’t. I’m certain that after meeting this person—or even long before you meet You’ve already told your brother the them—you’ll be able to recognize that Internet is forever and the low-key, low-stakes pseudo–sex work he’s doyour ex did you a favour.

Sometimes we dodge the bullet, ing could come back to haunt him, PTP, but on rare occasions the bullet FINDOMS. Beyond that… well, dodges us. there’s really not much more you can do. Your brother is an adult, as are b MY 19-YEAR-OLD younger brother the men paying “tribute” to him, as is doing financial domination on- they say in FinDom/FinSub Twitter, line. He maintains a Twitter account and he’s free to make his own choices. that’s mostly photos of him giving As for your parents, why is explainthe finger and looking smug. He also ing where your brother is getting all posts pics of his feet, videos of him those new shoes your problem? If urinating (no penis visible, just the your brother is old enough to set up stream), and lots and lots of “bitch his own Twitter and Venmo accounts, shots”, i.e., crotch-height photos look- he’s old enough to come up with a ing up at him from below. He uses a plausible lie about those shoes. g lot of homophobic slurs in the tweets that accompany these images. I would On the Lovecast: Mob Queens! Listen have exactly zero fucks to give about at savagelovecast.com. Email: mail@ this if my brother wasn’t still a teen- savagelove.net. Follow Dan on Twitter ager and wasn’t posting photos of his @fakedansavage. ITMFA.org.

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