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8 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

CONTENTS

Lynn Valley. Andy Mons photo.

11

WET WEATHER PROTECTION THAT BREATHES

STRAIGHT TALK

This year’s Mayor’s Arts Awards winners include Ballet BC artistic director Emily Molnar, composer Jocelyn Morlock, stage manager Jan Hodgson, chef Meeru Dhalwala, writer Betsy Warland, artist Dana Claxton, and the Georgia Straight.

THE LARGEST SELECTION OF THE NORTH FACE IN VANCOUVER

12

HEALTH

Dr. Gabor Maté says that even if cannabis is addictive, it doesn’t justify imposing heavier controls on it than on other addictive products.

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PHOTO / IAN MOMSEN

FOOD

Discover which eateries are most likely to serve directors and actors during the Vancouver International Film Festival. > BY LUCY L AU

14

THE BOTTLE

It’s a great time to splash into some superb wines for autumn with a quintet of notable names that span the globe. > BY KURTIS KOLT

15

MUSIC

Having asserted their independence long ago, a no-longer-tortured Tegan and Sara move foward again with Love You to Death. > BY JOHN LUCAS

START HERE 42 34 39 27 35 38 42 43

Confessions Dance I Saw You Movie Reviews Music Real Estate Savage Love Straight Stars

TIME OUT 36 Arts 19 Music

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EraDesign.ca modern • vintage natural • symbolic

SERVICES

20

COVER

Director Kevan Funk and a mob ot talented millennials are redefining cinema at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.

39 Careers 18 Healthy Living 39 Real Estate

> BY ADRIAN MACK

29

ARTS

This Hour Has 22 Minutes star Cathy Jones finds the fun in sharing her neurosis through her latest one-woman show. > BY ANDREA WARNER

39

COVER PHOTO

CLASSIFIEDS

Automotive | Education | Services | Travel Marketplace | Employment | Real Estate Property Rentals | Music | Announcements Callboard | And more...

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GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight

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straight talk

The Georgia Straight | Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly | Volume 50 Number 2544 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1W9 www.straight.com Phone: 604-730-7000 / Fax: 604-730-7010 / e-mail: gs.info@straight.com Display Advertising: 604-730-7020 / Fax: 604-730-7012 / e-mail: sales@straight.com Classifieds: 604-730-7060 / e-mail: classads@straight.com Subscriptions: 604-730-7000 Distribution: 604-730-7087 EDITOR + PUBLISHER Dan McLeod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Yolanda Stepien GENERAL MANAGER Matt McLeod EDITOR Charlie Smith SECTION EDITORS

Janet Smith (Arts/Fashion) Mike Usinger (Music) Steve Newton (Time Out) Adrian Mack (Movies) Brian Lynch (Books) EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR Doug Sarti ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Gail Johnson, John Lucas, Alexander Varty STAFF WRITERS

Tammy Kwan, Lucy Lau, Travis Lupick, Carlito Pablo, Amanda Siebert, Craig Takeuchi, Kate Wilson SENIOR EDITOR Martin Dunphy EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jennie Ramstad PROOFREADER Pat Ryffranck CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Gregory Adams, Nathan Caddell, David Chau, Jack Christie, Jennifer Croll, Ken Eisner (Movies), George Fetherling, Tara Henley, Michael Hingston, Ng Weng Hoong, Alex Hudson, Kurtis Kolt,

Robin Laurence (Visual Arts), Mark Leiren-Young, John Lekich, Amy Lu, Bob Mackin, Michael Mann, Rose Marcus, Beth McArthur, Verne McDonald, Allan MacInnis, Guy MacPherson, Tony Montague, Kathleen Oliver, Ben Parfitt, Vivian Pencz, Bill Richardson, Gurpreet Singh, Colin Thomas (Theatre), Jacqueline Turner, Andrea Warner, Jessica Werb, Stephen Wong, Alan Woo ART DEPARTMENT MANAGER

Janet McDonald SENIOR DESIGNER David Ko CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Alfonso Arnold, Rebecca Blissett, Trevor Brady, Louise Christie, Emily Cooper, Randall Cosco, Krystian Guevara, Evaan Kheraj, Kris Krug, Tracey Kusiewicz, Kevin Langdale, Shayne Letain, Matt Mignanelli, Mark “Atomos” Pilon, Carlo Ricci, William Ting, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward DIGITAL PRODUCT MANAGER

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DIRECTOR OF ARTS, ADVERTISING & MARKETING

Laura Moore SALES MANAGER Sharon Smith (On Leave)

Doctors: Caitlin Dunne Jon Havelock Jeffrey Roberts Ken Seethram Tim Rowe Victor Chow Ken Poon

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chose Arka Lwin for culinary arts; documentary and media artist Lorna Boschman chose indie filmmaker and editor Sebnem Ozpeta for film and new media; writer and poet Betsy Warland chose Jónina Kirton for literary arts; interdisciplinary artist Dana Claxton chose Mexican expat Carlos Colín for visual arts; art collective Instant Coffee chose Krista Belle Stewart for public art; and Theatre in the Raw’s Jay Hamburger chose hip-hop/ spoken-word artist Jerilynn Webster, aka JB the First Lady, in the realm of communityengaged art.

These winners will receive $3,000 as part of the award, which was established by Mayor Gregor Robertson in 2008.

The Straight’s award came in the category of business support for the arts. Other winners there included: Hassan and Nezhat Khosrowshahi for philanthropy; Mary Jane Morita for volunteerism; and Amy Nugent as the arts board member of the year.

At the October 3 event, veteran visual artist Gordon Smith will receive a lifetime-achievement award, and artist Susan Point will be given a civic merit award for outstanding achievement. The City of Vancouver Book Award will also be presented on the same evening. > STAFF

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H O W E

The Straight’s arts coverage has won recognition from the mayor’s office.

Vancouver resident Morgane Oger is determined to make an electoral first in the province.

Oger, an IT entrepreneur and owner of a marina outside the city, wants to become the first openly transgender member of the legislative assembly of B.C. The significance of possibly pulling off such a feat is well understood by the transgender woman and single parent to two schoolchildren.

“Fundamentally, what it represents is that we are considered to be people like everybody else,” Oger told the Straight in a phone interview. “And that, finally, in Canada, if I’m elected, it will mean that we’re trusted enough to be treated like everyone else.”

By her count, there are some 600 elected members in the House of Commons at the federal level and in provincial and territorial legislative assemblies across the country. But according to her, none of these representatives is an out transgender, an indication of how her community is behind in social acceptance.

However, the chair of the Trans Alliance Society is encouraged that times are changing.

At the provincial level, the government passed legislation in July this year to add protections in the B.C. Human Rights Code for transgender people. And in May, the federal government introduced legislation to add gender identity and expression to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act. The measure is pending in the House.

Oger is seeking the nomination of the B.C. NDP to run in Vancouver– False Creek in next year’s election.

If chosen, she will be challenging incumbent B.C. Liberal representative Sam Sullivan, a seasoned politician who was once mayor of Vancouver.

Oger related that she and Sullivan have met on two occasions. She said the second time was during this year’s Pride parade, and that he asked to have a photo taken with her.

“I’ve told him that I was intending to run against him,” she said about Sullivan, “and I’m sure that he’s a man of great character.” > CARLITO PABLO

ST

The City of Vancouver has announced its annual Mayor’s Arts Awards, a unique program in which the winners choose an emerging artist in their field to share the honour. In addition, Mayor Gregor Robertson named the Georgia Straight as winner for business support for the arts.

The Straight’s director of arts, advertising, and marketing, Laura Moore, said she’s thrilled that the company has received this honour from the mayor’s office. It came in recognition of the Straight’s 50th anniversary next year.

“The relationship with the arts community is embedded in our roots,” Moore said. “We feel strongly that supporting arts and culture not only provides economic benefits but helps to create a vibrant and interesting city to live in for everyone. We pride ourselves on nurturing and providing exposure for artists and arts groups starting their career while continuing to provide a platform for our most treasured arts groups.”

Janet Smith has been the Straight’s arts editor for almost two decades and oversees all the coverage in this area, including the annual fall arts preview issues.

“The editorial team is grateful to the city and the community for recognizing the Straight’s ongoing commitment to quality arts coverage at a time when our cultural scene is more dynamic than at any time in Vancouver’s history,” Smith said.

The awards will be formally presented at a ceremony next Monday (October 3) at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre.

In performing arts, Ballet BC artistic director Emily Molnar won the prize for dance, choosing contemporary dancer Lexi Vajda as her up-and-comer. Composer Jocelyn Morlock chose cellist Marina Hasselberg in the music category.

And stage manager Jan Hodgson chose recent Studio 58 theatre production grad Ruth Bruhn in theatre.

In the category of studio arts, eco art maverick Sharon Kallis chose similarly eco-engaged Rebecca Graham in craft and design; Vij’s Meeru Dhalwala

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SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 11

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Dr. Gabor Maté understands both the risks and benefits of drug usage.

Vancouver will present at the conference the following day, October 14.

In 2001, Donald MacPherson went to work for the city, drafting the “Four Pillars Drug Strategy”, a seminal policy document that emphasizes the roles of treatment and harm reduction in responding to addiction as a medical issue.

In a separate phone interview, MacPherson, now the executive director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, said he plans to speak about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s process to legalize recreational marijuana.

“It’s a unique opportunity to reorganize an existing market,” he told the Straight. “All of the same dynamics will exist. There will be profit motives just like there is with the illegal market, and there will be tensions between public health and the public-health framework—of trying to identify and control various harms related to cannabis—and the industry, which, presumably, wants to increase or maximize profits.”

MacPherson said one of the greatest challenges the new Liberal government will face in legalizing and regulating recreational marijuana is to successfully snuff out the existing black market that has thrived for many decades.

He noted that this could take quite some time—years, at the very least.

MacPherson suggested the trick will be to balance concerns for health and safety with market-friendly forces like convenience and low prices.

“This is an opportunity for industry, government, and the community to work together to create a really good system,” he said. “But the illegal market is not going to disappear overnight.” Gabor Maté and Donald MacPherson will speak at the International Cannabis Business Conference, which takes place on October 13 and 14 at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver.

CORRECTION The Boag Foundation

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hen Dr. Gabor Maté answered the telephone for an interview with the Georgia Straight, he was interrupted while reading Homer’s Odyssey, a Greek epic written almost 2,800 years ago.

“I’ve found in it the earliest mention I can think of of psychedelic substances being used as a healing or as a mood-altering modality,” he said. “They don’t identify it, but they learned it in Egypt and we know there was hemp in Egypt, so I suspect it was cannabis. Though Homer doesn’t say.”

For about 3,000 years, Maté emphasized, humans have consumed marijuana for a variety of reasons.

“My background is in medical practice and addictions, and I’ve seen marijuana used both ways,” he continued. “Then, of course, there is recreational use, which is perhaps no different from having a glass of wine.…Then there are some people who use it as a spiritual sacrament.”

Recreational, medical, spiritual, or as a symptom of addiction: “What is the dynamic behind the different uses of it?” Maté asked.

On October 13, the well-known physician and author of several books is scheduled to speak to that question during the International Cannabis Business Conference at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Vancouver.

Drawing on a decade of experience working as a physician in the Downtown Eastside’s low-income hotels— much of which is recounted in his 2009 book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction—Maté brings a unique perspective to drug-policy issues, one built on an open mind that understands the risks of drug use but also possible benefits, such as those of alternative therapies using ayahuasca.

“When somebody goes to a liquor store, you don’t know if they are buying wine to have a drink over dinner or whether they are buying it to get blasted because they are so miserable in their lives that they can’t stand how they feel,” he said. “The people who are worried about it [marijuana] being used addictively, they are quite right to be worried. But that’s not an argument for it to be illegal or more heavily controlled than other substances.”

With Parliament scheduled to table legislation to legalize recreational marijuana in the spring of 2017, Maté suggested lawmakers need to understand the larger issues behind addiction, such as emotional pain and unhappiness.

Another well-known name from

In the Georgia Straight’s Best of Vancouver balloting, the Best SustainableGoods/Gifts Store was Walrus Design Inc. at 3408 Cambie Street. The Best Professional Photographer was Randal Kurt. Incorrect information appeared last week.

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FOOD

E XC E P T I O N A L I TA L I A N C U I S I N E

Nuba is just one of many local eateries where you’re likely to spot Vancouver International Film Festival luminaries.

Where VIFF guests go to eat > BY L UC Y LA U

A

s residents of Hollywood North, we’ve had our fair share of celebrity sightings.

This past summer alone, lucky Vancouverites have spotted Adele waiting patiently for her doubleOreo scoop at a Yaletown ice-cream parlour, Neil Patrick Harris marching in the Vancouver Pride Parade, and Owen Wilson striding nonchalantly through the Fairmont Pacific Rim lobby with his entourage in tow.

Hell, even former Bachelorette hopeful and Penticton-born personal trainer Daniel Maguire has had his moment, posing for photos with giddy fans in various nightclubs and restaurants around Vancouver’s downtown core.

With the Vancouver International Film Festival running from this Thursday (September 29) to October 14, however, there’s no better time to strap on the stargazing goggles.

And though the fete will see special appearances by names like noted filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, X-Files creator Chris Carter, and Emmywinning actress Tatiana Maslany, the cinema isn’t the only place you can rub shoulders with some of Tinseltown’s brightest talents.

Thanks to the slew of filmmakers’ dinners organized by VIFF staff, eating out before, between, or after screenings may be your best bet for spying a VIP outside his or her natural habitat. “We organize the meals to showcase the food we have in the city, for our programmers to meet the guests inperson, and to introduce filmmakers to other filmmakers,” Tallulah,

VIFF’s assistant manager of guest services, tells the Straight by phone.

So, where can you expect to, um, casually cross paths with some of this year’s high-wattage guests? Although food preferences of the actors, filmmakers, and show-runners are taken into consideration, it turns out that wining-and-dining is all about location. For this reason, Tallulah reveals that Chambar has been a popular pick among VIFF staff and festival stars for years. “They’ve got a great atmosphere, the food is great, and their location is fantastic because it’s in the middle of International Village, SFU Goldcorp, and the Vancouver Playhouse,” she says.

The Crosstown eatery’s proximity to key VIFF venues makes it a prime spot for filmmakers to grab a bite during screenings, giving them enough time to dash back to cinemas in time for postfilm Q&As. Tallulah notes that past invitees have also been fans of the restaurant’s Belgian-inspired fare, which includes dishes like grilled octopus with scallop ceviche and braised lamb shank served with figs and almond couscous.

Nuba’s Gastown outpost—known for its vibrant Lebanese food and chillaxed vibe—is another hit among VIFF headliners. “Nuba is brilliant because you could take someone who’s been in the business for years or someone who’s new to the city or festival, and they’d both have a great time,” explains Tallulah. “The way the food is served and the type of food—it kind of crosses a bridge.”

Other restaurants frequented by VIFF guests include CinCin Ristorante

+ Bar for its outstanding Italian dishes and private wine room (“Sometimes that’s requested because guests know it will be a bit quieter for conversation,” discloses Tallulah); award-winning seafood joint Blue Water Café; and Exile Bistro, which Tallulah touts for its creative farm-to-table cuisine and site within walking distance of the Vancity Theatre and the Cinematheque.

If you’re looking to unwind or engage in some postfilm discussion, hit up Clough Club or L’Abattoir—two Gastown destinations that boast dark, sophisticated ambiances and celebrated cocktail programs. Tallulah says VIFF’s programmers will be accompanying actors and filmmakers to these venues following late-night screenings. New to this year’s VIP-dining roster are celebrity magnet Hawksworth Restaurant and its laid-back sister resto Nightingale, known for its housemade pastas, salads, and wood-fired-oven pizzas with a Canadian twist. “Those are ones we’ll probably take our top guests to,” Tallulah says of the David Hawksworth–owned eateries.

Caribbean hot spot Calabash Bistro also gets the hospitality pro’s seal of approval—check out the restaurant’s to-die-for coconut dumplings and rum-centric bar menu. But if you’re lucky enough to see a celeb while stuffing your own face, play it cool. It turns out stars aren’t so different from us regular folk after all.

“They love going to the dinners and having a place where they can sit, talk, have a nice glass of wine, and just breathe,” says Tallulah. -

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Autumnal wines to fall for

L

et’s splash into some wines for autumn, shall we? This week, a quintet of recently tasted (and enjoyed) red wines from notable names that span the globe.

right place. Start thinking about what tomato, a little cocoa, and a sprig of kind of pizza you’re in the mood for. mint. Well built and balanced. Drink now or lay it down for a special celebraBLACK SAGE VINEYARD SHIRAZ tion a few years down the road.

2014 (Okanagan Valley, B.C.; $24.99, greatestatesokanagan.com/) Is this VINA COBOS FELINO CABERNET 2013 RUFFINO MODUS 2013 (Tus- wine a big, jammy fruit bomb or is SAUVIGNON (Mendoza, cany, Italy; $29.99, B.C. Liquor Stores) it a little more closely tethered to the Argentina; $24 to $27, private liquor A blend casually known as a “super French style, with subtler earth and stores) From famed winemaker Paul Tuscan”, this combo of Sangiovese, peppery notes? It is, indeed, nice and Hobbs comes this opulent Cabernet Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot is ripe, compliments of the Black Sage Sauvignon from high-altitude mounaged in a mix of Vineyard in the tain vineyards in Argentina. The fruit American and South Okanagan, is lush, with strawberries, cherries, French oak barone of the hottest and black currants all making appearrels for 12 months. growing regions ances, woven with spearmint, mocha, Kurtis Kolt Upon the first in the country. and white-pepper character. This is couple of swirls, dark, brambly berry The aromatics don’t offer too many one of those wines that are at once fruit and a touch of anise waft out of hints, some very dark berry fruit and juicy and easily quaffable, but there the glass. A load of juicy currants dom- maybe a slight hint of dark chocolate. are some lovely nuances of spices and inates the palate, with dusty red and On the palate, it’s rather silky. It cer- herbs for those looking to examine it black plums carrying the finish. A fine tainly doesn’t exude too many Old a little further. When in Argentina, balance here: well-integrated tannins World earthy or rustic characteristics. I’d do what the Argentinians do and and juicy acidity keep everything in its There’s plenty of fruit here, though; barbecue a nice juicy steak and serve it stewed blueberries and blackberries with a good dollop of chimichurri. Reare dusted with a touch of wild sage, cently spotted at Marquis Wine Celand there’s a pretty balsamic note to- lars on Davie Street and Everything ward the end. It’s definitely nearer the Wine on the North Shore.

Shiraz side of things, but I’m happy to report that it’s far from being a fruit PAUL MAS ESTATE SINGLE VINEbomb. The purity of fruit, acidity, tan- YARD COLLECTION MALBEC 2015 nins, and alcohol are all right where (Pays d’Oc, France; $13.99, B.C. Liquor they should be, and more than any- Stores) While most of us are used to drinking Malbecs from Argentina, BOB LIKES THAI FOOD thing else, it’s delicious. let’s not ignore the variety’s homeland ROBERT MONDAVI MAESTRO in France. The Gardemiel Vineyard 2013 (Napa Valley, California; $63.99, where these vines are grown is just a B.C. Liquor Stores) To celebrate the couple hundred kilometres from Ca50th anniversary of the Robert Mon- hors, where the grape’s story began. davi Winery, director of winemaking A distinctively meaty nose of charred Genevieve Janssens has launched this brisket and barbecue sauce had me new wine, built from 59 percent Mer- salivating off the bat. The bright acid3755 Main St @ 22nd Ave lot, 25 percent Cabernet Franc, seven ity on the palate kept that sensation go604.568.8538 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, six per- ing, and it carries a flood of blueberries cent Petit Verdot, and three percent and cherries, along with umami notes Malbec. Some sweeter black and red of hoisin and sun-dried tomato. All fruit highlights the aromatics, while the way through, the wine is adorned 1521 W. Broadway @ Granville that toasty French oak trails behind. with fresh herbs; a little thyme, lavBlackberries, Italian plum, and dates ender, and rosemary goes a long way.

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Toward the end of the latest Tegan and Sara

BY JOHN LUCAS

album, Love You to Death, the Canadian sister duo delivers an emotional one-two punch in the form of “White Knuckles” and “100x”. Both songs were primarily written by Sara Quin, revisiting a past self who chafed at feeling constantly joined at the hip to her twin and musical partner.

“I cried wolf/Howled it at the moon,” Sara sings on “White Knuckles”, “So, luck be damned/Break that mirror in two.”

Tegan recalls working on the song with her sister, blissfully unaware that it was inspired by their sometimes fraught relationship. “When I went into the studio when she was finishing that one—I ended up contributing a little bit to the chorus and then wrote the pre-chorus—I was like, ‘Sara’s writing a kick-ass breakup song,’ ” Tegan tells the Straight over the phone from a tour stop in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It really resonated with me. I love the way Sara writes; she’s got this way of really creating an image in your mind, you know? She’s quite poetic in the way she writes. And both ‘100x’ and ‘White Knuckles’ are my favourites. And it’s so funny, I didn’t know until we started promoting the record that the songs are about a very tortured, very early part of our career where we were both fighting for independence. We moved across the country—Sara moved to Montreal. We were attempting a very impossible thing, which was to feel autonomous and independent while sharing everything. There was definitely a struggle.”

Stepping out of the fringe

Tegan is the Quin sister on the right and Sara is the one on the left. Or maybe it’s the other way around. No, we were right the first time. Pamela Littky photo.

We want visibility, we want to be represented.

We want to activate, you know?”

The Quins are speaking Tegan and Sara’s status as pop-culture fixtures to the mainstream in a big came only after years spent in the indie trenches way. From singing their hit single “Closer” with That emotional tug of war seems to be a thing Taylor Swift in 2013 to performing The Lego Movof the past; the Tegan and Sara of 2016 present ie’s Oscar-nominated “Everything Is Awesome” at a united front, and the Calgary-born sisters’ the 2015 Academy Awards, Tegan and Sara are a shared career has never been stronger. Pro- part of pop culture now. It’s a pretty nice payoff duced by studio wizard Greg Kurstin (Adele, for spending so many years under the radar; they Taylor Swift), Love You to Death is a strong fol- self-released their first album, Under Feet Like low-up to the duo’s commercial breakthrough, Ours, in 1999, but for much of the world, Tegan 2013’s Heartthrob. The new record finds Tegan and Sara seem like relative newcomers. and Sara diving even deeper into the synth-pop “If there’s a possibility that we can be mispool, with tracks like “Boyfriend” and “Stop De- taken for new or fresh, that’s awesome,” says sire” barbed with razor-sharp hooks.

Tegan. “I’ll take it, because after eight records What connects the new material to the Quins’ and so many years, you start to worry that you more indie-rock-oriented back catalogue? It’s seem like you’re a heritage band or something, intangible, but Tegan says it all comes down to which we’re obviously not. We had the benefit of feeling. “We felt like every single song on this putting out our first record when we were 18. We record should feel like it could have come off The started in our youth, so we have that on our side.

Con or So Jealous—the emotional intensity and I know lots of friends who are putting out their vulnerability and rawness of the early Tegan first record and they’re in their late 20s or early and Sara music should be there. We shouldn’t 30s, so we’re lucky that we had so many years have to give that up to make a record that could out of the limelight to build our career and build be played on the radio.” our persona and build our craft.”

Tegan admits that some long-time fans would Asked if her 18-year-old self could have prefer that she and Sara return to the sound of foreseen that she would still be making music those older albums and not just the emotional alongside her sister in 2016, Tegan admits that content. “When people come up and say that to she doesn’t think that far ahead. Tegan and Sara me now, about older records, I hear what they’re have never had a five-year plan, let alone a 17saying,” she says. “They liked part of what we year one. represented: we were the fringe, we were the “Sara and I wake up every morning and think, outsiders, we were the alternative. And by try- ‘This is so cool, we still have a job,’ ” she says. “Our ing to reach the mainstream, I know sometimes career still feels interesting. We’ve taken risks and that challenges our fans, because they still want therefore really been satisfied on a creative level, an us to be outsiders. But we also have bigger in- artistic level, so we just kind of focus on that.” tentions with our music. It’s about not saying the same thing that we’ve said before. And I Tegan and Sara play the Queen Elizabeth Theatre think now we want to speak to the mainstream. on Wednesday (October 5).

in + out

On playing old songs for new fans: “When people come up and it’s obvious they really only know the last two records, I feel excited. That’s partly why we invested so much time in reinventing the old songs, because I want them to know the back catalogue. I want them to leave and be like, ‘What was that song? What’s “Alligator”?

What’s “Northshore”?’ and go looking for it.”

On long-time fans following them into the mainstream: “I remember, for instance, after the Oscars performance of ‘Everything Is Awesome’ being worried to go on social media, feeling like ‘Oh God, are people going to be hating on it?’ I couldn’t find one negative thing. People were just like, ‘Holy shit, Tegan and Sara were on the Oscars.’ And I was like, ‘Right? How crazy is that?’ I think mostly it’s been really awesome and people have embraced it.”

On writing with intention: “I think in the past we just wrote songs and then just picked a producer, and then it was sort of like a surprise.

You just kind of crossed your fingers and you got to the end of the record process and you were like, ‘Okay, that’s our record.’ This last couple of records, it feels a bit different. I think there was definitely more intention behind what we were writing. I think we were at a point where we felt like we needed to say things that we hadn’t said before, to ensure we were covering ground that we hadn’t. I think that we felt like it would have been redundant to cover some topics again or approach a record in the same way we had approached it in the past.”

ROYAL CANOE LIVES ON THE E DG E O F TO O MU CH >>> Considering

they’ve

just

2 given birth to one of the most

admirably out-there albums of 2016, it’s funny that the members of Winnipeg’s Royal Canoe thought they were keeping things simple while writing Something Got Lost Between Here and the Orbit.

“I feel like we’re always running the risk of people going ‘What is this?’ I think that maybe because there’s six people in the band, we’re constantly at the edge of too much,” singer-guitarist Matt Peters says on the line from a Los Angeles tour stop. “But the weird thing about this one is that we thought that we’d made a pop record. But then everyone started telling us ‘Wow, this album is really bold and daring and you guys have taken a lot of risks.’ It’s funny how people see things. What you think is pop and accessible, other people have a completely different opinion of.”

Royal Canoe has earned itself a prominent place in Uber’s bad books by forcing drivers to take the whole band in one car, seat-belt laws be damned.

It’s not like Royal Canoe—past alternative-album-of-the-year Juno nominees for 2013’s Today We’re Believers—worked on Something Got Lost in a vacuum. Providing guidance was producer Ben H. Allen, whose work with artists as varied

as Gnarls Barkley, Deerhunter, and M.I.A. made him perhaps extra open to the idea that no sonic detour was too strange. And indeed nothing is too fantastical on the album’s 12 songs, which start with “Somersault” dressing up classic

Tegan Quin sounds off on the things that enquiring minds want to know.

Queens hip-hop with jazzy flute, pornosonic keyboards, and ghostof-Prince vocals. Soft funk meshes with’90s-vintage electronica on “Living a Lie”, while “I Am Collapsing So Slowly” begins as Band-brand Americana jam and then messes up everything with trap-powered percussion.

For all its wide-ranging adventurousness, Something Got Lost Between Here and the Orbit sticks to a relevant-to-our-times narrative, the album inspired largely by massive changes in the way that we communicate. Hands up if you now keep up with old friends via Facebook rather than coffee every couple of months or if you can’t go 12.3 seconds without checking Twitter or posting to Instagram.

We’ve all been out for dinner with people who’ve sat there texting friends, to the point where you wonder why they even

☞ showed up. Still, don’t think that Something Got Lost Between Here and the Orbit is about nothing but being distracted by the interweb, the songs touching on everything from ruined relationships to hipsters who do their drinking at Legion halls. Binding these threads together is the idea that, thanks to iPhones and satellite technology, we’re never out of touch with those we know and love, even as we remain hopelessly separated.

“You write what you know,” Peters says. “With us being away on tour so much, feeling that sense of disconnection from our community is inevitable. But I don’t think that it’s all negative. It’s also about feeling that there’s more out there. Even though you might feel a sense of separation, you know that there’s always an opportunity to connect. And at the same see page 17

SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 15

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Royal Canoe

Vancouver’s Farnaz Ohadi relishes creative freedom

from page 15

time it’s also a bit of a lamentation that you’ve lost yourself somewhere.

You’re never really that far from anybody. But in the actual type of contact that you have, you couldn’t be further from them.”

That might explain lines like “It’s a midweek morning, I’m a tangled up wire/I could get to my feet, but I’ll lay here instead/What’s your body been doing since you left it for dead?”, that coming in “BB Gun”, a beautiful bit of Sominex-ed slacker pop that ends with an outro of floating-in-space horns.

“It’s almost like ‘What sort of curated version of myself do I want to present?’ ” Peters offers. “People end up forcing the best parts of themselves on you. But without knowing it, they’re also exposing their worst parts.” > MIKE USINGER

Royal Canoe plays the Imperial Vancouver on Friday (September 30).

Truckers wonder what the hell is wrong with people The Drive-By Truckers have al-

2 ways been a politically minded

outfit, but on their brand-new album, American Band, they really waste no time in tackling the big issues of their home country. The opening track, “Ramon Casiano”, tells the fact-based (but little-known) story of former NRA leader Harlon Carter’s shotgun murder, in 1931, of 15-year-old Casiano, who had been loitering with two friends near the Carter family’s property in Laredo, Texas.

“It all started with the border,” sings DBT singer-guitarist Mike Cooley in the song’s opening line, “and that’s still where it is today. Someone killed Ramon Casiano, and the killer got away.”

After leading off with that riffdriven blast of outrage, the Truckers continue with hard-hitting tunes that confront issues of race, income equality, police brutality, and Islamophobia—all of which have been front and centre stateside since a certain billionaire turned politician threw his hat in the ring down there. But Cooley denies that the heavy political bent of American Band is a direct response to the rise of Donald Trump.

“No, no,” he says from his Alabama home, “that’s just a bonus, I guess. All of this stuff was being written up to two years ago—some of the ideas, for me, go back even further than that. And we started recording this thing back in November, and at that point most everybody in the country still thought that once people actually started voting, this guy would fall by the wayside.

We still really thought there was no chance in hell this guy was gonna be a nominee of a major party.

“But then people started voting and, lo and behold… So we’re writing all these songs, basically asking the question, ‘What the hell is wrong with you people?’ And now by the time [the album] comes out it’s like, ‘No, really, what the hell is wrong with you people?’ It’s worse than we thought.”

American Band was released in the U.S. last week, just four days before the start of a 30-date North American tour, so, politically speaking, the timing was impeccable. Do Cooley and his bandmates feel like they’re on something of a mission to get those new cautionary tunes out to the voting public before it’s too late?

“Well, the bad news, the sad reality, is we could probably sit on this thing for a year and put it out, and it would be just as relevant, just as timely,” he says. “I mean, once we realized what we had, we did want to get it out soon, and get it out while a lot of this is goin’ on. But the way things go, and the way things have been trending, the bad news is songs like this stay relevant and timely a lot longer than they really should, in a perfect world.

“Or,” he adds after a short pause, “in a more perfect world, at least.” > STEVE NEWTON

The Drive-By Truckers play the Rickshaw Theatre on Sunday (October 2).

From yearning start to joyous Farnaz Ohadi’s debut album, Bird Dance, follows an everascending path—one that presumably mirrors the Tehran-born singer’s own, from her childhood under fundamentalist rule through to becoming a rising star in Vancouver’s world-music underground.

And if that’s how listeners perceive the disc, Ohadi will be happy, for it’s exactly her intent.

“Absolutely, from the very first song,” she says, reached by phone at her West Side home. “The album traces the trajectory of my experiences, from Iran all the way to, basically, today. ” That first track, which also gives the album its title, draws on her childhood memories of being a kind of caged bird—a creative girl in an environment that valued neither art nor women.

“We lived in an apartment, and I remember waking up every morning and being envious of the birds that f lew by,” she recalls. “I remember thinking ‘If I could just f ly away… I mean, look at them!

They’re so free.’ So the whole album is about that bird, and the chorus says exactly that: ‘The cage is small, but I have to sing anyway, and I have a message of happiness and light for you.’ ” On Bird Dance as in life, that contentment takes some time to arrive.

“Hesar” depicts the feelings of loss and alienation Ohadi and her family felt after leaving Tehran for Toronto in 1990. “Stars”, meanwhile, explores the solace found in looking longingly at the night sky. But by the record’s penultimate track, “Vatan”, Ohadi has found her purpose: to encourage freedom, and especially creative freedom, for the women of Iran, an aim joyously expressed in the closing “Persian Dance”.

“It’s just literally calling the dancers to basically knock on every door and tell people, ‘Hey, this is now a joyful moment of truth and understanding. Why don’t you come and join us?’ ” Ohadi says.

What makes Bird Dance even more remarkable is that, musically, Ohadi is telling her story in her third language. The daughter of civil engineers, she grew up with classical piano lessons, and then moved on to singing in government-approved choirs. But her passion is for flamenco, the fiery dance and music of southern Spain.

Listening to her father’s f lamenco recordings provided Ohadi with her first exposure to fandangos and soleares. But it wasn’t until she moved to Vancouver that she realized that she could merge her own story with the Andalusian forms, and she credits local f lamenco guitarist Oscar Nieto with encouraging her to write and sing in Farsi, and to bring Iranian instruments such as santur and tar into the mix.

“He said, ‘Flamenco is for everybody. You just do your thing, and who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong?’ And that really freed me,” she recalls. “Yes, I will never be able to be what Spanish people are, but it doesn’t really matter. I have my own thing.”

A thing, she adds, that could only have blossomed here.

“I’ve been given this amazing opportunity—and that comes with a sense of responsibility,” Ohadi says, adding that the next phase of her journey might involve taking her cross-cultural Mashregh Ensemble to Iran, where women in music still find it difficult to escape traditional roles. “Looking back at all the friends that I grew up with, I realize that I am in a position to make something happen, to show that it can be done.”

2 finish,

Mick Fleetwood has long argued that “Y.M.C.A.” is the best song ever.

Mick Fleetwood returns to his roots with blues band Mick Fleetwood is best known

2 as the drummer for one of his-

tory’s most popular recording acts, Fleetwood Mac. But eight years before that band became the multiplatinum voice of mid-’70s pop, it was a gritty blues-rock outfit led by a stunning guitarist by the name of Peter Green.

So when Fleetwood calls from a tour bus near the tail end of a 16-hour trek from Telluride, Colorado, to San Diego, California, I’ve gotta ask him if—as much as he may have enjoyed selling millions of albums with Stevie Nicks and Co.—his current Mick Fleetwood Blues Band is what brings him the most satisfaction as a musician.

“Uh, I wouldn’t say that,” replies the 69-year-old skinbasher. “I think there’s more freedom, just the whole way we approach what we’re doing.

But having said that, you know, once you’re in the saddle, it’s about the same ethics of musical commitment, hopefully, to the evening. And at that point, playing is playing.

“Neither’s better or worse,” he continues, “it’s just different. But if you really pinned me down, I’d say I’m probably more expressive, for sure, playing out here with Rick and the boys.”

The Rick he refers to is singerguitarist Rick Vito, and the boys are bassist Lenny Castellanos and keyboardist Mark Johnstone. Vito is a veteran sideman and studio ace whose credits include John Fogerty, Albert Collins, John Mayall, Jackson Browne, and Bob Seger. (That’s his widely heard slide guitar on the Seger hit/Chevy truck ad “Like a Rock”.) Vito’s role in the MFBB has him singing and playing on a number of old Fleetwood Mac blues tunes written by Peter Green—including gems like “Black Magic Woman”, “Oh Well”, and “Rattlesnake Shake”—but Fleetwood doesn’t really see the quartet’s current tour as a tribute to Green.

“I don’t look at it like that,” he says.

“This band has always played bits and pieces of the original band, not only because that would be my request to be doing that, but it becomes relevant that I’m connecting to an audience through the songs that I used to play. Rick is a huge advocate and admirer of Peter Green in any case, but having said how much he likes Peter Green, he’s very formed as a player himself. He’s very much his own stylist, but he loved what Peter used to do, so he was the perfect fit.”

As well as the Green-penned classics, the band’s current set list includes some Vito originals and the odd blues standard. But when it comes to the choice of encore, it’s all about that “Greenie” vibe, via Fleetwood Mac’s dreamy 1968 instrumental—and surprising U.K. hit—“Albatross”.

“Rick plays it beautifully,” notes Fleetwood. “I don’t know how he does it, but he plays both parts, he does the harmony and the melody, answering each other. So we invariably do end our crazy evening with this very ethereal, haunting song.”

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Farnaz Ohadi and the Mashregh Ensemble host a CD-release party for Bird Dance at the BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday (October 1).

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SUPPORT GROUPS Are you living with HERPES? Need Support?

Join our Vancouver (Lower Mainland) social group and come out and meet others in the same situation.

All ages. Lots of different events (pub night/brunches/ bowling/ movie night/ etc.).

We also run a bimonthly support group. Join our Meetup site 'vancouverhfriends' or contact vancouverhfriends@yahoo.ca for more info

18 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

LifeRing - Sobriety your Way Sound Different? Men & Women supporting each other in a friendly, non-judgemental environment based on abstinence, secularity & self-help Van: @ Vancouver Daytox 377 E. 2nd Sat @ 4pm Maple Ridge: @ The CEED Centre 11739 - 223 St Sundays 1:30pm www.liferingcanada.org or www.lifering.org Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) Do you have a problem with sex and love relationships. You are not alone. SLAA is a 12 Step 12 Tradition oriented fellowship for those who suffer from sex and love addiction. Leave a message on our phone line and somebody will call you back for meeting time and locations. 604 515-5423 RECOVERY International FEAR? DEPRESSION? PANIC ATTACKS? Feelings that keep you from really living your life?

A way out is where we come in.

Weekly meetings. Call for info: 9am - 5pm Kathy 778-554-1026 www.recoverycanada.org Is your life affected by someone else's drug use?

Nar-Anon Family Group Meeting Every Friday 7:30-9:00 pm at Barclay Manor, 1447 Barclay

Nar-Anon 604 878-8844 Sex Addicts Anonymous 12-step fellowship of men & women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other, that they may solve their common problem and help others recover from their sexual addiction.

Membership is open to all who desire to stop addictive sexual behaviour. For a meeting list as well as email & phone contacts go to our website at

www.saavancouver.org

Vancouver Society for Sexuality, Gender & Culture Educational group with monthly meetings are planned for: 1st Tuesday of each month, 6:30 PM 8:30 PM Vancouver Public Library - Firehall Branch 1455 W 10th Ave (by Granville St next to the Firehall) All are welcome, and we are looking for Board Members from the Health, Counseling, Education, and Business Professions Info: Michael or Darren: VSSGC@yahoogroups.ca Healing Our Spirit B.C. First Nations AIDS Society has volunteer opportunities for hospital visitation, information booths, office assistance & preparation of pamphlets & condoms for distribution. We offer volunteer orientation, training & recognition & bus tickets.

If interested, please call 983-8774 Ext. 13.

We are dedicated to preventing and reducing the spread of HIV in the aboriginal communities of B.C. Drug & Alcohol Problems?

Free advanced information and help on how quit drinking & using drugs. For more information call Barry Bjornson @ 604-836-7568 or email me @livinghumility@live.com Infertility Awareness Assoc. of Canada (IAAC) provides educational material & support to individuals or couples experiencing infertility.

Meetings: 7 pm the 2nd Wed of the month.

Richmond Library & Cultural Centre, 7700 Minoru Gate. Info 523-0074 or www.iaac.ca Fertility Support Group Discover new perspectives make positive changes and learn simple tools to take charge of your reproductive wellness while connecting with other women.

The meetings provide a space for open discussion.

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MOOD DISORDERS SUPPORT GROUPS We have peer-led support groups all over the Lower Mainland for people with depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety led by well-trained facilitators.

Group sessions during days, evenings, or Saturdays.

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IBD Support Group Suffer from Crohn's and ulcerative colitis?

Living with IBD can often be overwhelming, but you're not alone! 3rd Wed of each month the GI Society holds a free IBD support group meeting for patients & their families to come together in an open, friendly environment. 7:00pm at RavenSong Community Health Centre (2450 Ontario St). or more information call 604-875-4875.

LIVING THROUGH LOSS COUNSELLING facilitated support group for people who are grieving the death of a significant person.

Monthly drop-in- last Wed of every month YLTLC #201 – 1847 W. Broadway Van. 604-873-5013 www.ltlc.bc.ca Concerns of Growing Old? If you are 60 plus and find yourself alone, let's talk and support each other 604-682-3269 ext 7101

performances by Flume, Disclosure DJ, Marshmello, Zeds Dead, Baauer, Gareth Emery, W&W, Hucci, Getter, Slushii, and Big Wild. Dec 26-27, BC Place Stadium (777 Pacific Boulevard). Tix on sale Sep 29, 11 am, $150 (plus service charges and fees) at www.contact-festival.com/.

music/ timeout CONCERTS < CLUBS & VENUES < OUT OF TOWN <

CONCERTS 2JUST ANNOUNCED ANDY SHAUF Canadian indie-pop artist tours in support of latest album The Party, with guests Scattered Clouds. Oct 14, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret (2321 Main). Tix $19.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketfly.com/.

JEZ LOWE The Rogue Folk Club presents the English folk vocalist-guitarist. Oct 19, 8-10:30 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th).

Tix $22/18, info www.roguefolk.baremetal. com/concerts/ev16101920/.

CL South Korean K-pop vocalist performs on her Hello Bitches Tour 2016. Nov 1, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix on sale Sep 30, 12 pm, $99.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

CHANTAL KREVIAZUK Canadian adultcontemporary singer-songwriter tours in support of latest release Hard Sail. Nov 3, doors 7 pm, show 7:30 pm, Clarke Theatre (33700 Prentis Ave., Mission). The event also runs on Nov 4 at the Massey Theatre.

Tix $38.25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketmaster.ca/.

CONTACT WINTER MUSIC FESTIVAL Electronic music festival features

ADAM ANT English pop singer-songwriter tours in support of the 35th anniversary of his landmark album Kings of the Wild Frontier. Feb 4, 7 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix on sale Sep 30, 10 am, $33.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketfly.com/.

DAYA American synth-pop singer-songwriter tours in support of debut full-length album Sit Still, Look Pretty. Mar 17, doors 7:30 pm, show 8:30 pm, Rio Theatre (1660 E. Broadway). Tix on sale Sep 30, 10 am, $20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

2THIS WEEK KT TUNSTALL The Georgia Straight presents Scottish indie-rock singer-songwriter. Sep 29, doors 7 pm, show 8:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix $29.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

CONNIE KALDOR The Rogue Folk Club presents the Canadian folk vocalist-guitarist.

Sep 29, 8 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th).

Tix $30/26, info www.roguefolk.bc.ca/ concerts/ev16092920/.

don’t miss out!

For up-to-the-minute, searchable Music Time Out listings, visit

www.straight.com

DAVID LIEBE HART American outsider musician, street performer, sign and window painter, artist, puppeteer, and actor Sep 29, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $13, info www.facebook. com/events/1741805609382767/.

TWIN PEAKS American garage-rock band, with guests White Reaper and Modern Vices. Sep 29, 8 pm, Biltmore Cabaret (2755 Prince Edward). Tix $1316, info www.ticketfly.com/purchase/ event/1224311?utm_medium=bks.

straight choices KAYTRANADA Don’t be fooled by his relative youth or the fact that he has only one official album out under his current Kaytranada moniker: Louis Kevin Celestin has been around for a minute. Several minutes, in fact. The 24-yearold Haitian-born Montrealer has been releasing music since 2010, when he called himself Kaytradamus. The producer’s smooth but quirk-laced take on downtempo house, narcotic R&B, and beat-driven funk earned him the 2016 Polaris Prize for Kaytranada’s XL recordings debut, 99.9%. Check him out at the Vogue Theatre on Friday (September 30), and display your unimpeachable hipness by shouting out requests for obscure Kaytradamus B-sides.

THE BRAINS Montreal punk-psychobilly band, with guests Kman, the 45s, and Obscene Being. Sep 29, 8:30 pm, WISE Hall (1882 Adanac). Tix $15, info www.thebrainsmtl.com/.

FUTURISTIC Illinois hip-hop artist performs on his As Seen on the Internet Tour, with guests Beez, J.Rob the Chief, and Alpha Omega. Sep 29, 9 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Info www.bplive.ca/.

LANY Los Angeles-based dream-pop band performs on its Kinda Tour, with guests Transviolet. Sep 29, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Venue (881 Granville). Tix $20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

MICK FLEETWOOD BLUES BAND Blues band featuring Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood. Sep 30, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Molson Canadian Theatre at Hard Rock (2080 United Blvd.). Tix $139.50/129.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketmaster.ca/.

ROYAL CANOE Indie-pop band from Manitoba performs tunes from latest album Something Got Lost Between Here and the Orbit. Sep 30, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, The Imperial (319 Main). Tix $17.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

LATE NIGHT @VIFF HUB Highlights include members of We Are The City presenting pieces of the award-winning Violent soundtrack (Sep 30), local electronica band HUMANS with visuals

by Genki Nishida (Oct 1), seven short films by emerging local web creators accompanied by local rising hip-hop star K!mmortal (Oct 3), local electronic artist

Iain Howe performing with Chin Injeti (Oct 4), DJs Trevor Risk and Christa Belle spinning tunes from films (Oct 5), musician Desi Subculture joined by Vancouverbased interdisciplinary media artist Sammy Chien (Oct 6), and music by Dunks of the Vancouver-based band Funk Hunters (Oct 8). Sep 30–Oct 8, Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour). Info www.viff.org/festival/.

KAYTRANADA Haitian-Canadian electronica musician, producer, and DJ performs on his 99% Tour. Sep 30, 7 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Info www.bplive.ca/.

PSYCHIC TV English experimental videoart and music group. Sep 30, 7 pm, Venue (881 Granville). Tix $25 (plus service charges and fees), info www.venuelive.ca/.

REBELS SING: A TRIBUTE TO TODD SERIOUS AND THE REBEL SPELL Tribute evening features music by ATD, Jeff Andrew, Soundcity Hooligans, Reckless Rebels, JESSE LEBOURDAIS, Selfist, Chaos, Disorder And Panic, Alien Boys, Soiled Doves, Flagpolers, 19th Floor, Trade Your Children, Meeka Morgan, AK-747s, and REDS. Sep 30, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings).

Tix $10, info www.rickshawtheare.com/.

TOPS Montreal pop band, with guest Gal Gracen. Sep 30, 8 pm, WISE Hall (1882 Adanac). Tix $13, info www.facebook. com/events/1061077810627578/.

THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST: A VANCOUVER CELEBRATION A celebration of the David Bowie album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spider from Mars features performances by Vancouver musicians Alex Cuba, Jim Byrnes, Ralph

Shaw, Ndidi Onukwulu, Roy Forbes, Khari McClelland, Dustin Bentall, Rich Hope, John Reischman, and Keri Latimer, all under the leadership of Steve Dawson and the Black Hen House Band. Sep 30--Oct 1, 8 pm, Kay Meek Centre (1700 Mathers Ave., West Van). Tix $52/45, info kaymeekcentre.com/on_stage/2341/.

DINOSAUR JR. The Georgia Straight presents American alt-rock band, with guests Moon Duo. Sep 30, doors 8 pm, show 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix $32.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

HARD RUBBER ORCHESTRA WITH RENÉ LUSSIER Vancouver jazz band led

by John Korsrud premieres Lussier’s new work We Will See, as well as excerpts from Le Vaisseau d’Or. Oct 1, 8 pm, Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre (149 W. Hastings). Tix $22/12, info www. hardrubber.com/.

FARNAZ OHADI Vancouver-based Persian flamenco artist launches debut album Bird Dance Oct 1, 8-11 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts (2055 Purcell Way). Tix $35-45 , info www.mashreghmusic. com/#!farnaz/.

PENNYWISE American punk-rock band plays album About Time, with guests Strung Out, Unwritten Law, and Runaway Kids. Oct 1, doors 7 pm, show 8:15 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville).

Tix $35 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

TENGGER CAVALRY New York folkmetal group, with Incite, Revenger, and Trollband. Oct 1, 10 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $14.50, info www.rick shawtheatre.com/.

BARRULE The Rogue Folk Club presents the folk group from the Isle of Man in Great Britain. Oct 2, 8-10:30 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix $26/22, info www. roguefolk.bc.ca/concerts/ev16100220/.

DJ SHADOW American hip-hop producer and DJ tours in support of upcoming studio album The Mountain Will Fall, with guests Noer the Boy. Oct 2, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix $32.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

see page 28

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MOVIES

In 2015, Adam Cook scored an administraBY ADR IAN M ACK

tive gig at the Vancouver International Film Festival. A year later, remarkably, the sometime Georgia Straight contributor inhabits a far more exalted position as the programmer behind Future//Present, a collection of deeply independent films arriving at this year’s festival as an adjunct to its traditional Canadian Images program, which in turn has been beefed up and shuffled into a wider category called True North. When executive director Jacqueline Dupuis and her team made the announcement last month that VIFF was launching “a bold restructuring of its traditional film and industry programming”, they weren’t just whistling “Dixie”. There’s a sense of newness and discovery across all of the refreshed festival’s programming streams, and Future//Present provides an especially potent dose.

“The greatest films in our country right now are coming from all sorts of different places, often with low budgets, being made in atypical ways and in atypical forms,” Cook tells the Straight, explaining that he pitched the series with a mock program composed of super-indie critical raves like Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This Hammer and Isiah Medina’s 88:88.

Long live the new fest A

With his first feature Hello Destroyer, Emily Carr grad Kevan Funk brings one of the best in an impressive lineup of debuts to this year’s VIFF. Amanda Siebert photo.

way home from TIFF. “I know this emerging filmmaking scene in Toronto that’s very much a pushback led by guys like Kazik Radwanski and new generation of outside-the-box filmmakers is bringing Andrew Cividino and Albert Shin. These guys are making, life to a refreshed Vancouver International Film Festival in my opinion, the best cinema The films ultimately selected by Cook—eight in total, in the country. Way better than the big, big boys, and each one a feature debut, half of them directed or better even than the French-Canadian cinema.” codirected by women—were all made well outside Like Adam Cook, Funk senses a “trickle-down the conventional industry framework, with only effect into B.C.”, but he’s blunt about the future of a one, Ashley McKenzie’s micro-budgeted Werewolf, local film culture steeped in a long-established serreceiving any support from Telefilm. vice-industry “comfort zone” concerned more with McKenzie’s staggeringly raw and original por- status than with cultivating meaningful work. trait of two tragic Cape Breton junkies also played “I was probably just as nervous about getting into (and slayed) at this year’s Toronto International VIFF as I was about getting into Toronto because Film Festival, unlike, to VIFF’s credit, the rest of Hello Destroyer is so much a film of B.C.,” he says.

Future//Present, which includes Montreal media “I have pretty strong feelings about the state of B.C. artist Karl Lemieux’s postrock tooth-grinder film and English-Canadian film in general. I don’t (that’s a recommendation) Maudite Poutine and want to speak in some ridiculous grandiose way Lev Lewis’s uncomfortably hilarious and downbeat about making something that’s changing everytale of a one-night stand gone weird, The Intestine. thing in B.C. film or anything like that, but I do Cook’s miniseries of films “made in atypical ways think that we need to be a bit bolder in our voices. and in atypical forms” otherwise represents the work Film in B.C. can sometimes suffer under the weight of an atypical generation. Millennials have emerged of the reality of the city, which is very much influinto a pitiless world frozen into corporate lockdown, enced by serving Hollywood. I feel there’s a reason but also a world that inadvertently surrendered the that Quebec has such great cinema, and it’s because means of production when it shoved an iPhone, it’s not attached to that world at all. It’s all culturamong other digital toys, into everyone’s hands. “I ally based, and so much of what frustrated me about guess it got easier to make movies 10 years ago and B.C. film is a lack of identity of place, and a lack of a it took 10 years for a sophisticated generation of strong authorial voice that was interested in looking filmmakers to emerge from that,” suggests Cook, back on where we’re from.” who proclaims that Toronto’s independent-cinema Inspired in some ways by Todd Bertuzzi’s fate, movement is equal to that of either New York or Los Hello Destroyer is a sensitive critique of our failure Angeles. “And it’s starting to happen in Vancouver,” to reckon with institutional violence, on the rink he adds. “I think we’re at a really exciting historical and beyond. It’s equally compelling when viewed moment for Canadian independent cinema.” as a repudiation of Canadian cinema itself, forever aiming wide on its tired search for national identity, AT THE VERY LEAST, we’re at a really exciting or, worse, forever coming up short with mainstream historical moment for Kevan Funk. The Emily Carr audiences. “There are exceptions,” says Funk, “but grad brings one of the buzziest of this year’s feature- in a broad way we have so long made films for nolength debuts to VIFF with Hello Destroyer, his body. You literally end up spending money making devastating, Prince George–set portrait of a junior- these films that zero people are interested in seeing.” hockey-league grinder whose world collapses after he administers a life-threatening hit to an oppon- IF VIFF HAS OFFERED a robust response to ent. Funk’s film arrives here via Ignite, which is the long crisis described by Kevan Funk, TeleVIFF’s shiny new take on the B.C. Spotlight series, film deserves equal praise for supporting Hello although it’s philosophically related to the insur- Destroyer. “We had some big institutions in this country sign up and then ditch us at the gent community defined by Future//Present.

“I’ve got a bunch of good friends there,” says the altar,” says Funk. “It was pretty traumatic and 30-year-old filmmaker, calling the Straight on his we ended up making the film for half the budget

we thought we were going to have, but Telefilm stood by us.”

His good fortune aside, the filmmaker also allows that Canada’s primary funding body has stagnated along with Canada’s product. The solution is busy presenting itself as a cross-country mob of young, connected, cine-literate artists building pressure from below with work too convincing to ignore—like Hello Destroyer.

Indeed, when TIFF awarded its best-Canadianfirst-feature-film prize this year to Johnny Ma’s Old Stone, it zeroed in on a work of astounding confidence and maturity. “It’s a game-changer. I’m shocked that we won,” Ma tells the Straight during one of his frequent visits to his family’s Vancouver home. “It’s a message to all the Canadian filmmakers who don’t make the traditional kind of Canadian film that they can all come out and boldly do what they want to do and trust that the Canadian filmmaking platforms are going to support it.”

The noir-ish tale of a taxi driver in China who makes the grave mistake of trying to help the motorcyclist he injured, elliptically told inside a perfectly judged 80 minutes, Old Stone could have been made by an old master. It appears as part of the True North program, but again, Ma provides another coordinate inside Canada’s loose assembly of 30-something radicals.

“Kevan Funk, me, and a small group of other Canadian filmmakers—we all sort of grew up together with TIFF, basically,” he says, citing Cook’s Future//Present program as a welcome, one-stop location for much of their work. “And it’s just the beginning. In the next couple of years you’ll see what the new face of Canadian filmmaking could be. It’s very, very exciting.”

“It’s about looking to a new generation, but also the types of cinema that maybe didn’t even exist before or we didn’t even know about before,” offers Adam Cook. “I think there’s a real chance to cultivate audiences and to really foster a culture that hasn’t exactly flourished in the past—an artistically driven culture rather than an industry-driven one. And obviously, in Vancouver, that’s all we’ve talked about: the industry. I don’t think there’s been a support system for audiences or filmmakers who think about film differently. This is more geared towards them.” By which, of course, he means you, dear festie. The Vancouver International Film Festival runs from Thursday (September 29) to October 14. More information is at www.viff.org/.

V I FF ’S AB SOLUT E BEGI NN E R S >>> We recommend five amaz-

2 ing debut features to catch

at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

HELLO DESTROYER (Canada) Writer-director Kevan Funk quips that his drama is “a hockey film, but not a hockey film”; whatever it is, a powerful sense of location and sensitivity to the subject matter are what make this near-flawless movie so impressive. That and Fear the Walking Dead star Jared Abrahamson’s monumental turn as Prince George Warriors grinder Ty Burr, a rookie who loses everything when he sends an opponent to hospital with lifethreatening injuries. Funk’s shrewd framing of the hit is almost incidental; Burr’s subsequent railroading by the club, the community, and even his own family is tragically on point.

As a frightened boy too emotionally constipated to help himself, Abra-

hamson tears your heart to shreds.

Rio, October 1 (6 p.m.); International Village, October 6 (3:45 p.m.)

(Canada) Sofia Bohdanowicz is the “future of Canadian cinema”, according to Future//Present programmer Adam Cook. “She’s our Chantal Akerman. Her cinema is already complete and extraordinary, and I imagine that her name is one we will study.” Yowza! A widow in her 80s wonders about the fate of an almost-flame she met on the set of a live TV musical in the ’50s.

Her granddaughter tracks down the tape, and more. On this slim premise, presented with docu-like realism, Bohdanowicz builds an acutely observed poem to ordinary life that somehow also contains an outlandish gimmick (though that’s hardly the right word) best saved for discovery inside the theatre.

NEVER

EAT

ALONE

20 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

Cinematheque, October 2 (9:30 p.m.) and October 4 (3:45 p.m.)

SUFFERING OF NINKO (Japan) The plight of irresistibly sexy Buddhist priests in ancient Japan—a subject too often avoided in contemporary cinema, and anywhere else—is finally given the attention it deserves in this wild Gateway Dragons & Tigers series entry. Ninko’s suffering in this case comes in the form of village women in heat, horny brothers in the monastery, and a nude, life-force-sucking succubus or two. Hardly surprising, since Ninko is a ringer for super-hot Japanese actor Tsujioka Masato. Director Niwatsukino Norhiro’s lively and very pretty film mixes animation with medieval raunch and a lot of nipples, not to mention a very agreeable visualization of the deep meditative state. Cinematheque, October 1 (6:30 p.m.); International Village, October 2 (12:45 p.m.)

> BY ADRIAN MACK

SHE’S ALLERGIC TO CATS (USA) The Altered States program (now part of the larger series Alt) goes to the wall with this inspired anticomedy about a video artist stuck in a dog-grooming job (Mickey Rourke’s daughter is a client) and saddled with a rat infestation, a mentally challenged landlord called Honey, and a super-macho German producer who despises weakness. And then Cora turns up, played by Sonja Kinski, who’s definitely a Kinski. The film’s glitchy analogue style is a blast, and director Michael Reich is happy to construct a little musical montage out of the detailed cleaning of a dog’s anal glands, but something endearing (star Mike Pinkney, mostly) rises out of all the elevated amateurishness. Rio, October 8 (11 p.m.); Cinematheque, October 12 (8:45 p.m.)

GIANT (Sweden/Denmark) Astonishing, unforgettable, and

THE

☞

perhaps no less than we should have expected from Johannes Nyholm, the mad genius behind that “baby trashes bar in Los Palmas” video you watched on YouTube a thousand times. Christian Andrén disappears inside his role (and behind a lot of superb makeup) as Rikard, a deformed and severely autistic man whose life commitment to the game of pétanque (like boules, but apparently way more aggressive) is a form of devotion to his institutionalized mother. Aided by an ecstatically original score and luminous fantasy sequences, this entry in the Panorama Contemporary World Cinema stream is both hilarious and heartbreaking, skirting bad taste and moments of too-broad humour, but in the end emerging clean—and deeply moving. International Village, September 30 (6 p.m.); Vancity, October 10 (10:30 a.m.) -

Expand the frame.

September 29 to October 14 Discover viff.org

Alejandro Jodorowsky in attendance

Yang Chao in attendance (Oct. 3)

The Confessions

Crosscurrent

Roberto Andò – Italy/France SAT. OCT 1

8:30 PM

TUE. OCT 4

11:30 AM

Dolores

Endless Poetry

Michael Rösel – Germany

Yang Chao – China

Alejandro Jodorowsky – Chile/France

CENTRE FOR ARTS

MON. OCT 3

9:30 PM

PLAYHOUSE

FRI. SEP 30

9:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

INTL VILLAGE 10

TUE. OCT 11

1:30 PM

VANCITY

SUN. OCT 2

1:15 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

The set-up is delicious: at a G8 meeting in Germany, the immaculately clad monk Robert Salus (Toni Servillo, great), invited by IMF chief Daniel Roché (Daniel Auteuil) to hear his confession, goes up against a scheme to further enslave the struggling economies of Europe. Just what did Roché confess before committing suicide...? “[In] Roberto Andò’s offbeat thriller... there is much to chuckle over as the plodding, plotting politicos are outmaneuvered by the monk’s sheer goodness.”—Hollywood Reporter

Poetic, enigmatic, sublime and achingly beautiful: Yang Chao’s long-awaited masterpiece sets a new standard for Chinese cinema. Signed up for a mysterious boat journey up the Yangtze River, a sailor finds a book of poetry, inspiring visions of a beautiful woman (or is it several women?) in each of the riverside ports he traverses. As their intimacy intensifies, their passion permeates through the film’s poetic texts and classical landscapes. Sensuality made visible: a triumph of cinema art.

Best First Film, Brussels 16

Gimme Danger

Graduation

Mirjana Karanović – Serbia/Bosnia/Croatia

THU. SEP 29

9:15 PM

RIO

SAT. OCT 8

4:30 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

WED. OCT 12

6:30 PM

RIO

6:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

FRI. SEP 30

1:15 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

THU. OCT 13

4:00 PM

SFU-GCA

WED. OCT 5

8:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

TUE. OCT 11

6:00 PM

INTL VILLAGE 8

TUE. OCT 11

3:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

Premier Sponsor

Festival Sponsors

SFU-GCA

Cult legend Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo), now in his 80s, looks back on his youth and fashions this wildly inventive, criminally charming chronicle of the young poetry- and sex-mad Alejandro (the director’s son, Adan) let loose among the bohemians of Santiago, Chile, in the 1940s and 50s. “[Jodorowsky] has managed to reinvent himself in the most spectacular and unlikely way... [This] is the most accessible movie he has ever made, and it may also be the best. It’s Felliniesque and moving.”—Variety

Ryon Baxter – USA

WED. OCT 5

Mirjana Karanović brings us a drama about a woman’s courage, a husband’s secret, and a nation’s past. She plays Milena, a middle-aged Serbian wife whose life is relatively happy until she discovers a VHS tape from her husband’s war days. What she sees on that tape will change her life…“Karanović’s fearless performance is one of an actress right on the top of her game…[it] holds you hard in its gaze.”

—Eye for Film

PLAYHOUSE

3:15 PM

Green / Is / Gold

Cristian Mungiu – Romania

The Stooges are the greatest rock and roll band ever.

Try and argue that assertion with Jim Jarmusch and he’ll counter with this documentary that makes its persuasive case by cranking the volume for archival footage and imparting anecdotes with as many hooks as “Search and Destroy.” Engaging Iggy Pop as an iconoclastic equal, Jarmusch illustrates these glamorous degenerates’ influence on music and the maverick director’s own filmmaking. “One of the great rock documentaries of recent times.”—Sight & Sound

9:00 PM

FRI. OCT 7

Audience Award, Los Angeles 16 Ryon Baxter in attendance

Best Director, Cannes 16

A Good Wife

Jim Jarmusch – USA

In 1950s Germany, the chance meeting between precision-model builder Georg (Udo Schenk), possessor of mysterious powers, and movie star Dolores Moor (Franziska Petri) leads to a tale of obsession and murder... Alternately funny and chilling, and based on a graphic novel, Michael Rösel’s gorgeously designed tongue-in-cheek cross between mad-scientist movies and melodramas of the 50s is smashing fun. Think Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In crossed with Vertigo, and add one dollop of Sirk, plus two of comedy…

WED. OCT 5

Winner of the 2007 Cannes Palme d’Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu returns with this tale about a doctor with a secret who’ll do anything to ensure his 18-year-old daughter passes her final exam with a high enough score to guarantee a scholarship abroad. “A five-star study of grubby bureaucratic compromise... [This] is a masterly, complex movie of psychological subtlety and moral weight, about the shabby choices people make as they claw their way up... Deeply intelligent...”—Guardian

WED. OCT 5

9:00 PM

RIO

FRI. OCT 7

3:00 PM

INTL VILLAGE 8

A basement grow-op serves as the unlikely backdrop for a coming-of-age tale in this emotionally authentic rough gem. With his dad serving hard time, 13-yearold Mason (Jimmy Baxter) is sentenced to living with his estranged brother Cameron (writer-directoractual-older-sibling Ryon Baxter) on his pot plantation.

As the siblings bond over the cultivation of killer bud, they also experience their first brushes with pride, adopting the credo, “If you’re going to do wrong, make sure you do it right.”

Schedule subject to change.

Visit viff.org for updates and full lineup of 300+ films and events.

Box Office

Premier Supporters

Public Supporters

Regular: Adult $15, Student/Senior $13 Special Presentations: $17 Gala Screenings: $22 Ticket Packs + Passes Available Online: at viff.org

Major Partners

Media Partners

In-person: Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, at Davie (Mon-Sat: Noon - 7pm, Sun: 2pm – 9pm) Film Infoline: 604-683-FILM

SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 21

September 29 to October 14 Discover viff.org

Palme d'Or, Cannes 16

The Handmaiden

I, Daniel Blake

Park Chanwook – South Korea

Julieta

In a Valley of Violence Ti West – USA

Ken Loach – UK/France/Belgium

SUN. OCT 2

8:45 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

MON. OCT 3

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

FRI. OCT 7

3:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

THU. OCT 6

3:15 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. OCT 14

8:30 PM

RIO

FRI. OCT 14

6:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

With this sexy, dangerous bodice-ripper, Park Chanwook (Oldboy) has fashioned a cinema of striptease; as the film slowly unspools, we marvel at its sensual flair. After a Korean pickpocket is hired by a con-man to masquerade as a Japanese heiress’s maid and help pilfer her fortune, The Handmaiden’s plot twists as fast as its characters shift sexual allegiances. “Park brings the full arsenal of cinematic expression… [He] can make a mere door opening an act of emotional transcendence.”—Village Voice

Best Canadian Feature Documentary, Hot Docs 16 Nettie Wild in attendance

Ti West in attendance (Oct. 1)

Rumours of his retirement having been greatly exaggerated, Ken Loach returns with this emotionally shattering critique of inequality in Britain’s welfare system. After suffering a heart attack, the 59-year-old Daniel (Dave Johns) enters the labyrinthine world of social services, seeking a disability allowance. “One of Loach’s finest films, a drama of tender devastation that tells its story with an unblinking neorealist simplicity that goes right back to the plainspoken purity of Vittorio De Sica.”—Variety

SAT. OCT 1

9:00 PM

RIO

MON. OCT 10

4:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

With his faithful dog at his side (and stealing scenes), an unassuming drifter (Ethan Hawke) wanders into a desolate outpost and immediately lands on the wrong side of a lawman (John Travolta) and his petulant son (James Ransone). Revered for The House of the Devil, a subtle modern horror classic, Ti West indulges his every whim in this over-the-top Western that comes loaded for bear, armed with cartoonish villains and inventively staged shootouts. “A classic revenge tale with a smirk...”—IndieWire

Barnet Bain, Mia Krishner and William Ainscough in attendance (Sep. 30)

A Man Called Ove 9:30 PM

SAT. OCT 8

10:45 AM

WED. OCT 5

6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. OCT 7

1:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

SAT. OCT 8

8:45 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

Pedro Almodóvar’s decades-spanning tale, based on stories by Alice Munro, masterfully blends elements of melodrama and mystery. Middle-aged Julieta (Emma Suárez) discovers that her long-missing daughter has resurfaced, leading her to reflect on her younger self (played by Adriana Ugarte) and the events that drove her daughter away. “A sombre, ravishing study of grief, guilt and burden... [The film] offers a cumulative power that’s finally extremely moving and teasingly free of easy resolution.”—Time Out

Reza Dormishian – Iran

Nettie Wild – Canada MON. OCT 3

6:30 PM

PLAYHOUSE

SUN. OCT 9

12:30 PM

VANCITY

In Nettie Wild’s stunning magnum opus, a mining company helicopter hovers above the pristine land of the Tahltan First Nation in northern BC, carrying a huge electric transmission tower, casting patterned shadows. This conflict between manmade geometries and nature’s vortices is at the film’s heart. Marking a tonal departure from her earlier documentaries, Wild creates a balanced profile that’s free of polemics and a feast for the eyes.

“Subtle, beautiful and remarkably even-handed...”

—Globe & Mail

RIO

THU. OCT 6

6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. SEP 30

5:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

TUE. OCT 4

6:30 PM

RIO

SUN. OCT 2

6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

SFU-GCA

SAT. OCT 8

2:15 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

SUN. OCT 9

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

THU. OCT 6

1:00 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

SUN. OCT 9

1:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

WED. OCT 12

8:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

Patrolling his neighbourhood for signs of disorder, sticking his nose into everyone’s business, observing no social niceties when dealing with “idiots”—Ove (Rolf Lassgard) is one cantankerous old git! The arrival of a young family next door, however, sets in motion a charming tale that uses flashbacks and wonderful acting to tell Ove’s story… “A touching comic crowdpleaser… Hannes Holm’s irresistible adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s eponymous bestselling novel… [is] a heartwarming tale...”—Variety

An all-star cast, a riveting script and a smart narrative puzzle give Kenneth Lonergan’s (Margaret; You Can Count on Me) drama devastating power. Casey Affleck is superb as a taciturn Boston handyman Lee, who returns to his salty hometown after his brother (Kyle Chandler) dies. There, past and present collide with a force that few could survive. “[An] extraordinary swirl of love, anger, tenderness and brittle humour… [This is a] beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama.”

—Variety

Neruda

Mixed Match

Jeff Chiba Stearns – Canada/USA

Barnet Bain – Canada

A victim of bullying at school and a witness to his parents’ (David Sutcliffe and Mia Kirshner) tensions at home, young Milton (William Ainscough) retreats into an emotional shell. Fortunately, his enlightened grandfather (Donald Sutherland) arrives on this fraught scene to impart wisdom on how to unburden oneself of such troubles. Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) supplied the source material for Barnet Bain’s timeless story about inner peace and empowerment that will resonate with the whole family.

Pablo Larraín – Chile/Argentina/Spain/France

This film could save your life. Jeff Chiba Stearns unveils the desperation of people waiting for a suitable match for a bone marrow donor. Unlike blood donations, which are generally suitable for anyone of the same blood type, bone marrow donation requires an extremely close genetic match, leaving multiracial blood cancer patients to draw from a small pool of donors. Incorporating animation to great effect, Chiba Stearns lets us know what we can do to address this critical situation in cancer treatment.

A Quiet Passion

Jim Jarmusch – USA

The Red Turtle

Terence Davies – UK/Belgium

SUN. OCT 2

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

TUE. OCT 11

8:45 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. OCT 14

6:00 PM

RIO

Adam Driver is Paterson, a bus driver and aspiring poet in Paterson, New Jersey, and Iranian star Golshifteh Farahani is his wife, Laura, in Jim Jarmusch’s delightful ode to love, life, inspiration and William Carlos Williams. “A lovely... fable about the fragile, fruitful and just occasionally fraught relationship between creativity and everyday life... There’s so very much to enjoy here: Jarmusch’s wry script and beautifully becalmed direction, Fred Elmes’ quietly glowing photography…”—Time Out

MON. OCT 3

6:00 PM

SUN. OCT 9

11:00 AM

Michael Dudok de Wit – Netherlands/France/Japan CENTRE FOR ARTS

SAT. OCT 1

2:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

INTL VILLAGE 9

THU. OCT 6

6:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

The life of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (played here by a superb Cynthia Nixon) is brought luminously to life by, appropriately enough, a master poet of the cinema, Terence Davies (The Deep Blue Sea). Davies imbues Dickinson’s cloistered life with a beauty that shows her for the quiet rebel she was.

“Nixon does a brilliant job... Above all, though, it is Davies’ ability to invest even the most apparently humdrum moments with some form of intense radiance that sustains his film.”—Guardian

TUE. OCT 4

9:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

TUE. OCT 11

12:30 PM

Zacharias Kunuk – Canada

TUE. OCT 4

6:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

TUE. OCT 4

6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

PLAYHOUSE

WED. OCT 5

1:15 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

THU. OCT 6

3:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

Not for the fainthearted, Reza Dormishian’s tour-deforce takes the “eye for an eye” justice permitted by Islamic law to its logical extreme. A Lantouri gang member (Navid Mohammadzadeh), obsessed with a crusading journalist (Maryam Palizban), deals with her rejection by throwing acid in her face… Covering many issues plaguing Tehran today, the film unspools “with near-cyclonic force… [This is an] ambitious examination of the churning frustrations of Iran’s disenfranchised younger generation…”—Variety

SUN. OCT 9

6:00 PM

CINEMATHEQUE

For decades, Polish surrealist Zdzislaw Beksinski obsessively recorded—in photographs, on video and on audiotape—every aspect of his life in the modest apartment he shared with his wife, mother and mother-in-law. Inspired by this archive, Jan P. Matuszyński has constructed a portrait of the artist as a mild, unassuming husband and son, and a loving father to a troubled, volatile son of his own. The banal sits cheek by jowl with madness, death and desire in this trenchant, superbly executed debut.

Another robust and inventive drama from Pablo Larraín (No, VIFF 12; The Club, VIFF 15), Neruda, set in 1948 Chile, features Gael García Bernal (terrific) as a somewhat inept yet self-aggrandizing police detective who makes it his mission to hunt down Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) after the poet is forced into hiding for his beliefs… “[This represents] the director at his stunning best with a work of such cleverness and beauty, alongside such power, that it’s hard to know how to parcel out praise…”—Variety

A marvellous, dialogue-free slice of animated poetry, this collaboration between Dutch Oscar-winner (for the animated short Father and Daughter) Michael Dudok de Wit and Japan’s Studio Ghibli gives us a Robinson Crusoe-like man, stranded on a desert isle, whose adventures delve deep into the allegorical and fantastic... “A fable so simple, so pure, it feels as if it has existed for hundreds of years, like a brilliant shard of sea glass rendered smooth and elegant through generations of retelling.”—Variety

Seasons

Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud – France

Operation Avalanche

Original Bliss

Matt Johnson – Canada/USA

The Other Half

Sven Taddicken – Germany

FRI. SEP 30

9:00 PM

RIO

MON. OCT 10

2:30 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

In 1967, movie geeks from the CIA’s A/V Department are recruited to help NASA stage the moon landing.

Operating in true guerrilla fashion (including actually infiltrating NASA to shoot scenes), director-star Matt Johnson and his resourceful team have created a truly audacious conspiracy thriller, with every frame infused with the delirious (and wholly infectious) joy of mischief-makers who can’t believe that they’re getting away with it. “A sly little comedy-thriller... An act of movie love.”—Vulture

Joey Klein – Canada

TUE. OCT 4

9:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

WED. OCT 5

4:30 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

The Lives of Others (2006) co-stars Martina Gedeck and Ulrich Tukur re-team for Sven Taddicken’s (My Brother the Vampire) wholly original drama about a seemingly complacent housewife (Gedeck, mesmerizing) whose underlying masochism leads her to embark on a relationship with her shrink (Tukur)...

“An elegantly disquieting investigation into the interrelation of faith, violence and sexual degradation, held together by a rivetingly sure-footed performance

by German star Martina Gedeck...”—Variety

SAT. OCT 1

9:15 PM

SUN. OCT 2

12:30 PM

MON. OCT 10

6:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE PLAYHOUSE INTL VILLAGE 8

Joey Klein’s accomplished debut hinges on the relationship between a bipolar woman (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black) and a grief-stricken man (Tom Cullen, Weekend). The film’s nuanced narrative is striking in its depth and sincerity as it portrays a relationship borne of mutual mental distress. Its aesthetic flourishes and indelible soundtrack work to create a dizzyingly atmospheric tone. “A troubled, anguished love story that neither exaggerates nor softpedals the demons on display...”—Variety

Best Director, Berlin 16

Strangers on the Earth

The Student SUN. OCT 2

9:30 PM

PLAYHOUSE

FRI. OCT 7

12:30 PM

SFU-GCA

Tristan Cook – USA/Spain

3:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

SUN. OCT 2

6:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

FRI. OCT 7

6:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

WED. OCT 5

1:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

WED. OCT 12

6:15 PM

VANCITY

SUN. OCT 9

10:00 AM

VANCITY

In the footsteps of Walking the Camino, Tristan Cook’s lively portrait of modern pilgrims and fellow travellers winding their way on the legendary Camino de Santiago muses on the psychological and spiritual dividends of a 30-day hike. The landscape is beautiful but brutal, the dorms are packed and the bunks are hard. Some find solace in solitude; others discover kinship and community en route. In the case of Dane Johansen, he embarks on the nearly 600-mile journey carrying his cello on his back...

Things to Come

Thanks, Boss!

François Ruffin – France

Kirill Serebrennikov – Russia

SUN. OCT 2

A poetic and magnificently shot chronicle of Europe over the past 15,000 years as seen through the eyes of the animals that have lived there, Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud’s (Winged Migration) latest uses the framing device of the four seasons to explore the habitats and denizens of a vast and varied land. To call this a “documentary” is to sell it short: it plays more like a natural symphony in which the forests, plains, mountains and inhabitants come together in a stunning vision of time and space.

Zacharias Kunuk introduced the world to Inuit filmmaking with the Cannes award-winning Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, recently voted the top Canadian film of all time. The director’s exciting new offering is based on a true story, with an obvious nod to John Ford’s classic The Searchers. A man returns from a hunting trip to discover his wife and daughter kidnapped and the rest of his family slaughtered. His father’s spirit helper, the loon Kallulik, sets him on course to revoke fate and reunite his family.

Joey Klein and Tatiana Maslany in attendance (Oct. 1 & 2)

Tristan Cook and Dane Johansen in attendance (Oct. 2)

Jury Prize, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 16

Paterson

Maliglutit (Searchers)

Jan P. Matuszyński – Poland

Matt Johnson in attendance (Sep. 30)

Jeff Chiba Stearns in attendance

Milton’s Secret

Kenneth Lonergan – USA

Zacharias Kunuk in attendance

The Last Family

Lantouri

Manchester by the Sea

Hannes Holm – Sweden TUE. OCT 4

KONELINE: our land beautiful

Pedro Almodóvar – Spain

Best Actor, Locarno 16 Jan P. Matuszynski in attendance (Oct. 4)

A battle of wills between a fanatically Orthodox teen, Venya (Pyotr Skvortsov), and his atheistic biology teacher, Elena (Victoria Isakova), threatens to careen over into tragedy in Kirill Serebrennikov’s savage satire on the state of Russia today. As Venya’s extremism lurches into anti-Semitism and homophobia, Serebrennikov takes dead aim at Russia’s regression.

“Splendid... A stormy, swoon-inducingly shot bout of Russian moral wrestling that hits as hard and as heavily as a nastoyka hangover...”—Variety

Mia Hansen-Løve – France/Germany

TUE. OCT 4

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

WED. OCT 5

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

THU. OCT 13

9:15 PM

RIO

SUN. OCT 9

6:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

TUE. OCT 11

6:00 PM

INTL VILLAGE 8

A surprise hit this year in France, journalist-turnedfilmmaker François Ruffin’s funny and acute documentary takes a page from the Michael Moore playbook as it tries to hunt down France’s richest man—LVMH head Bernard Arnault—and hold him to account for the closure of a French factory. Posing as the son of broke former LVMH workers Serge and Jocelyn Klur, Ruffin skewers the labour practices of Arnault, seeks compensation for the Klurs and shows just how far Arnault will go to protect his image...

The great Isabelle Huppert gives a profoundly moving performance as a philosophy teacher who finds her life unmoored by a wholly unexpected divorce in Mia Hansen-Løve’s terrific exploration of one woman’s complex emotional and intellectual response to latemiddle-aged trauma. “Hansen-Løve and Isabelle Huppert prove a dream partnership in the director’s gorgeous, heart-cradling post-divorce drama... This is major, many-shaded work even by [Huppert’s] lofty standards.”—Variety

Schedule subject to change.

Visit viff.org for updates and full lineup of 300+ films and events.

Box Office Fipresci International Critics Prize, Cannes 16

Best Editing, Sundance 16

Toni Erdmann

Under the Shadow

Maren Ade – Germany

The Unknown Girl

Babak Anvari – UK/Jordan/Qatar

FRI. SEP 30

8:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

TUE. OCT 11

8:30 PM

RIO

THU. OCT 13

2:15 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

Saying it is sui generis only begins to describe the unique breadth and depth of Maren Ade’s (Everyone Else) comic masterpiece, a film that traces the relationship between a prank-playing father (Peter Simonischek) and his corporate go-getter daughter (Sandra Hüller) to side-splitting and moving effect. “A stunningly singular third feature by Ade that transports the intricately magnified human observation of her previous work to a rich, unexpected comic realm... A humane, hilarious triumph.”—Variety

FRI. SEP 30

11:45 PM

MON. OCT 3

9:30 PM

Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne – France/Belgium RIO INTL VILLAGE 9

With the Iran-Iraq conflict raging on, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) discovers that her Tehran apartment is no sanctuary when a missile crashes through the roof but fails to detonate. The Damoclean dread is further stoked when a djinn manifests and malevolently targets her daughter, proving itself the most terrifying paranormal interloper since The Babadook. Director Babak Anvari has crafted a small-scale masterpiece rich in subtext. “[A] delectable, increasingly unnerving shiver-fest…”―The New York Times

22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

FRI. SEP 30

2:30 PM

Bruce McDonald in attendance (Oct. 2)

Window Horses

Weirdos

We Are X

Bruce McDonald – Canada

Stephen Kijak – UK/USA/Japan

CENTRE FOR ARTS

SAT. OCT 1

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

MON. OCT 3

6:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

6:30 PM

RIO

WED. OCT 5

1:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

4:15 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

MON. OCT 3

9:15 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

WED. OCT 5

FRI. OCT 14

6:15 PM

SFU-GCA

SUN. OCT 9

Adèle Haenel (Love at First Fight, VIFF 14) confirms her place in the firmament of French movie stars with a riveting turn in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s latest drama. She plays a young doctor forced to confront her own fallibility when a woman she turns away from her clinic is found dead on a nearby riverbank the next morning... “What is new here is a flirtation with genre that lends an extra dose of resonance to a finely scripted story. For The Unknown Girl is a detective tale...”—Screen

Watch this documentary and be rocketed into the outer realms of rock ‘n’ roll extravagance as you meet X, the Japanese band that’s captivated audiences worldwide with their operatic musical stylings, outlandish costumes and over-the-top theatrics.

The backstage story explores some darker territory, but Stephen Kijack’s film remains a riveting, often inspiring movie. “Bound to become a favorite among fans and to persuade others to join the ranks of those under the loud spell of X.”—IndieWire

Regular: Adult $15, Student/Senior $13 Special Presentations: $17 Gala Screenings: $22

Ann Marie Fleming in attendance

Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo) has a knack for presenting the Canadian experience in a way that brings out universal truths. With a gently humorous script from playwright Daniel MacIvor, McDonald takes us back to the freewheeling 70s in a road flick featuring the music of Patsy Gallant, Gordon Lightfoot and Murray McLauchlan. The setting is Cape Breton and the cast includes veteran Molly Parker, as well as promising newcomers Dylan Authors and Julia Sarah Stone as the central pair of teenage runaways.

(The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming) Ann Marie Fleming – Canada

While the Women Are Sleeping Wayne Wang – Japan

FRI. SEP 30

6:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

SAT. OCT 1

6:30 PM

PLAYHOUSE

MON. OCT 3

3:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

SAT. OCT 8

10:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses, a beautifully narrated and colourfully animated story of a young girl’s journey, employs poetry, music and illustration to celebrate the value of self-discovery. After being invited to a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran, by a mysterious figure, Rosie Ming faces challenges that ultimately lead to her self-realization. The film’s superb voice cast includes festival veterans Sandra Oh, Don McKellar and Ellen Page.

Working in Japan and adapting a story by Javier Marías, Wayne Wang delivers his most accomplished and resonant movie in some time. On vacation in a luxury beachfront hotel, writer Kenji grows obsessed by an ‘odd couple’—an old man (Beat Takeshi) and a much younger woman—and tries to discover their story. But is he really questioning himself? Secrets, lies and enigmas under the tropical sun.

Ticket Packs + Passes Available Online: at viff.org In-person: Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, at Davie (Mon-Sat: Noon - 7pm, Sun: 2pm – 9pm) Film Infoline: 604-683-FILM

SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23

September 29 to October 14 Discover viff.org

Palme d'Or, Cannes 16

The Handmaiden

I, Daniel Blake

Park Chanwook – South Korea

Julieta

In a Valley of Violence Ti West – USA

Ken Loach – UK/France/Belgium

SUN. OCT 2

8:45 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

MON. OCT 3

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

FRI. OCT 7

3:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

THU. OCT 6

3:15 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. OCT 14

8:30 PM

RIO

FRI. OCT 14

6:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

With this sexy, dangerous bodice-ripper, Park Chanwook (Oldboy) has fashioned a cinema of striptease; as the film slowly unspools, we marvel at its sensual flair. After a Korean pickpocket is hired by a con-man to masquerade as a Japanese heiress’s maid and help pilfer her fortune, The Handmaiden’s plot twists as fast as its characters shift sexual allegiances. “Park brings the full arsenal of cinematic expression… [He] can make a mere door opening an act of emotional transcendence.”—Village Voice

Best Canadian Feature Documentary, Hot Docs 16 Nettie Wild in attendance

Ti West in attendance (Oct. 1)

Rumours of his retirement having been greatly exaggerated, Ken Loach returns with this emotionally shattering critique of inequality in Britain’s welfare system. After suffering a heart attack, the 59-year-old Daniel (Dave Johns) enters the labyrinthine world of social services, seeking a disability allowance. “One of Loach’s finest films, a drama of tender devastation that tells its story with an unblinking neorealist simplicity that goes right back to the plainspoken purity of Vittorio De Sica.”—Variety

SAT. OCT 1

9:00 PM

RIO

MON. OCT 10

4:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

With his faithful dog at his side (and stealing scenes), an unassuming drifter (Ethan Hawke) wanders into a desolate outpost and immediately lands on the wrong side of a lawman (John Travolta) and his petulant son (James Ransone). Revered for The House of the Devil, a subtle modern horror classic, Ti West indulges his every whim in this over-the-top Western that comes loaded for bear, armed with cartoonish villains and inventively staged shootouts. “A classic revenge tale with a smirk...”—IndieWire

Barnet Bain, Mia Krishner and William Ainscough in attendance (Sep. 30)

A Man Called Ove 9:30 PM

SAT. OCT 8

10:45 AM

WED. OCT 5

6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. OCT 7

1:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

SAT. OCT 8

8:45 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

Pedro Almodóvar’s decades-spanning tale, based on stories by Alice Munro, masterfully blends elements of melodrama and mystery. Middle-aged Julieta (Emma Suárez) discovers that her long-missing daughter has resurfaced, leading her to reflect on her younger self (played by Adriana Ugarte) and the events that drove her daughter away. “A sombre, ravishing study of grief, guilt and burden... [The film] offers a cumulative power that’s finally extremely moving and teasingly free of easy resolution.”—Time Out

Reza Dormishian – Iran

Nettie Wild – Canada MON. OCT 3

6:30 PM

PLAYHOUSE

SUN. OCT 9

12:30 PM

VANCITY

In Nettie Wild’s stunning magnum opus, a mining company helicopter hovers above the pristine land of the Tahltan First Nation in northern BC, carrying a huge electric transmission tower, casting patterned shadows. This conflict between manmade geometries and nature’s vortices is at the film’s heart. Marking a tonal departure from her earlier documentaries, Wild creates a balanced profile that’s free of polemics and a feast for the eyes.

“Subtle, beautiful and remarkably even-handed...”

—Globe & Mail

RIO

THU. OCT 6

6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. SEP 30

5:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

TUE. OCT 4

6:30 PM

RIO

SUN. OCT 2

6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

SFU-GCA

SAT. OCT 8

2:15 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

SUN. OCT 9

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

THU. OCT 6

1:00 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

SUN. OCT 9

1:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

WED. OCT 12

8:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

Patrolling his neighbourhood for signs of disorder, sticking his nose into everyone’s business, observing no social niceties when dealing with “idiots”—Ove (Rolf Lassgard) is one cantankerous old git! The arrival of a young family next door, however, sets in motion a charming tale that uses flashbacks and wonderful acting to tell Ove’s story… “A touching comic crowdpleaser… Hannes Holm’s irresistible adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s eponymous bestselling novel… [is] a heartwarming tale...”—Variety

An all-star cast, a riveting script and a smart narrative puzzle give Kenneth Lonergan’s (Margaret; You Can Count on Me) drama devastating power. Casey Affleck is superb as a taciturn Boston handyman Lee, who returns to his salty hometown after his brother (Kyle Chandler) dies. There, past and present collide with a force that few could survive. “[An] extraordinary swirl of love, anger, tenderness and brittle humour… [This is a] beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama.”

—Variety

Neruda

Mixed Match

Jeff Chiba Stearns – Canada/USA

Barnet Bain – Canada

A victim of bullying at school and a witness to his parents’ (David Sutcliffe and Mia Kirshner) tensions at home, young Milton (William Ainscough) retreats into an emotional shell. Fortunately, his enlightened grandfather (Donald Sutherland) arrives on this fraught scene to impart wisdom on how to unburden oneself of such troubles. Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) supplied the source material for Barnet Bain’s timeless story about inner peace and empowerment that will resonate with the whole family.

Pablo Larraín – Chile/Argentina/Spain/France

This film could save your life. Jeff Chiba Stearns unveils the desperation of people waiting for a suitable match for a bone marrow donor. Unlike blood donations, which are generally suitable for anyone of the same blood type, bone marrow donation requires an extremely close genetic match, leaving multiracial blood cancer patients to draw from a small pool of donors. Incorporating animation to great effect, Chiba Stearns lets us know what we can do to address this critical situation in cancer treatment.

A Quiet Passion

Jim Jarmusch – USA

The Red Turtle

Terence Davies – UK/Belgium

SUN. OCT 2

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

TUE. OCT 11

8:45 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

FRI. OCT 14

6:00 PM

RIO

Adam Driver is Paterson, a bus driver and aspiring poet in Paterson, New Jersey, and Iranian star Golshifteh Farahani is his wife, Laura, in Jim Jarmusch’s delightful ode to love, life, inspiration and William Carlos Williams. “A lovely... fable about the fragile, fruitful and just occasionally fraught relationship between creativity and everyday life... There’s so very much to enjoy here: Jarmusch’s wry script and beautifully becalmed direction, Fred Elmes’ quietly glowing photography…”—Time Out

MON. OCT 3

6:00 PM

SUN. OCT 9

11:00 AM

Michael Dudok de Wit – Netherlands/France/Japan CENTRE FOR ARTS

SAT. OCT 1

2:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

INTL VILLAGE 9

THU. OCT 6

6:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

The life of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (played here by a superb Cynthia Nixon) is brought luminously to life by, appropriately enough, a master poet of the cinema, Terence Davies (The Deep Blue Sea). Davies imbues Dickinson’s cloistered life with a beauty that shows her for the quiet rebel she was.

“Nixon does a brilliant job... Above all, though, it is Davies’ ability to invest even the most apparently humdrum moments with some form of intense radiance that sustains his film.”—Guardian

TUE. OCT 4

9:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

TUE. OCT 11

12:30 PM

Zacharias Kunuk – Canada

TUE. OCT 4

6:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

TUE. OCT 4

6:00 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

PLAYHOUSE

WED. OCT 5

1:15 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

THU. OCT 6

3:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

Not for the fainthearted, Reza Dormishian’s tour-deforce takes the “eye for an eye” justice permitted by Islamic law to its logical extreme. A Lantouri gang member (Navid Mohammadzadeh), obsessed with a crusading journalist (Maryam Palizban), deals with her rejection by throwing acid in her face… Covering many issues plaguing Tehran today, the film unspools “with near-cyclonic force… [This is an] ambitious examination of the churning frustrations of Iran’s disenfranchised younger generation…”—Variety

SUN. OCT 9

6:00 PM

CINEMATHEQUE

For decades, Polish surrealist Zdzislaw Beksinski obsessively recorded—in photographs, on video and on audiotape—every aspect of his life in the modest apartment he shared with his wife, mother and mother-in-law. Inspired by this archive, Jan P. Matuszyński has constructed a portrait of the artist as a mild, unassuming husband and son, and a loving father to a troubled, volatile son of his own. The banal sits cheek by jowl with madness, death and desire in this trenchant, superbly executed debut.

Another robust and inventive drama from Pablo Larraín (No, VIFF 12; The Club, VIFF 15), Neruda, set in 1948 Chile, features Gael García Bernal (terrific) as a somewhat inept yet self-aggrandizing police detective who makes it his mission to hunt down Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) after the poet is forced into hiding for his beliefs… “[This represents] the director at his stunning best with a work of such cleverness and beauty, alongside such power, that it’s hard to know how to parcel out praise…”—Variety

A marvellous, dialogue-free slice of animated poetry, this collaboration between Dutch Oscar-winner (for the animated short Father and Daughter) Michael Dudok de Wit and Japan’s Studio Ghibli gives us a Robinson Crusoe-like man, stranded on a desert isle, whose adventures delve deep into the allegorical and fantastic... “A fable so simple, so pure, it feels as if it has existed for hundreds of years, like a brilliant shard of sea glass rendered smooth and elegant through generations of retelling.”—Variety

Seasons

Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud – France

Operation Avalanche

Original Bliss

Matt Johnson – Canada/USA

The Other Half

Sven Taddicken – Germany

FRI. SEP 30

9:00 PM

RIO

MON. OCT 10

2:30 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

In 1967, movie geeks from the CIA’s A/V Department are recruited to help NASA stage the moon landing.

Operating in true guerrilla fashion (including actually infiltrating NASA to shoot scenes), director-star Matt Johnson and his resourceful team have created a truly audacious conspiracy thriller, with every frame infused with the delirious (and wholly infectious) joy of mischief-makers who can’t believe that they’re getting away with it. “A sly little comedy-thriller... An act of movie love.”—Vulture

Joey Klein – Canada

TUE. OCT 4

9:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

WED. OCT 5

4:30 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

The Lives of Others (2006) co-stars Martina Gedeck and Ulrich Tukur re-team for Sven Taddicken’s (My Brother the Vampire) wholly original drama about a seemingly complacent housewife (Gedeck, mesmerizing) whose underlying masochism leads her to embark on a relationship with her shrink (Tukur)...

“An elegantly disquieting investigation into the interrelation of faith, violence and sexual degradation, held together by a rivetingly sure-footed performance

by German star Martina Gedeck...”—Variety

SAT. OCT 1

9:15 PM

SUN. OCT 2

12:30 PM

MON. OCT 10

6:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE PLAYHOUSE INTL VILLAGE 8

Joey Klein’s accomplished debut hinges on the relationship between a bipolar woman (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black) and a grief-stricken man (Tom Cullen, Weekend). The film’s nuanced narrative is striking in its depth and sincerity as it portrays a relationship borne of mutual mental distress. Its aesthetic flourishes and indelible soundtrack work to create a dizzyingly atmospheric tone. “A troubled, anguished love story that neither exaggerates nor softpedals the demons on display...”—Variety

Best Director, Berlin 16

Strangers on the Earth

The Student SUN. OCT 2

9:30 PM

PLAYHOUSE

FRI. OCT 7

12:30 PM

SFU-GCA

Tristan Cook – USA/Spain

3:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

SUN. OCT 2

6:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

FRI. OCT 7

6:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

WED. OCT 5

1:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

WED. OCT 12

6:15 PM

VANCITY

SUN. OCT 9

10:00 AM

VANCITY

In the footsteps of Walking the Camino, Tristan Cook’s lively portrait of modern pilgrims and fellow travellers winding their way on the legendary Camino de Santiago muses on the psychological and spiritual dividends of a 30-day hike. The landscape is beautiful but brutal, the dorms are packed and the bunks are hard. Some find solace in solitude; others discover kinship and community en route. In the case of Dane Johansen, he embarks on the nearly 600-mile journey carrying his cello on his back...

Things to Come

Thanks, Boss!

François Ruffin – France

Kirill Serebrennikov – Russia

SUN. OCT 2

A poetic and magnificently shot chronicle of Europe over the past 15,000 years as seen through the eyes of the animals that have lived there, Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud’s (Winged Migration) latest uses the framing device of the four seasons to explore the habitats and denizens of a vast and varied land. To call this a “documentary” is to sell it short: it plays more like a natural symphony in which the forests, plains, mountains and inhabitants come together in a stunning vision of time and space.

Zacharias Kunuk introduced the world to Inuit filmmaking with the Cannes award-winning Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, recently voted the top Canadian film of all time. The director’s exciting new offering is based on a true story, with an obvious nod to John Ford’s classic The Searchers. A man returns from a hunting trip to discover his wife and daughter kidnapped and the rest of his family slaughtered. His father’s spirit helper, the loon Kallulik, sets him on course to revoke fate and reunite his family.

Joey Klein and Tatiana Maslany in attendance (Oct. 1 & 2)

Tristan Cook and Dane Johansen in attendance (Oct. 2)

Jury Prize, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 16

Paterson

Maliglutit (Searchers)

Jan P. Matuszyński – Poland

Matt Johnson in attendance (Sep. 30)

Jeff Chiba Stearns in attendance

Milton’s Secret

Kenneth Lonergan – USA

Zacharias Kunuk in attendance

The Last Family

Lantouri

Manchester by the Sea

Hannes Holm – Sweden TUE. OCT 4

KONELINE: our land beautiful

Pedro Almodóvar – Spain

Best Actor, Locarno 16 Jan P. Matuszynski in attendance (Oct. 4)

A battle of wills between a fanatically Orthodox teen, Venya (Pyotr Skvortsov), and his atheistic biology teacher, Elena (Victoria Isakova), threatens to careen over into tragedy in Kirill Serebrennikov’s savage satire on the state of Russia today. As Venya’s extremism lurches into anti-Semitism and homophobia, Serebrennikov takes dead aim at Russia’s regression.

“Splendid... A stormy, swoon-inducingly shot bout of Russian moral wrestling that hits as hard and as heavily as a nastoyka hangover...”—Variety

Mia Hansen-Løve – France/Germany

TUE. OCT 4

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

WED. OCT 5

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

THU. OCT 13

9:15 PM

RIO

SUN. OCT 9

6:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

TUE. OCT 11

6:00 PM

INTL VILLAGE 8

A surprise hit this year in France, journalist-turnedfilmmaker François Ruffin’s funny and acute documentary takes a page from the Michael Moore playbook as it tries to hunt down France’s richest man—LVMH head Bernard Arnault—and hold him to account for the closure of a French factory. Posing as the son of broke former LVMH workers Serge and Jocelyn Klur, Ruffin skewers the labour practices of Arnault, seeks compensation for the Klurs and shows just how far Arnault will go to protect his image...

The great Isabelle Huppert gives a profoundly moving performance as a philosophy teacher who finds her life unmoored by a wholly unexpected divorce in Mia Hansen-Løve’s terrific exploration of one woman’s complex emotional and intellectual response to latemiddle-aged trauma. “Hansen-Løve and Isabelle Huppert prove a dream partnership in the director’s gorgeous, heart-cradling post-divorce drama... This is major, many-shaded work even by [Huppert’s] lofty standards.”—Variety

Schedule subject to change.

Visit viff.org for updates and full lineup of 300+ films and events.

Box Office Fipresci International Critics Prize, Cannes 16

Best Editing, Sundance 16

Toni Erdmann

Under the Shadow

Maren Ade – Germany

The Unknown Girl

Babak Anvari – UK/Jordan/Qatar

FRI. SEP 30

8:30 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

TUE. OCT 11

8:30 PM

RIO

THU. OCT 13

2:15 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

Saying it is sui generis only begins to describe the unique breadth and depth of Maren Ade’s (Everyone Else) comic masterpiece, a film that traces the relationship between a prank-playing father (Peter Simonischek) and his corporate go-getter daughter (Sandra Hüller) to side-splitting and moving effect. “A stunningly singular third feature by Ade that transports the intricately magnified human observation of her previous work to a rich, unexpected comic realm... A humane, hilarious triumph.”—Variety

FRI. SEP 30

11:45 PM

MON. OCT 3

9:30 PM

Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne – France/Belgium RIO INTL VILLAGE 9

With the Iran-Iraq conflict raging on, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) discovers that her Tehran apartment is no sanctuary when a missile crashes through the roof but fails to detonate. The Damoclean dread is further stoked when a djinn manifests and malevolently targets her daughter, proving itself the most terrifying paranormal interloper since The Babadook. Director Babak Anvari has crafted a small-scale masterpiece rich in subtext. “[A] delectable, increasingly unnerving shiver-fest…”―The New York Times

22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

FRI. SEP 30

2:30 PM

Bruce McDonald in attendance (Oct. 2)

Window Horses

Weirdos

We Are X

Bruce McDonald – Canada

Stephen Kijak – UK/USA/Japan

CENTRE FOR ARTS

SAT. OCT 1

3:45 PM

PLAYHOUSE

MON. OCT 3

6:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

6:30 PM

RIO

WED. OCT 5

1:00 PM

PLAYHOUSE

4:15 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

MON. OCT 3

9:15 PM

CENTRE FOR ARTS

WED. OCT 5

FRI. OCT 14

6:15 PM

SFU-GCA

SUN. OCT 9

Adèle Haenel (Love at First Fight, VIFF 14) confirms her place in the firmament of French movie stars with a riveting turn in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s latest drama. She plays a young doctor forced to confront her own fallibility when a woman she turns away from her clinic is found dead on a nearby riverbank the next morning... “What is new here is a flirtation with genre that lends an extra dose of resonance to a finely scripted story. For The Unknown Girl is a detective tale...”—Screen

Watch this documentary and be rocketed into the outer realms of rock ‘n’ roll extravagance as you meet X, the Japanese band that’s captivated audiences worldwide with their operatic musical stylings, outlandish costumes and over-the-top theatrics.

The backstage story explores some darker territory, but Stephen Kijack’s film remains a riveting, often inspiring movie. “Bound to become a favorite among fans and to persuade others to join the ranks of those under the loud spell of X.”—IndieWire

Regular: Adult $15, Student/Senior $13 Special Presentations: $17 Gala Screenings: $22

Ann Marie Fleming in attendance

Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo) has a knack for presenting the Canadian experience in a way that brings out universal truths. With a gently humorous script from playwright Daniel MacIvor, McDonald takes us back to the freewheeling 70s in a road flick featuring the music of Patsy Gallant, Gordon Lightfoot and Murray McLauchlan. The setting is Cape Breton and the cast includes veteran Molly Parker, as well as promising newcomers Dylan Authors and Julia Sarah Stone as the central pair of teenage runaways.

(The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming) Ann Marie Fleming – Canada

While the Women Are Sleeping Wayne Wang – Japan

FRI. SEP 30

6:15 PM

PLAYHOUSE

SAT. OCT 1

6:30 PM

PLAYHOUSE

MON. OCT 3

3:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

SAT. OCT 8

10:45 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses, a beautifully narrated and colourfully animated story of a young girl’s journey, employs poetry, music and illustration to celebrate the value of self-discovery. After being invited to a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran, by a mysterious figure, Rosie Ming faces challenges that ultimately lead to her self-realization. The film’s superb voice cast includes festival veterans Sandra Oh, Don McKellar and Ellen Page.

Working in Japan and adapting a story by Javier Marías, Wayne Wang delivers his most accomplished and resonant movie in some time. On vacation in a luxury beachfront hotel, writer Kenji grows obsessed by an ‘odd couple’—an old man (Beat Takeshi) and a much younger woman—and tries to discover their story. But is he really questioning himself? Secrets, lies and enigmas under the tropical sun.

Ticket Packs + Passes Available Online: at viff.org In-person: Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, at Davie (Mon-Sat: Noon - 7pm, Sun: 2pm – 9pm) Film Infoline: 604-683-FILM

SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23

Creator Talks

Emmy Award Winner: Tatiana Maslany In conversation with Tatiana Maslany, star and producer of the VIFF selection The Other Half. Maslany stars in the Canadian science-fiction thriller series Orphan Black and has received widespread critical acclaim for her performance, winning two Critics’ Choice Television Awards, a TCA Award, and three Canadian Screen Awards, in addition to receiving Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG nominations.

SAT. OCT 1, 12:30 – 1:30 PM @ RIO, $25

Creator Talks

Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol The creators and stars of Vice’s first scripted series Nirvanna the Band the Show.

FRI. SEP 30, 3:30 – 4:30 PM, $25

Presented by

Episodic

Marti Noxon

Skate, Ski, Ride

Van Helsing

Better Call Saul

Writer and producer on Mad Men and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and creator of UnREAL.

Skateboarder Rick McCrank, owner of Antisocial skate shop and star of VICELAND’s Abandoned and Jordan Manley, creator of A Skier’s Journey.

Join Vancouver executive producer Simon Davis Barry (Continuum) for a screening of the premiere episode of Van Helsing, followed by a behindthe-scenes look at the making of this sure-to-beblockbuster series.

After a screening of his Emmy nominated episode, “Five-O”, writer Gordon Smith discusses his work on the acclaimed Breaking Bad spinoff series.

TUE. OCT 4, 6:00 – 7:00 PM, $25

SAT. OCT 8, 8:00 – 9:30 PM, $25

Presented by

SAT. OCT 1, 6:00 – 8:00 PM, $25 Presented by

Episodic

The X-Files Marathon

Introduced by creator and executive producer, Chris Carter Thirteen years after the original series run, the next mind-bending chapter of THE X-FILES is a thrilling, six-episode event series. This marks the momentous return of the Emmy® and Golden Globe® Awardwinning pop culture phenomenon, which remains one of the longest-running sci-fi series in network television history. VIFF screens all six episodes.

Bullying: Cast & Crew of Milton’s Secret

Generation Z: A Workshop for Young Filmmakers

Impact: Manufacturing Meets Environment

Director Barnet Bain will join cast members Mia Kirshner, David Sutcliffe and William Ainscough to discuss how parents and kids alike can use mindfulness as a resource to respond to the challenges of stress.

Randall Okita (The Lockpicker), Emma Samms (The Law of Moments) and Joonas Rutanen (I Love Anna) offer a hands-on workshop that will teach aspiring filmmakers how to scale a production up and work with actors of all ages.

Roger Williams (RiverBlue) and Denis Delestrac (Freightened: The Real Price of Shipping) talk about the impact of manufacturing above and below the waterline.

SAT, OCT. 1, 1:00 – 2:00 PM, FREE

SUN, OCT. 2, 3:30 – 5:30 PM, $13

Virtual Reality

Expanding Frontiers in Storytelling: Virtual Reality

VIFF Industry Exchange provides attendees with high-level education and business development opportunities from global industry leaders in the everevolving digital entertainment market. Participating companies include Machinima, Supergravity, Authentic, JASH, Dimension Gate, Vimeo, CBC, Lifeboat Productions, Scripps Networks Interactive, Vice Media, YomYomF, Comcast, WB, Cracked, PGA, The Television Academy, USC, Expansive Media.

Featuring a keynote from Ted Schilowitz, the Futurist at 20th Century Fox Studios and Chief Creative Officer at Barco Escape, who is helping guide the film industry into the next breakthroughs in storytelling for mass audience consumption; as well as a series of talks, panels and presentations from leading VR companies, distributors and creators, with highlighted case studies, and important discussions on business models, distribution and looks at where the new opportunities are. Live demonstrations across the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Gear VR, will also be running throughout the day for participant sampling.

Presented by In partnership with

SUN, OCT. 2, 6:00 – 7:00 PM, $25

Presented by

Where Content Meets Business

MON, OCT 3, ALL DAY VIE Pass: $250 | VIE + VR Pass: $350

ACFC WEST, LOCAL 2020 UNIFOR

On Topic

FRI. OCT 7, 9:00 PM, FREE

VIFF Industry Exchange

FRI. OCT 7, 6:00 – 7:45 PM, $25

Participating companies include: WeVR, Twentieth Century Fox, NBC Universal, 30 Ninjas, NBC Universal, Occupied VR, Vice Media, NFB, New Amsterdam, PGA, The Television Academy TUE, OCT. 4, ALL DAY VR Pass: $150 | VIE + VR Pass: $350 Presented by

24 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

Totally Indie Day

LATE NIGHT @HUB

A dynamic day designed to provide real insights and hands-on advice from top experienced industry pros and rising new talent. The best emerging film directors of 2016 (Kevan Funk, Ben Chace, Yan England, Ashley McKenzie), the creators of the hit web series, Second Jen, top distributors looking for the next great indie, legendary documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild, a one of the most successful writers and producers in Hollywood, Krista Vernoff will share their successes, setbacks, what they’re looking for, and what you need to do to rise to the top.

From September 30 to October 8, the Vancouver International Film Centre transforms into the place to be late-night as live music, video and film collide to create eight nights of unique and immersive experiences. From local favourites Humans to the global beats of Desi Sub Culture, each night between 10 pm and 1 am will celebrate the diversity of Vancouver’s music creators as part of the larger screen-based industry with Late Night @ VIFFHub.

SAT. OCT 8, ALL DAY Full Day Pass $125 Morning $75, Afternoon $99

Supported by

Free access to the VIFF HUB atrium.

In-theatre shows $15

Presented by

Discover more HUB events and announcements on viff.org VIFF HUB, Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour St. Talks Pass: $99 Access to all Talks

HUB Pass: $475 All HUB events

HUB+ Pass: $625 All HUB events + Screenings

VIFF ’16

Capturing Britain’s betrayer > B Y A DRIA N M A C K

A

sked in 2002 to single out her proudest political achievement, Margaret Thatcher replied: “Tony Blair and New Labour.” As George Galloway tells the Straight in a call from London, it was a stunning statement.

“Apart from Iraq,” he says, “it is the greatest indictment on the Blair era that Margaret Thatcher viewed it with such favour. And it’s immortalized in our film.”

That film, The Killing$ of Tony Blair, brings the ever-colourful former British MP to Vancouver in the coming days for three sure to be sold-out screenings at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Perhaps best known on this side of the Atlantic for the withering good hiding he gave to the U.S. Senate in 2005, when he was falsely accused in a bogus Oil for Food scandal, Galloway has now turned his formidable attention to an old foe. Blair’s appalling betrayal of Britain’s working class and the party that he led for 13 years until his ignominious resignation in 2007 proved to be a painful vindication for Galloway, whose opposition to his autocratic leader’s rush to war in Iraq got him expelled from the Labour party in 2003—although he never exactly admired the man.

“I denounced him at the Labour conference at Inverness in March of 1995,” recalls Galloway. “So he’d only been the leader for five or six months when I first criticized him from the platform, with him sitting right behind me. So I knew he was a wrong’un, as we say, right from the very beginning, but I had no idea that he would turn out to be quite as bad as he did.

I was a winning candidate in ’97, when he was elected in a landslide, but I felt no elation at all as I watched these crowds in Downing Street with their specially issued Union Jack flags waving. I knew that what was now in power—although he had affixed the word New in front of Labour—was

Paterson

Jim Jarmusch – USA Former MP George Galloway says his film The Killing$ of Tony Blair is merely the latest denouncement of the one-time British prime minister.

going to be non-Labour at best, and, as it turned out, anti-Labour at worst.”

Distilled from over 40 hours of footage and almost 50 interviews with former colleagues like cabinet minister Clare Short and novelist Will Self, The Killing$ of Tony Blair provides a staggering 90-minute tour of Blair’s outrages in office—including the lies that took Britain into four wars—and his breathtaking avarice in private dealings as “an international call boy”, as Galloway puts it, “sitting by the phone waiting for a call from the world’s worst people, offering him money to do things for them.

“He’s basically a nonperson in Britain now,” says Galloway, “except when people get into a lather about his latest outrage—the latest corporate client, the latest dictatorship that hires him— such that he announced this week in an interview on Bloomberg that he was giving up most of his corporate work and is going to become St. Francis of Assisi and spend most of his time on charity work. And the reaction amongst the public was cynical laughter.”

One of the less familiar details raised in Killing$ is that, on top of everything else, the obscenely wealthy former PM costs the U.K. £16,000 a week in private security. “He can’t

move in Britain without a phalanx of machine-gun-carrying police officers with him because he is so hated,” says Galloway, who otherwise hopes that the recent Chilcot Report, while short of taking Blair to The Hague for crimes against humanity, will at least trigger a wave of private lawsuits from the bereaved families of Iraq war casualties.

Until then, we have what Galloway believes is “the document of the Blair era”, and a thrillingly angry one at that, made with the help of over 5,000 Kickstarter donors, if not the people closest to Blair himself. “All of his friends were told not to agree to be interviewed, and that’s a pity,” says Galloway. “Some of them probably thought—in fact, I know some of them did—that Blair would sue. But I knew, because I know him better than almost anyone else, that he wouldn’t dream of suing me, because that would put him in court, under oath, with me representing myself for several weeks. And trust me, that would be better than any movie anybody could make.” -

Adam Driver is Paterson, a bus driver and aspiring poet in Paterson, New Jersey, and Iranian star Golshifteh Farahani is his wife, Laura, in Jim Jarmusch’s delightful ode to love, life, inspiration and William Carlos Williams. “A lovely... fable about the fragile, fruitful and just occasionally fraught relationship between creativity and everyday life... There’s so very much to enjoy here: Jarmusch’s wry script and beautifully becalmed direction, Fred Elmes’ quietly glowing photography…”

—Time Out SUN. OCT 2, 3:45 PM, PLAYHOUSE TUE. OCT 11, 8:45 PM, CENTRE FOR ARTS FRI. OCT 14, 6:00 PM, RIO Media Parter

September 29 to October 14 Discover viff.org Premier Partner

The Killing$ of Tony Blair screens at the Vancouver International Film Festival on Saturday, Tuesday, and next Thursday (October 1, 4, and 13).

Premier Supporters

September 29 to October 14 Discover viff.org

Our neighbours, ourselves > BY KEN E I SNE R

H

alf of the movies making up the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Ignite series—spotlighting B.C.–made features—are documentaries, all made by local veterans of the nonfiction form. Among the highlights are Nettie Wild’s KONELINE: Our Land Beautiful, an impressionistic look at life in northern B.C., and Vic Sarin’s Keepers of the Magic, which looks at the history of cinematography.

Showing in between is Linda Ohama’s A New Moon Over Tohoku, her intensive study of the devastating human effects of Japan’s 2011 tsunami and the nuclear meltdown on the country’s northeast coast.

Ohama’s breakthrough film, 2003’s Obaachan’s Garden, connected her to the Japanese roots she didn’t really know she had, by researching and retelling her grandmother’s story.

“Basically,” says the Alberta-born B.C. stalwart and long-time visual-arts teacher, reaching the Straight from her part-time home in Japan’s Onomichi, a coastal town near Hiroshima, “I got drawn in after witnessing from Vancouver the horrific live footage of the tsunami striking Japan and feeling the need to help a neighbour.

When my family lost our farm in the 1990s, neighbours passed the hat around and came up with hundreds of thousands to appease the bank—although without success. Tohoku is only geographically far away, but is like a neighbour in today’s world.”

The distance was made shorter by a chance remark.

“On the morning after the tsunami,” she continues, “my six-year-old granddaughter asked me how the children in Tohoku were doing. I told her, honestly, that they were probably not doing well and she said she wanted to help. Her simple words hit a chord in me as I was searching for a way to respond.”

Ohama ended up spending more than two years interviewing survivors and exploring which strains of Japanese culture prove the strongest, or most vulnerable.

“My first films, The Last Harvest and Neighbors, Wild Horses & Cowboys, drew on my Prairie farm background, with an innate touch of my Japanese background; I’m a third-generation, Sansei Canadian. Since visiting Japan for the first time 17 years ago, on a quest to find answers for my 100-year-old grandmother’s questions, my works since have used my Japanese sensibilities, with a little understanding of the traditions and culture that comes from direct exposure and my natural

Albüm

Mehmet Can Mertoğlu – Turkey/Romania/France

A still from A New Moon Over Tohoku, B.C. filmmaker Linda Ohama’s look at post-tsunami life in Japan.

DNA. Now I can say, with Tohoku, that both my Prairie girl and Japanese-ness are working as one.”

Filmmaking technology has changed considerably over the past two decades, but Ohama says it hasn’t really changed her attitudes toward the work.

“There is a very important phrase the Japanese say before eating: ‘Itadakimasu.’ It is acknowledging the food’s source from the earth, the weather, the farmer, the fisherman, the seller, the person who prepared the meal, et cetera, for your body and soul. To me, a lot of doc-making today has become like our fast-food industry: make ’em tasty and cheap, eat ’em fast.

But I’m more the plain-meat-and-potatoes type—I grew up on a potato farm! So projets like this take a lot of time to prepare, simmer, spice, and present on the table. In this instance, it took five years—just the same as Obaachan’s Garden.”

Still, lightweight digital equipment has changed the nature of the work involved, and requires fewer people to operate.

“New technology allowed me to work in the disaster area single-handedly, for the most part. This meant that I could afford the luxury of spending several years with the Tohoku survivors and carrying the equipment around in a backpack. Postproduction is also a lot easier these days. But easier isn’t always the best road to take. It all depends on the journey, and what’s in sight at the end.” A New Moon Over Tohoku screens at International Village on Wednesday (October 5) and next Friday (October 7).

TUE. OCT 11

9:30 PM

INTL VILLAGE 10

THU. OCT 13

4:00 PM

INTL VILLAGE 9

To avoid opprobrium in a country that still views infertility as some sort of moral defect, office worker Bahar (Şebnem Bozoklu) and her teacher husband Cüneyt (Murat Kiliç) go to outlandish lengths to hide the fact that they are adopting a child… With rare panache, Mehmet Can Mertoğlu’s mordant debut skewers some of his society’s more irrational attitudes. “[An] elegantly opaque social satire, which touches on bureaucratic ineptitude, class conflict and very questionable parenting…”—Variety

Kedi

Ceyda Torun – Turkey/USA/Germany SAT. OCT 1 MON. OCT 3

9:15 PM 11:00 AM

CINEMATHEQUE INTL VILLAGE 9

Why waste hours on YouTube cat videos when you can immerse yourself in this absorbing cat’s-eye view of the colours, textures and pace of modern Istanbul instead? Ceyda Torun’s delightful film uses specially crafted camera rigs to let us ride along with these nimble, adventurous felines. Given the hallowed status they enjoy in Turkish culture, they’re practically granted an all-access pass to every vista and alcove in this ancient Eurasian capital, making this a viewing experience unlike any other.

Box Office | Online: viff.org | Film Infoline: 604–683–FILM Premier Partner

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Proudly sponsored by

6

SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 25

VIFF ’16

Gold from our buds at VIFF

T

he Vancouver International Film Festival kicks off this week with the gala opener, Maudie, and ends with an IMAX screening of Terrence Malick’s long-awaited (like, 35 years) documentary, Voyage of Time. With the best and boldest in Canadian and international cinema filling the 14-day gap in between, we’ve been busy compiling some of our raves (and a few raspberries) to help get you into that sweet festival grind.

Manchester by the Sea Kenneth Lonergan – USA

An all-star cast, a riveting script and a smart narrative puzzle give Kenneth Lonergan’s (Margaret; You Can Count on Me) drama devastating power. Casey Affleck is superb as a taciturn Boston handyman Lee, who returns to his salty hometown after his brother (Kyle Chandler) dies. There, past and present collide with a force that few could survive. “[An] extraordinary swirl of love, anger, tenderness and brittle humour… [This is a] beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama.”

—Variety THU. OCT 6, 6:00 PM, CENTRE FOR ARTS SAT. OCT 8, 2:15 PM, CENTRE FOR ARTS WED. OCT 12, 8:30 PM, CENTRE FOR ARTS Media Parter

BURDEN (USA) How could the same

September 29 to October 14 Discover viff.org Premier Partner

THE BACCHUS LADY (South Korea) The title refers to an energy drink proffered by an aging prostitute, played with exquisite restraint by Youn Yuhjung, originally known in South Korea for her femme fatale roles and more recently for over-the-top comic matriarchs.

The film is a quietly stylish, cheerfully nonjudgmental look at a society that is loaded with middle-class comforts—as represented by the tidy, peaceful parks where she plies her tired wares—but that has neglected to roll out the safety needed to support older people who don’t have families at hand. The subject sounds grim, but the movie is a mellow parade of small, human-scaled delights mixed with the offhandedly macabre.

SFU, September 29 (6:30 p.m.) and October 1 (4 p.m.) > KEN EISNER

Premier Supporters

man who staged his own shooting, nailed himself to a revving Volkswagen, and stuffed himself into a tiny school locker for five days have later created such popular, whimsical lamppost and Erector-set sculptures?

Filmmakers Timothy Marrinan and Richard Dewey explain it all in this thorough documentary about the late, crazily committed artist Chris Burden, a Californian whose early performance work still manages to shock and terrify 40 years on. They reveal a man who blazed a new trail at a time when art was a commodity, who literally risked his life for his art, and who lost his way and then softened in old age to create works that created new kinds of spectacle. In other words, you’ll walk out with a whole new respect for one of contemporary art’s true shit disturbers. SFU, September 30 (1:30 p.m.); Vancity, October 13 (8:30 p.m.) > JANET SMITH

THE COMPLEXITY OF HAPPINESS

BC Spotlight Series Once again, VIFF invites the latest work by our province’s brightest filmmakers to take centre stage. This year’s line up includes: Cadence dir Alex Lasheras Hello Destroyer dir Kevan Funk Keepers of the Magic dir Vic Sarin KONELINE: our land beautiful dir Nettie Wild Marrying the Family dir Peter Benson Mixed Match dir Jeff Chiba Stearns A New Moon Over Tohoku dir Linda Ohama The Unseen dir Geoff Redknap Window Horses (The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming) dir Ann Marie Fleming

BC Spotlight Awards Gala Spirit Unforgettable dir Pete McCormack Oct. 8, 5:30pm at The Centre Media Parter

September 29 to October 14 Discover viff.org Premier Partner

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26 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

(Italy) Confident storytelling skills are pushed to the fore—one might even say balls to the wall—for this deceptively simple tale centring on an almost middle-aged financial consultant played

by Italian veteran Valerio Mastandrea.

He’s part of a consortium that buys out ownership in family companies when young ne’er-do-wells don’t care about their late parents’ businesses. Usually, that’s a win-win, but then he runs into siblings with a more complicated agenda, causing him to reexamine his own family past and future. It’s basically a well-observed drama, but with two hours to fill, writer-director Gianni Zanasi tries to shoehorn big laughs into the proceedings, at a cost to the story.

More problematic is that he saddles the conflicted hero with a much younger love interest, played by Israel’s Hadas Yaron (known here for the Quebec film Félix et Meira), who ends up more of an empty plot contrivance than a character. Recommended, but with that caveat. Rio, September 29 (6:30 p.m.); SFU, October 12 (4 p.m.) > KE

Green / Is / Gold by writer-director-star Ryon Baxter is among our picks from this year’s stash at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

A GOOD WIFE (Serbia/Bosnia/Croatia) Tackling heavyweight themes in a small-scaled way, this tale of truth and reconciliation (or their opposites) is grounded by a powerhouse performance from Mirjana Karanovic, who also wrote and directed it. She plays a Serbian housewife and mother who has always, it seems, meekly accepted her mostly good fortune in life.

Then she has a sobering medical visit at exactly the same time she accidentally discovers that her beloved husband committed war crimes during the Yugoslavian war of the 1990s. The movie’s form is a bit clumsy at times (the music is schlocky), and this firsttime filmmaker could have gestured a bit more forcefully at how young Serbs are coping with their open national wound. But it works as a potent assertion of human, and female, rights.

Playhouse, October 5 (6:15 p.m.); SFU, October 13 (4 p.m.) > KE GREEN / IS / GOLD (USA) This nobudget indie flick has its moments, but a small stash of material is stretched thin by writer-director Ryon Baxter, who also stars as a pot-growing 20-something suddenly saddled with his much younger brother when their dad goes to jail. Baxter sometimes recalls a young Dennis Quaid, but there’s nothing terribly compelling about his character’s situation or commentary, and the movie gets by on low-key mood, with the seeds and stems better than the actual bud. Rio, October 5 (9 p.m.); International Village, October 7 (3 p.m.) > KE

KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE (USA) The concept of this performance piece– cum–media interrogation is much stronger than its execution, although students of the crisis of values in American society are likely to forgive its inconclusiveness. In Robert Greene’s docu(ish)drama, House of Cards’ Kate Lyn Sheil is seen researching her role as Christine Chubbuck, a Florida TV reporter who shot herself on-air in 1974.

Usually, that kind of legwork is done by a screenwriter, but here the academically inclined actor digs deep, interviewing people who knew or worked with Chubbuck, now mostly forgotten.

We also get scenes from the prospective movie itself, shot in daytime-soap style, with Sheil in a ridiculous wig. It’s hard to imagine why doing these passages well wouldn’t improve Kate Plays Christine, and the blame-the-audience DISQUIET IN PARADISE (Various) finish feels like an easy cop-out. InterEven the lone U.K. entry reflects the national Village, October 4 (9:15 pm); slickly commercialized, Hollywood- Vancity, October 6 (1 p.m.) > KE calling-card vibe that dominates this largely squirm-inducing program of KEEPERS OF THE MAGIC (Canada) international shorts, most concentrat- Veteran cinematographer Vic Sarin ing on stylishly feisty kids. At least turns to his DOP colleagues for an the Ukrainian “Without You”, about endlessly fascinating, if initially sometough siblings on the road, is the op- what disorganized, tour of key image posite of slick, happily. Elsewhere, for- makers of the past 50 years. The visits mulas are avoided when greyhound with Italian genius Vittorio Storaro racing is seen from a dog’s-eye POV (The Conformist, Apocalypse Now) in Argentina’s “Champion”, and Jim and English Coen brothers regular Morrison’s own words, recorded near Roger Deakins are particularly revthe end of his life, elucidate a trip to his elatory. But all these sage cinematogfamous grave in “Paris, 1971”. Inter- raphers—male, older, and more or national Village, October 4 (6:15 p.m.) less white—tell good yarns, frequently illustrated by key clips. Having Asia’s and October 7 (noon) > KE

burgeoning cinema represented here wouldn’t have hurt, but that actually helps make the case for turning this kind of Magic into a miniseries. SFU, September 30 (6:30 p.m.) ; Vancity, October 14 (10:30 a.m.) > KE KONELINE: OUR LAND BEAUTIFUL

(Canada) Veteran filmmaker Nettie Wild’s peripatetic camera captures many facets of life in B.C.’s fastchanging far north, as mining interests seek to scrape resources out of land on which First Nations people struggle to survive. The gorgeously shot doc is no polemic, however; it sticks to kaleidoscopic impressions of a sometimes dreamlike landscape, and lets viewers decide how they feel about what they’re seeing. Strongly recommended. Playhouse, October 3 (6:30 p.m.); Vancity, October 9 (12:30 p.m.) > KE

LOST IN MUNICH (Czech Republic) Lingering resentment over the 1938 conference at which Britain and France “gave” Czechoslovakia to Hitler is the context in which this surprisingly unpredictable farce plays out. When a struggling journalist accidentally snags the ancient parrot that witnessed French PM Daladier’s sellout—and can reproduce verbatim quotes from the event—he creates a firestorm in Prague. Then, just when this Czechocentric concept wears thin, writerdirector Petr Zelenka (Wrong Side Up) pulls a switcheroo on the premise of the movie—and on the idea of national betrayal. SFU, September 29 (9:15 p.m.); International Village, October 2 (4:30 p.m.); Cinematheque, October 10 (6:30 p.m.) > KE MALIGLUTIT (SEARCHERS) (Canada) Much has been made of Zacharias Kunuk’s new riff on the old western, and when you see its lone gunman traversing icy canyons and barren white plains, you’ll instantly spot the references. The plot, too, draws from the kidnapping quest at the heart of John Ford’s classic The Searchers. But Kunuk’s film is so much more shaded by his Inuit culture, full of spiritual visions and painstaking re-creations of old-time daily life. It’s also punctuated by terrifying acts undertaken by a gang of outcast men and often obscured in the dim oil light. Rest assured, no one could ever feel more vulnerable and alone, in an igloo, than a mother, two children, and two elderly grandparents in the dead night of winter. The carnage sets the father on a path of revenge, violent but empty—as existential as the best westerns. Kunuk’s mix of frosty panoramas, intense closeups, and odd handheld sled sequences makes for heady viewing. In the end, Maliglutit is more moody and doesn’t move as quickly as his Atanarjuat, but that 2001 mind-blower was named for a fast runner. Centre, October 4 (6 p.m.); Playhouse, October 6 (3:15 p.m.) > JS

PLAYING LECUONA (Spain) Three modern pianists celebrate the music and romantic allure of Ernesto Lecuona, whose name might be see next page

MOVIES forgotten although genre-stretching songs like “Malagueña” and “Andalucia” are very much still with us. The well-travelled musicians are Michel Camilo, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and, most crucially, Chucho Valdés, whose father, Bebo, was a student of the maestro. The audio recording, as you would hope, is spectacular, and although it seems churlish to complain, the lengthy on-screen performances come at the expense of more cultural context. There are some lovely images here, though, especially when Camilo goes to the Canary Islands. Vancity, September 29 (8 p.m.); SFU, October 5 (4 p.m.) and October 9 (9:15 p.m.) > KE RIVERBLUE (Canada) Do you think

woman (standout Bhreagh MacNeil) gets an ordinary job and kind of likes it. The film’s close-ups are relentless to a fault, but they (and the young actors) also convey the director’s unsparing compassion for sickly spirits that can be here and gone in the blink of an eye.

Cinematheque, October 4 (6:30 p.m.) and October 6 (4 p.m.) > KE WHERE THE UNIVERSE SINGS: THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF LAWREN HARRIS (Canada) Group

Bhreagh MacNeil hits the skids in Ashley McKenzie’s gritty Werewolf.

about the water pollution, health problems, and deaths you’re contributing to each time you buy cheaply priced fashions from multinational clothing companies? You will after watching this investigation exposing how consumer purchases in the western world feed into the hydrocide, as one activist puts it, of the most important rivers in the East—and the global water system. Sidestepping the pitfalls of other colonial-activist films, B.C.–based river conservationist Mark Angelo meets journalists and environmentalists who are sounding the alarm in their own countries, from China and Indonesia to India and Pakistan. Although the documentary is TV-grade (to reach fashion-conscious consumers, style needs to be considered), the content is solid and alarming, with plenty of disturbing shots of polluted water as well as viable solutions that offer hope. SFU, October 1 (6:30 p.m.); International Village, October 4 (2 p.m.) > CRAIG TAKEUCHI

that could have remained dry and academic. Her lead character is a philosophy prof who’s forever overthinking life. Even when her own starts to fall apart, she insists: “I’m lucky enough to be fulfilled intellectually, and that’s reason enough to be happy.” Except we don’t quite believe her and realize that beneath her unflappable exterior, she is starting to break down.

She’s always had someone to take care of—her children, her husband, and her aging mother—but now they’re disappearing, just like the beloved books she’s losing amid the breakup of her marriage. It’s a riveting, subtle performance, one that questions the meaning of happiness as the film follows Huppert, who’s always striding around in a rush, in circles as she tries to quell her loneliness and find peace.

Quiet, brainy questioning that could only have come out of France. Playhouse, October 5 (3:45 p.m) and October 9 (6:15 p.m.) > JS

SINS OF THE FLESH (Egypt) The class

VITA ACTIVA: THE SPIRIT OF HANNAH ARENDT (Israel/Canada) This

injustice that sparked the recent revolt in Egypt plays out in steamy microcosm in a film that—while it verges occasionally on melodrama—picks at some incredibly taboo scars in Middle Eastern society. Gorgeous young Fatma (Nahed El Sebai) is a hard-working farm labourer reduced to marrying an elderly but kind man. But when her former lover shows up at the grounds to live and work, she begins a forbidden affair. Hovering around ominously is the farm owner, an unhappy old rich guy who frets at his adult children’s dabblings in the protests to overthrow Hosni Mubarak. What his kids clearly don’t get is that their own cushy lifestyle rests on their father’s exploitation of the poor—an exploitation that takes on a truly sinister dimension as the story progresses. A film as fearless about sexual passion as it is about ripping the modern-day slavery that fuels the establishment—and patriarchy—in Egypt. International Village, October 5 (8:15 p.m.) and October 7 (3:30 p.m.) > JS

provocative doc spends more time on the philosopher’s actual writing than on the controversy it caused, although that’s there too. Scholars arrayed for or against her during these well-assembled two hours paint a picture, supported by a lot of archival material, that goes well beyond her “banality of evil” coverage of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial.

Her refusal to limit the genocide to its anti-Semitic roots angered Israelis and many survivors, who didn’t always want to acknowledge her more wide-sweeping views on the mutable nature of fascism. Arendt’s focus on the demonization of refugees as a precursor to genocide proved prescient, and the film makes the case that exile allows some thinkers to see the bigger picture, even as they’re forced to sacrifice their own notion of home. International Village, October 1 (1 p.m.) and October 5 (9:15 p.m.) > KE

STRANGERS

WEIRDOS (Canada) Veteran director

ON

THE

EARTH

(Spain/USA) American cellist Dane Johansen, giving ad hoc concerts in churches along the way, is among the devout hikers followed for a month on Spain’s famed Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. The impressionistic doc draws on The Way and other films about the challenging 965-kilometre route in order to give context and demythologized reality to a journey that means something different to everyone who makes it. Recommended. Playhouse, October 2 (6:45 p.m.); International Village, October 5 (1:45 p.m.); Vancity, October 9 (10 a.m.) > KE TEEN TROUBLE (Various)

There are some poignant moments of latechildhood fear, fun, and awakening in this program of shorts from places as different as Spain, Finland, and Palestine. And Whistler plays itself in a very commercial-looking U.S. short about a female snowboarder. But forget all the others and run down to see “Fabrizio’s Initiation”, 17 minutes of pure filmmaking bliss. Argentina’s Mariano Biasin is as skilled with his young actors as he is with the script and design of this tale of four teens who pool their money to pimp out an abandoned car as their (nonmobile) love shack. Dude’s a serious talent to watch! International Village, October 2 (6 p.m.) and October 5 (11 a.m.) > KE

Bruce McDonald brings a light touch to theatre great Daniel MacIvor’s presumably autobiographical tale of young teens getting ready to leave rural Cape Breton in 1976. Dylan Authors is good as ambitious Kit, starting to question his own sexuality, with Wet Bum’s Julia Sarah Stone even better as his would-be girlfriend who has ambitions of her own. But the real star is cinematographer Becky Parsons for capturing so much melancholy beauty in her low-contrast black-and-white images. There’s also a raft of Canadian songs from the ’70s to help compensate for the screenplay’s odd collapse about an hour in when Kit catches up with his unstable mother, frantically played

by Molly Parker. Having the spectre of Andy Warhol following the boy was a cute notion that probably should have stayed on paper. International Village, October 3 (6:45 p.m.); Playhouse, October 5 (1 p.m.) > KE

WEREWOLF (Canada)

A pair of ghost-white opiate addicts struggle to mix methadone with feeble attempts to get clean in rural Cape Breton.

Writer-director Ashley McKenzie sticks to a gritty 16mm style for an unpretty, old-school look at life on the bottom. Wandering around their dirtpoor neighbourhood with a brokendown lawnmower—a forlorn stand-in for a baby carriage—these skinny, THINGS TO COME (France) An pockmarked kids struggle to scrape understated Isabelle Huppert brings together enough money for drugs and unexpected profundity to a movie ciggies. Crisis comes when the young

of Seven painter Lawren Harris’s glowing ice peaks and dreamy islandscapes take on truly transcendent dimension in this thorough new doc. You’ll see how everything from the war to theosophy to a brush with a Scandinavian art exhibit fed his drive to simplify and abstract forms, endowing them with that incredible light and raising them to spiritual heights. This is detailed and educational stuff at a time Mark Wahlberg is the hero of Deepwater Horizon, director Peter Berg’s thrilling, if shallow, account of the worst environmental disaster in North American history. when Harris’s work is at the height of its popularity. Along with ample shots of the artworks themselves, the film reenacts his trips to the Rockies and Lake Superior, gathers insights from experts (including Vancouver Art Gallery curator Ian Thom), and, of course, gets a few admiring words Malkovich as an oily business shark from his most famous collector, Steve REV IEWS with a Louisiana accent so thick, it Martin. International Village, October makes its own mint juleps, and stirs 2 (4 p.m.) and October 4 (6:45 p.m.) > JS DEEPWATER HORIZON them, too. Pushback comes from the Starring Mark Wahlberg. Rated 14A WINDOW HORSES (THE POETIC rig’s safety boss, craggily played by PERSIAN EPIPHANY OF ROSIE Working from a New York Times Hudson’s stepdad, Kurt Russell.

MING) (Canada) Veteran animapiece that broke down the bad Berg quickly individuates Mike’s tor Ann Marie Fleming joins forces decisions leading to the worst environ- colleagues, with the only female with a dazzling array of guest car- mental disaster in North American onboard, Gina Rodriguez’s tough toonists to go with her stellar jam history, director Peter Berg reverse- tech operator, given a fair amount session of vocal talents. These begin engineers the 2010 explosion that killed of dialogue. Still, between the petrowith Sandra Oh as Rosie Ming, a 11 and injured 17, out of a crew of 126. jargon and the consonant-free southThat crew is boiled down to elec- ernspeak that everyone mumbles, Chinese-Persian Canadian who confronts family history when invited tronics specialist Mike Williams, viewers can be forgiven for feeling to a poetry festival in Iran. Ellen played with unshowy heroism by underwater for the movie’s first half.

Page and Nancy Kwan are among Mark Wahlberg. In real life, Mike’s The money shot comes about an hour friends and family; when Rosie gets wife looks like Margo Martindale in, when the pressure from below— to Shiraz, the voices include Iranian more than she does Kate Hudson, which we see before anyone onboard film greats Peyman Moaadi (A Sep- but guess who the filmmakers chose does—overwhelms a drilling operaration) and Shohreh Aghdashloo to send the dude off for his next 21 ation insufficiently tested, thanks to (Oscar-nominated for House of Sand days on a semisubmersible oil rig. BP’s careless corner-cutting. and Fog), as well as Don McKellar as The floating drill station in the Gulf The subsequent events are as teran unctuous German traveller. The of Mexico is leased out to British rible, and terribly exciting, as you youth-aimed movie leans toward Petroleum, as represented by John see next page sentimentality and coincidence, but beautiful interludes of music and poetry add more deeply shaded complexity. Playhouse, September 30 (6:15 p.m.); International Village, October 3 (3:45 p.m.) > KE

Neck deep with no hope on the horizon

2

++++

YARN (Iceland)

Yarn bombers unite! Knitting is no longer the innocuous hobby of grannies. This doc portrays it, instead, as a kind of subversive, feminist tool of arts activism, travelling the world to find women using it in provocative ways.

Polish artist Olek sends performance artists, literally knit into yarn bodysuits, out into crowded events; Japanese-Canadian Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam stretches huge textile playgrounds between high-rises, colour-blasting the urban jungle; Iceland’s Tinna Thorudottir Thorvaldar hangs free-speech-minded crochet on the walls of Havana; and Tilde Björfors builds otherworldly metaphors out of threads in Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkör. Barbara Kingsolver’s narrated bits are a bit pretentious, and the film doesn’t dig too deep into cultural history, but damned if this isn’t as visually resplendent as that crazy pink-and-orange afghan your grandma made you. SFU, October 2 (8:45 p.m.); Vancity Theatre, October 5 (12:30 p.m.) > JS Chan Tze-Woon had the prescience and stamina to keep his camera fixed on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy students whose protests came to a head two summers ago. He frames his impressionistic, on-the-fly footage— which makes no attempt to single out heroes and villains—with scenes of the same streets now eerily quiet, and we instinctively miss the idealistic noise of bright young people who held out real hope for saving their sui generis city-state over a surprisingly long period. The movie could probably have been trimmed to just under two hours, but it’s still time well spent. Cinematheque, October 2 (6:15 p.m.); International Village, October 4 (2:45 p.m.) > KE

THE GUARDIAN

“AMONG THE MOST EXCITING,

VISUALLY ARRESTING AND HIGH TENSION ACTION-THRILLERS

IN RECENT MEMORY” JOBLO

++++ “A VICIOUSLY

INTENSE DISASTER FILM” WE GOT THIS COVERED

++++

“A GREAT TESTAMENT TO

EXTRAORDINARY COURAGE AND THE HEROISM OF ORDINARY MEN” EMPIRE

YELLOWING (Hong Kong)

IN THEATRES AND IMAX® FRIDAY! SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 27

Deepwater Horizon

Music time out

could want in a disaster story. While Deepwater makes it clear who let this horror happen, it makes no mention of the almost five million barrels of oil spilled, much of which is still in the gulf, accompanied by lakes of toxic chemical dispersant, with negative consequences for all life, and business, in the region. An only partially informed audience could walk out of this starkly engaging movie thinking that if BP had followed the safety procedure preferred by the valorous men and one woman portrayed here, everything would have been okay. But the crisis really began with the fantastically expensive decision not to leave that oil where it was.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS Georgia guitarrockers play tunes from new album American Band, with guest Lydia Loveless.

Oct 2, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. Tix $30 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketweb.ca/.

from previous page

> KEN EISNER

IT’S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD Starring Gaspard Ulliel. Rated PG

What happens when an enfant terrible becomes just plain terrible? Some answers are to be found in It’s Only the End of the World, the latest cinematic salvo from Quebec’s Xavier Dolan.

Roaring out of the gate when he was only 20 with 2009’s audacious I Killed My Mother, the Quebec writerdirector-actor developed his ideas mostly along formal lines, specializing in a kind of melodramatic excess.

None of the four pictures since have been as satisfying, and this one—a France-Canada coproduction—is by far the weakest, despite having the most potent cast he has yet assembled.

The least-known internationally is Gaspard Ulliel, who played the title character in Saint Laurent. Here, he is soft-spoken Louis-Jean Knipper, a successful writer who visits his family in rural France after a 12-year absence.

His return is occasioned by the need to inform them that he is terminally ill, although nothing in his communication suggests that he might be the clever playwright admired by his flighty sister (Spectre’s Léa Seydoux)

2

from page 19

SQUEEZE English new-wave band tours in support of latest release Cradle to the Grave, with guests Look Park. Oct 3, doors 8 pm, show 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix $45 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

CONJURE ONE Canadian electronica musician, with guests ACTORS. Oct 4, 7:30 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings).

Tix $18.50, info www.rickshawtheatre.com/.

Marion Cotillard gets with her bad self in It’s Only the End of the World.

HAYDEN The Georgia Straight presents Canadian indie-folk singer-songwriter touring in celebration of the 20th anniversary of his debut album Everything I Long For. Oct 4, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix $35 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

and ditsy, overpainted mother (’70s icon Nathalie Baye). Certainly, it’s hard to talk to his tense older brother CYMBALS EAT GUITARS New York indie(actor-director Vincent Cassel), al- rock band tours in support of upcoming ways ready to fly off the handle—es- release Pretty Years, with guests Field Mouse. Oct 4, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, pecially at any of the goofy things said Cobalt (917 Main). Tix $13 (plus service by his mousey, self-deprecating wife. charges and fees) at www.ticketweb.ca/.

She’s played by Marion Cotillard, DISCHARGE British hardcore-punk aboard for anyone who’s been won- band from the 1970s, with guests Toxic dering if the Oscar winner could turn Holocaust, Mass Grave, Old Derelicts, in a bad performance if she tried hard and World View. Oct 5, 6 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $28, info enough. She can, and does.

It’s not hard to understand why www.rickshawtheatre.com/. these heavyweights signed on, since TEGAN AND SARA Calgary indie-pop that quintet—flashbacks and inci- duo perform tunes from new album Love dental travel scenes aside—is the You to Death, with guests Shura and Too Attached. Oct 5, doors 6:30 pm, show whole 97 minutes, and each is given 7:30 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre (650 reams of dialogue. None is particu- Hamilton). Tix $46/36 (plus service charlarly good, but most people would be ges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. impressed by sheer technique if able FLIGHT FACILITIES Australian electronica to see this cast on-stage, where Jean- duo composed of Hugo Gruzman and Luc Lagarce’s play, later adapted by James Lyell. Oct 5, doors 8 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix $28 (plus serDolan, originated.

Presumably, the cast didn’t know vice charges and fees) at wwwbplive.ca/. that its work would be suffocated in LAL Music by electronica duo, with guests a welter of badly lit, poorly framed, Kimmortal and Lee Reed. Oct 5, 9 pm, WISE (1882 Adanac). Tix $5-15, info www.face and fussily edited images, with most Hall book.com/events/1780040612274293/. scenes built around tight close-ups of shadowy characters we don’t even TOKYO POLICE CLUB Canadian indiewith guests Born Ruffians. Oct want to see from a distance. Turns out rockers, 5, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Commodore that this exercise in cut-rate Edward Ballroom. Tix $26.50 (plus service charges Albee will be Canada’s official for- and fees) at www.livenation.com/. eign-language entry at the next Academy Awards. Let’s just leave it at that. CLUBS & VENUES > KEN EISNER

BACKSTAGE LOUNGE Arts Club Theatre, 1585 Johnston, Granville Island, 604-6871354. Vancouver’s only live-music venue on the water, with music nightly. Hot Jazz Jam night on Tue. 2FRASER & MAIN Sep 28 BILTMORE CABARET 2755 Prince Edward, 604-676-0541. 2TWIN PEAKS Sep 29 2MARLON WILLIAMS AND THE YARRA BENDERS Oct 7 2MILD HIGH CLUB Oct 8 2OCTOBURLESQUE Oct 9 2PANTHA DU PRINCE Oct 12 2TAL WILKENFELD Oct 13 2HONNE Oct 18 2HOW TO DRESS WELL Oct 20 2BLIND PILOT Oct 21 2DANCE YOURSELF CLEAN AT NITE*MOVES Oct 22 2THE BOXER REBELLION Oct 23 2K.FLAY Oct 29 2NIYKEE HEATON Nov 1 2DUOTANG Nov 3 2DUOTANG Nov 3 2BUSTY AND THE BASS Nov 9 2BULLY Nov 11 2DUNE RATS AND DZ DEATHRAYS Nov 12 2THE SUFFERS Nov 13 2JENNY HVAL Nov 16 2WATERSTRIDER Nov 18 2MR LITTLE JEANS Nov 22 2PAPER LIONS Nov 26 2THE CAVE SINGERS Dec 2 2THE DEAD SOUTH Dec 3 2WILD CHILD Dec 6 2KOBO TOWN Feb 4, 2017 2THE RADIO DEPT. Feb 28, 2017 BLUE MARTINI JAZZ CAFE 1516 Yew, 604-428-2691. Live jazz, soul, and blues.

2TONY FOSTER TRIO Sep 28 2VINCE MAI Sep 30 COBALT 917 Main, 778-918-3671. 2NICK WATERHOUSE Sep 28 2C.R. AVERY Oct 1 2CYMBALS EAT GUITARS Oct 4 2JAPANDROIDS Oct 5 2WHITE FANG AND NO PARENTS Oct 9 2THE FELICE BROTHERS Oct 14 2CHIXDIGGIT Oct 15 2POSTER CHILDREN Oct 16 2JEREMY ENIGK Oct 20 2FLOCK OF DIMES Oct 21 2JACUZZI BOYS Oct 22 2MANGCHI Nov 5 2DAUGHTERS Nov 12 2BIG BUSINESS Nov 13 2PUP Nov 21 2THE JAPANESE HOUSE Dec 1 2PERE UBU Dec 2 COMMODORE BALLROOM 868 Granville, 604-739-4550. 2PEACHES Sep 28 2KT TUNSTALL Sep 29 2DINOSAUR JR. Sep 30 2PENNYWISE Oct 1 2DJ SHADOW Oct 2 2SQUEEZE Oct 3 2TOKYO POLICE CLUB Oct 5 254-40 Oct 7 2PHANTOGRAM Oct 9 2GROUPLOVE Oct 10 2THE PROCLAIMERS Oct 11 2NAHKO AND MEDICINE FOR THE PEOPLE Oct 12 2COLD WAR KIDS Oct 13 2I MOTHER EARTH Oct 14 2THE STRUMBELLAS Oct 16 2STIFF LITTLE FINGERS Oct 19 2AGAINST ME! Oct 25 2YOUNG THE GIANT Oct 26 2SUM 41 Oct 28 2BOY & BEAR Oct 29 2THE BACARDI BOOHAHA Oct 29 2MAJID JORDAN Oct 30 2HALLOWEEN HOWLER Oct 31 2NICOLAS JAAR Nov 1 2HANNAH GEORGAS Nov 2 2NOFX Nov 4 2SHOVELS & ROPE Nov 9 2LAPSLEY Nov 11 2THE TREWS Nov 12 2YELAWOLF Nov 13 2ANIMALS AS LEADERS Nov 16 2PORTUGAL. THE MAN Nov 17 2A TRIBE CALLED RED Nov 18 2WINTERSLEEP Nov 19 2GORD BAMFORD Nov 22 2JAMES VINCENT MCMORROW Nov 24 2JULY TALK Nov 25 2BROTHERS OSBORNE

28 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

straight choices

HARD RUBBER ORCHESTRA Expect a wild ride from the Hard Rubber Orchestra’s Saturday (October 1) concert at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts’ Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre.

Vancouver’s leading avant-jazz big band is never less than thrilling, but this time out it’s enlisted Quebec composer and guitarist René Lussier to contribute a new long-form composition, We Will See. With a title like that we don’t dare predict how it will sound, but past Lussier undertakings have been rhythmically extroverted, texturally abrasive, and occasionally unexpectedly tender. A bonus is the all-star opening act: Lussier with trumpeter JP Carter, cellist Peggy Lee, pianist Paul Plimley, and drummer Dylan van der Schyff.

Nov 30 2THE DANDY WARHOLS Dec 6 2ANDRA DAY Dec 12 2IN FLAMES AND HELL YEAH Dec 14

DOOLIN’S IRISH PUB 654 Nelson, 604605-4343. Live music Sun-Thu, with acoustic soloist or duo Sun-Wed and live band Thu DJ Fri-Sat. FORTUNE SOUND CLUB 147 E. Pender, 604-569-1758. 2FUTURISTIC Sep 29 2KERO KERO BONITO Oct 12 2HAYDEN JAMES AND ELDERBROOK Oct 25 2THE VEILS Nov 11 2TIMEFLIES Nov 12 2THE GOTOBEDS Nov 16 2LEMAITRE Nov 17 2THE PACK A.D. Nov 26 2MERCHANDISE Dec 2 FOX CABARET 2321 Main. 2THE WORLD FAMOUS MOTOWN PARTY Sep 30 2SEX WITH STRANGERS Oct 1 2RYLEY WALKER Oct 7 2TEEN ANGST NIGHT Oct 8 2ONLY A VISITOR Oct 10 2ANDY SHAUF Oct 14 2ANDY SHAUF Oct 15 2RACHAEL YAMAGATA Oct 18 2KISHI BASHI Oct 19 2KROY Oct 22 2SUNFLOWER BEAN Oct 28 2HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER Oct 29 2ELEPHANT STONE Nov 8 2DONOVAN WOODS Nov 11 2MAX FROST Nov 12 2HANNAH EPPERSON Nov 18 FUNKY WINKER BEANS 37 W. Hastings, 604-764-7865. 2HALLUX, STAB TWIST PULL, SILENT SCREAMERS Sep 30 2BUSH PARTY, 19TH FLOOR, JOHNNY AND THE TIT WHISTLES Oct 1 2BANANA MAMA SILVER PANTS, THIS GUN FOR HIRE, ANTIPOLITIC Oct 7 2RAISED BY CAIN, UTILITY PROVIDER, DARK SUN PROFITS Oct 8 2ALCHEMY CHAMBER, GANGYLON, WRAITHS Oct 14 THE IMPERIAL 319 Main, 604-868-0494.

2ROYAL CANOE Sep 30 2H’ARTS FOR THE HOMELESS Oct 6 2MARK FARINA Oct 14 2QUANTIC Oct 15 2MARGO PRICE Oct 19 2TOM ODELL Oct 21 2BAD SUNS Oct 23 2WET Nov 2 2CLASSIXX Nov 4 2KIIARA Nov 8 2THE STRUTS Nov 9 2AUTOGRAF & GOLDROOM Nov 11 2THE JEZABELS Nov 13 2DRAGONETTE Nov 23 2RÜFÜS DU SOL Nov 24 2MICHAEL KIWANUKA Dec 7 IVANHOE PUB 1038 Main, 604-608-1444.

2HONEYBOY WILSON TRIO Sep 30 2BEAVER T BAND Oct 1 2SONS OF THE HOE Oct 2 LAMPLIGHTER PUBLIC HOUSE 92 Water, 604-687-4424. Pub trivia with Nice Guys Inc. Tue; bourbon and bingo Wed; Rocksteady with DJs Arems, Hoppa & Rexx Thu; FKYA DJs Fri; DJ Antonia & Friends Sat. MEDIA CLUB 695 Cambie, 604-6082871. 2SCENIC ROUTE TO ALASKA Oct 8 2TERRA LIGHTFOOT Oct 19 2AN EVENING WITH DAVID RAMIREZ Nov 11 MOLSON CANADIAN THEATRE AT HARD ROCK 2080 United Blvd., 604-5236888. 2MICK FLEETWOOD BLUES BAND Sep 30 2GREAT WHITE & SLAUGHTER Oct 14 2DWIGHT YOAKAM Oct 28 2ROGER HODGSON Nov 25 ORPHEUM THEATRE 601 Smithe, 604665-3050. 2LINDSEY STIRLING Sep 28 2THE MUSIC OF DAVID BOWIE Oct 5 2JAMES BLAKE Oct 13 2OPETH Oct 26 2THE HEAD AND THE HEART Dec 5 2HALF MOON RUN Dec 16 2SAM ROBERTS BAND Feb 7, 2017 2PASSENGER Mar 25, 2017 PRINCETON PUB & GRILL 1901 Powell, 604-253-6645. 2PALOMARS Oct 6 2HONKY TONK DILETTANTES Oct 13 2SAINTS AND SINNERS Oct 14 2SICK BOSS Oct 20 QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE 650 Hamilton, 604-665-3050. 2RICHARD CLAYDERMAN Sep 30 2TEGAN AND SARA Oct 5 2GLASS ANIMALS Oct 12 2NORAH JONES Oct 18 2ALICE COOPER Oct 19 2PET SHOP BOYS Oct 24 2IL DIVO Nov 6 2MS. LAURYN HILL Nov 8 2DAUGHTER Nov 25 2BRIAN WILSON Apr 8, 2017 REPUBLIC 958 Granville, 604-669-3214.

House, hip-hop, EDM, chart, and reggae.

Open nightly from 10 pm to 3 am.

RICKSHAW THEATRE 254 E. Hastings, 604-681-8915. 2PREOCCUPATIONS Sep 28 2DAVID LIEBE HART Sep 29 2REBELS SING: A TRIBUTE TO TODD SERIOUS AND THE REBEL SPELL Sep 30 2TENGGER CAVALRY Oct 1 2DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

Oct 2 2CONJURE ONE Oct 4 2DISCHARGE Oct 5 2ADAM GREEN’S ALADDIN Oct 6 2THE JULIE RUIN Oct 7 2BEACH FOSSILS Oct 8 2CARSICK CARS Oct 10 2THE INTERRUPTERS Oct 12 2THE WORLD HAS NO EYEDEA Oct 13 2GORGUTS Oct 14 2CJ RAMONE Oct 15 2ALESTORM Oct 18 2HELL ON HASTINGS Oct 22 2FACE TO FACE Oct 26 2THE KING KHAN & BBQ SHOW Oct 28 2NIK TURNER’S HAWKWIND Oct 31 2DESORDEN PUBLICO Nov 11 2AGENT ORANGE Nov 15 2OFF! Nov 18 2OM Nov 19 2DARK TRANQUILLITY Nov 25 2THEE OH SEES Nov 26 2REVOCATION AND ABORTED Nov 29 2THE SLACKERS Dec 3 2THE ALBUM LEAF Dec 13 2HED PE Dec 18 2MIDGE URE Jan 5, 2017 2KYLE MORTON Jan 9, 2017 2DIRKSCHNEIDER Jan 19, 2017 2LORDI Feb 2, 2017 2WAX TAILOR Feb 17, 2017 2AMORPHIS Apr 3, 2017

RIVER ROCK SHOW THEATRE River Rock Casino Resort, 8811 River Rd., Richmond, 604-247-8900. 2DONNY & MARIE Dec 20-22 ROGERS ARENA 800 Griffiths Way, 604-899-7400. 2KANYE WEST Oct 17 2CHICAGO AND EARTH, WIND & FIRE Nov 7 2FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE Nov 12 2STEVIE NICKS Dec 9 2RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS Mar 18, 2017 2ARIANA GRANDE Mar 24, 2017 2CHRIS STAPLETON Mar 27, 2017 THE ROXY 932 Granville, 604-331-7999.

2LAS DIVAS Sep 28 2ROXY LAUNCH PROJECT FINALE Sep 29 2AIR STRANGER, FOOTSTEPS UNDERGROUND Sep 30 ST. JAMES HALL 3214 W. 10th, 604-7363022. 2CONNIE KALDOR Sep 29 2MARIN PATENAUDE AND THE FOLLOW THROUGH Sep 30 2BARRULE Oct 2 2HAYDEN Oct 4 2GUY DAVIS Oct 6 2BIRDS OF CHICAGO Oct 7 2THE BUMPER JACKSONS Oct 14 2JEZ LOWE Oct 19 2ROY FORBES Oct 22 VENUE 881 Granville, 604-646-0064.

2HATEBREED Sep 28 2LANY Sep 29 2PSYCHIC TV Sep 30 2SANDER VAN DOORN Oct 9 2DIRTY MIKE AND THE BOYS Oct 14 2SHE WANTS REVENGE Oct 20 2STORMZY Oct 21 2PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT Nov 1 2ME & MAE Nov 5 2COLEMAN HELL Nov 10 2JAI WOLF Nov 16 2NICK CARTER Nov 23 2SONATA ARCTICA Nov 28 2NEUROSIS Dec 20

straight choices

DAVID LIEBE HART Give David Liebe Hart credit for his ability to stay in character, seemingly 24/7. The 61-year-old musician and puppeteer from Park Forest, Illinois—you might know him from his appearances on Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!—is either a brilliant performance artist or he’s genuinely as bizarre as he seems. Only Hart knows for sure. You can judge for yourself by listening to some of his songs online. (A good place to start is “The Pickle Man and Mr. Moose”, about the afterlife adventures of a pair of German Shepherds who got shot in the head during a botched robbery attempt. Yes, really.) Better yet, be at the Rickshaw Theatre when Hart performs there on Thursday (September 29), but be warned— after sufficient exposure to this guy, you might start to question your own sanity, let alone his.

VOGUE THEATRE 918 Granville, 604-5691144. 2KAYTRANADA Sep 30 2FLIGHT FACILITIES Oct 5 2DANNY BROWN Oct 6 2STICKY FINGERS Oct 7 2GOJIRA Oct 9 2BASIA BULAT Oct 12 2GHOST Oct 13 2ZIGGY MARLEY Oct 16 2PURITY RING Oct 18 2ANONYMOUS AND THE POLITICS OF LEAKING Oct 20 2MATTHEW BARBER AND JILL BARBER Oct 22 2ANJELAH JOHNSON Oct 26 2DANNY BHOY Oct 27 2THE NAKED AND FAMOUS Oct 28 2POST MALONE Oct 30 2CL Nov 1 2CHARLIE PUTH Nov 4 2A$AP FERG Nov 5 2MAC MILLER Nov 6 2LUKAS GRAHAM Nov 10 2TERRI CLARK Nov 12 2TORY LANEZ Nov 14 2THE LIFE AQUATIC: A TRIBUTE TO DAVID BOWIE Nov 20 2YG Nov 21 2MØ Nov 23 2AURORA Dec 3 2ADAM ANT Feb 4, 2017 WISE HALL 1882 Adanac, 604-254-5858.

2THE BRAINS Sep 29 2TOPS Sep 30 2DROP IN ROCK CHOIR Oct 4 2LAL Oct 5 2JOEY ONLY OUTLAW BAND Oct 7 2 DAVID SIMARD Oct 14 2DAN BERN Oct 23

OUT OF TOWN 2THIS WEEK DEF LEPPARD Multiplatinum guitarrockers from the ’80s, with guests REO Speedwagon and Tesla. Oct 1, 7 pm, Tacoma Dome (Tacoma, Wash.). Tix at www.ticketmaster.ca/.

TIME OUT MUSIC LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit listings 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.

ARTS

Cathy Jones’s vagina is just fine, thank

BY ANDREA WAR N ER

you very much.

When the This Hour Has 22 Minutes star connects with the Straight the day before she f lies into Vancouver for a two-week stint at the Firehall Arts Centre, she’s a bit frazzled and deeply frustrated. It’s been a stressful two days doing promotion for her new one-woman show, Stranger to Hard Work, which has resulted in an article about her on a certain national daily’s website. The headline next to her photo reads “What it’s like to speak out about vaginal atrophy”. On this day, it’s the second or third item that comes up when you Google Jones’s name.

She’s been in the business for 23 years.

“I in no way signed on to have it reported that I am suffering from vaginal atrophy,” Jones says. “That’s the last thing I want out there as my reputation, you know what I mean? I wanted to support vaginal health and a conversation between a woman and her doctor. I’ve kept my vaginal tissues healthy since I fucking became menopausal because one of my big passions is sex and I always want to be able to have it.”

At first it sounds almost like a bit, like maybe this is all part of her show. But a few minutes later, she’s crying, genuinely upset. We take a short break for her to regroup, and when we connect again 15 minutes later, Jones is ready to talk about her new show, wherein it’s actually quite likely that her vagina and her sex life will come up, but on her own terms.

Stranger to Hard Work is Jones’s third onewoman show, a mix of standup and sketch comedy. Jones is the only remaining original member of 22 Minutes, which begins its 23rd season this fall. She admits that she’s considered leaving in the past, but she always goes back. Jones says it’s a combination of things: the fun vibe, the people, the producers, the fact that she’s valued, and creating new characters.

“I’m always learning something about something,” Jones says. “Like I’ve just got to Earth all the time, ’cause I have ADD, and so it’s like every day is new to me.”

More than her 22 minutes

Comedian Cathy Jones is in no way looking to kick back and relax, unless it’s retreating to her rowboat or writing a self-help book with considerable edge.

22 Minutes has has three sons (“My daughter and her husband afforded Jones the are beautiful parents—these kids are so sweet! kind of life she wants They’re named Tennessee, Wilder, and HuckleCathy Jones’s Stranger to Hard Work is a way to do comedy and the stability to berry, if you can fuckin’ believe it”) but she’s in on her own terms and deal with a severe “honesty problem” keep her focus on no way looking to kick back and relax. personal rather than “I’m still figuring things out, I don’t feel that I’m at the end of anything,” she says. “I don’t Stranger to Hard Work is a chance to do comedy professional development.

“Th is show is just right up the alley of feel I’m at the end of my career in any her own way, Jones says. way. I’ve got another chunk, when I’m “It’s about me, it’s about my inner life,” she a lazy person, ’cause the show is from Check out… says. “It’s fun to share my neurosis, but not in the September till the end of March, STRAIGHT.COM gonna play the still-fuckable grandmother, you know? Like, I could still way of saying, ‘Th is has got to have a beat.’ I’ve and then you can just fuck around,” Visit our website Jones says. “I got a place out in the be a detective, like Angela Lansbury. got a lot of freedom.” for morning-after There’s lots of characters.”

Characters can be a nice shield between country, off the grid, and I go around reviews and local arts news Jones is also passionate about selfthe performer and the audience, and Jones in my underpants with my big Therhelp culture, though hers might be admits that it’s “very raw” coming out on-stage mos of tea, rowing my boat, throwing sticks for my dog, and I’m just like Mowgcalled advice with an edge. as oneself.

“I want to sort of preach the gospel of fuckin’ “I have a kind of an honesty problem,” Jones li out there. And, you know, it’s the perfect thing. says. “I’m aff licted by wanting to be genuine, I mean, I’m trying to, you know, get disciplined, workin’ out your stuff. Like I talk about in the and so when I tell the truth in a comedy show, but my personal journey—it’s been great to have show, I have a self-help book that I’m writing I’m not as comfortable in a standup situation, the show and have that time when I can just have called Get Help, You Sick Fuck.”

It might also be a great title for her fourth oneand so it is better for me to, you know, mix it up, time to, over the years, work on my own issues characters and people expressing things. I don’t and become more friends with myself, more de- woman show. pression-proof, you know, and more content with go around being funny all the time.

“I like to have the odd time when I fuckin’ let my life, and more appreciative of what I do have.” Stranger to Hard Work runs at the Firehall Arts Jones is 61, Buddhist, and the mother of two Centre from Wednesday (September 28) until ’er go,” Jones adds. “Like eat a little brownie and daughters, aged 34 and 20. Her older daughter October 8. laugh my ass off.”

THINGS TO DO

ARTS High five

Editor’s choice BOLD AND OLD There are too many reasons to catch UBC Theatre’s production of the rarely seen, 16th-century Edward II to count. First off, the young cast is staging it in the horseshoe-shaped Telus Studio Theatre for a true surround-sound experience for the audience. Second, they’re setting Christopher Marlowe’s play in the stylin’ 1930s. Then there’s the fact that the plot is a tale of a king who’s smitten with a guy named Gaveston—a story that inspired a Derek Jarman film in 1991. Let’s just say Marlowe’s original title says it all: The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, With the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer. UBC Theatre and Film presents Edward II at the Telus Studio Theatre from Thursday (September 29) to October 15.

Five events you just can’t miss this week

1

SONIC ELDER (To October 2 at the Penthouse Night Club) Six sexagenarians show they can still rock it in a truly storied venue.

2

HUUN-HUUR-TU (October 1 at the Vancouver Playhouse) Tuvan throat singing is as bone-chilling as it is otherworldly.

3

CULTURE DAYS (September 30 to October 2 around the region) With hundreds of activities, there’s just no excuse not to get your art on.

4 5

In the news

BOLD NEW TAKES AT BARD Bard on the Beach has announced its 2017 season, and it includes a big show inspired by 1950s Italian cinema. John Murphy will direct the comedy Much THE FLICK (October 5 to 29 at the Arts Club Ado About Nothing, setting it in that era and borrowing its big style.

Granville Island Stage) This movie-theatre-set Sharing the main stage with that will be The Winter’s Tale, the play comes trailing rave reviews from elsewhere.

Greek-set family drama directed by Dean Paul Gibson. Canadian actor-director Nigel Shawn Williams is set to helm a contemporary-Italy-set Merchant of Venice at the smaller Howard Family ANGELS IN AMERICA (September 29 to Stage, while Bard veteran Scott Bellis directs The Two Gentlemen October 16 at Studio 58) A rare chance to see a of Verona. And as a complement to Merchant, Bard remounts a wildly epic work about the AIDS era. limited engagement of Mark Leiren-Young’s one-man Shylock, which focuses on a modern-day actor playing that controversial title role in a time of political correctness, in September 2017. SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 29

ARTS

Singing the Starman’s legacy > B Y JO HN LU C A S

T

A Firehall Arts Centre presentation Out Innerspace Dance Theatre, Vancouver

MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

Choreographed and performed by

David Raymond and Tiffany Tregarthen in collaboration with

Laura Avery, Ralph Escamillan, Elissa Hanson, Arash Khakpour and Renée Sigouin

OCT 12-15

“Jaw-droppingly original” Times Colonist

Wed - Sat 8pm

604.689.0926

firehallartscentre.ca

280 E Cordova St

he music of David Bowie has been performed by orchestras before, but never quite the way Brent Havens presents it. When the arranger and conductor comes to the Orpheum to lead the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra through a performance of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s songs, don’t expect a cerebral experience like the one you might have listening to the Philip Glass symphonies based on Bowie’s albums Low and “Heroes”.

“Philip Glass likes to do some reinterpretations of things, do his own version of them,” Havens tells the Straight in a telephone interview.

“We’re doing the version that everybody knows so that they can come in and sing the tunes right off the bat.

They don’t have to wait 45 seconds or two minutes and go, ‘What tune is that? Oh, wait, I know that. There’s a melody I recognize.’ ” Havens promises that The Music of David Bowie will be a crowd-pleasing affair, complete with a rock ensemble and a commanding frontman who possesses megawatt star power and a voice to match. That frontman is Tony Vincent. If you don’t recognize him from Season 2 of The Voice, you might know Vincent as a bona fide Broadway star; he originated the key role of St. Jimmy in American Idiot and starred as Judas Iscariot in the 2000 revival of Jesus Christ Superstar.

This isn’t Vincent’s first time stepping into an iconic rocker’s shoes. He took the lead role in Queen and Ben Elton’s musical We Will Rock You in its original West End production, and even performed with the band Queen for the actual Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Compared to navigating the vocal pyrotechnics of Freddie Mercury, Vincent says, tackling Bowie’s repertoire is less challenging, at least on a purely technical level. Reached at home in

VS

Conductor Brent Havens’s accessible approach to his orchestral adaptation of popular David Bowie songs will include a rock ensemble and singer Tony Vincent.

New York City, the singer notes that he grew up on the Thin White Duke, whose music had an immeasurable impact on his own songwriting. When pressed to name his favourite selection from Bowie’s astonishing 50-year career, Vincent picks “Ashes to Ashes”, a song he admits he finds difficult to sing, but for personal reasons rather than musical ones.

“The content of that lyric resonates with me in such a deep way,” he says of the 1980 single. “There isn’t a more personal song to me in his catalogue—that sort of monkey-on-yourback, addictive kind of behaviour, and the struggle to get away from that. It’s something that rings true to my past, and it’s something that I really connect with. Frequently, it’s an emotional song to get through, because it hits a little too close to home.”

Vincent isn’t the only one who finds relevance in Bowie’s work. He

says the rock legend—who died in January at the age of 69—touched on universal themes. In particular, humanity’s eternal striving to receive, and divine meaning from, some great, elusive cosmic message—a quest that informed nearly all of Bowie’s work, from “Starman” to “Blackstar”.

“What makes his music so enjoyable to people, apart from him reinventing himself over and over and over again, is that there’s a lyrical content of this sort of searching and longing, and looking for something that’s out there that’s bigger than us as the human race, basically,” Vincent reflects. “And I think that sort of melancholy feel touched a lot of people.

I know it did me, personally.” The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra presents The Music of David Bowie at the Orpheum on Wednesday (October 5).

AT THE MOVIES!

of the

Founding Member Los Romeros - Royal Family Of Guitar

2007 Grammy’s President’s Merit Award Winner

Pepe Romero

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5 7:30PM, ORPHEUM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6 2PM, ORPHEUM

And Friends: Alexander Dunn

Constantine Kitsopoulos conductor Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Celebrate the 35th Anniversary of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, with the VSO! The original Indiana Jones adventure, re-mastered and presented on the big screen at the Orpheum, with the orchestra playing the famous, awardwinning score by John Williams live on stage.

“RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK” licensed by LUCASFILM, LTD and PARAMOUNT PICTURES. Motion Picture, Artwork, Photos © 1981 Lucasfilm, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

MEDIA SPONSOR

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TICKETS:

vancouversymphony.ca

30 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

Saturday October 22 7:00 Chan Centre Auditorium UBC Vancouver. $46.00-94.00

Classification: PG. Parental Guidance Suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

SPONSORED BY

randy pile & robert ward

604.876.3434

Available @ Chan Centre Box Office 604.822.9197 7 www.chancentre.com/tickets/ “Sizzling, detailed performance” New York Times

ARTS

Drawing out Vancouverites

A

rtist Brian Lye wants to get you drawing—and to do so, he’s making it as playfully inviting as possible. Heading up just one of dozens of public events for Big Draw Vancouver on Saturday (October 1), he’ll be rolling out lengths of paper on the Trout Lake Community Centre floor and walls, taping markers to yard-long drawing sticks, and setting up games where you have to do it blindfolded or by using your nondominant hand.

“My approach is to make it accessible and make it about the act of drawing,” he tells the Straight over the phone. “It’s to make it fun and take away preconceived notions of what a good drawing is with spontaneity and play.

“And when someone encounters this long drawing stick, it’s not as likely to be intimidating,” he adds.

“That cuts away a little bit of the selfconsciousness.”

In a way, Lye’s interactive workshop at Trout Lake embodies everything that the Big Draw is about. Launched as the Vancouver Draw Down seven years ago, the event now moves from June to October and takes its name from an international event that gets people putting pen to paper and other materials simultaneously around the globe. It also ties in with B.C. Culture Days—“one big cultural storm”, as Marie Lopes, organizer of Big Draw Vancouver and a programmer for arts, culture, and environment at the city’s park board, puts it.

“The goal has always been to get people over their performance anxiety with drawing,” explains Lopes over the phone. “People see drawing as an artist with a pencil that makes something look three-dimensional and beautiful and it gets framed.”

As with so many Big Draw events, on the other hand, Lye focuses more

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Big Draw Vancouver organizer Marie Lopes hopes to help people overcome any anxieties about drawing and to tap into creative talents they may not have used.

on process than product. He’ll use music as another way to kick-start that process. “It can inspire and test responses and reactions to see where sounds can connect us,” he explains.

“My request would be to look and see what comes out of it—to get people out of their regular headspace.

Music can be a way of helping them to focus in.” He might use written cues as well: everyday phrases like “good holiday” and “bad holiday” can launch a world of imagery, he’s found. “It’s always surprising to see what people choose to draw.”

And in the case of the citywide workshops—held at art galleries, outdoor sites, community centres, and park fieldhouses—it’s also surprising to see how they draw. Events are as diverse as finger knitting and “yarndrawing” at the Sunset Community Centre, wheelchair- and foot-created “dance-drawing” at the Creekside

Community Centre’s outdoor plaza, a Cloudscape comic jam at the Memorial South Park Fieldhouse, and fairytale-themed costume and set drawing at Vancouver Opera. (See www. drawvancouver.com/ for a complete list and a printable “passport” you can get stamped for prizes.)

Lopes says it’s all a means to get people to tap into a creative side they may not have said hello to for years.

“We want to emphasize that it’s allages,” says Lopes. “Kids don’t need to be encouraged to draw, but for adults, they need a little nudge.”

Adds Lye: “Sometimes parents shuff le their kids in there, but they don’t take part, so I try to get a marker to them.” One on a threefoot-long stick. -

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Big Draw Vancouver takes place at locations around the city on Saturday (October 1).

START PLANNING YOUR WEEKEND AT CULTUREDAYS.CA SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 31

A Firehall Arts Centre presentation

Cathy Jones

Star of This Hour Has 22 Minutes

STRANGER TO HARD WORK Written and performed by

Cathy Jones Directed by

Ann-Marie Kerr

“Brilliant comedian… deeply moving”

SEP 28 -OCT 8

Halifax Chronicle Herald

604.689.0926

firehallartscentre.ca

280 E Cordova St Tue Sep 27th Showtime 7pm

Join us for “Don’t be a Stranger: Conversations and Cocktails with Cathy Jones.” More info at firehallartscentre.ca

Watch this space.

Celebrating the new season!

@vancivictheatre #myVCT 32 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

media sponsor

ARTS

Film traces arc of Chinese art > BY JA NET SM IT H

C

hinese contemporary art has made a big impact in Vancouver over the past decade, thanks to public work by Ai Weiwei and prominent exhibitions like the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Unscrolled in 2014.

It’s so well known these days, in fact, that it’s easy to forget how closed a society China was just a few decades ago, and how far underground the artists now celebrated once were.

German filmmaker Michael Schindhelm puts the pieces together by focusing on one crucial westerner who helped usher the art out into the world.

The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg is the story of a Swiss businessman, and later ambassador, who was able to gain rare access to a country once as closed off as North Korea is today. Sigg went on to collect thousands of seminal works by the likes of Ai, Fang Lijun, and Zeng Fanzhi, donating most of them in 2012 to the soon-to-be-built M+ museum in Hong Kong. But the film is also the story of modern-day China, a portrait of almost unimaginable change that speaks personally to Schindhelm, who was born and raised in East Germany.

“After the wall fell in ’89 we had to adapt to this in a very fast way and a lot of people had problems, especially people in my generation and the older generation. So I saw the extraordinary change Chinese people would have faced,” the filmmaker, author, and opera and theatre director tells the Straight over the phone from his home base in London, before the film travels here for the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Music/Art/Design (M/A/D) series.

“And I saw how much art really articulates this challenge and transformation. It helps us to understand how China has changed today.”

Lingering images of that art play a central role in The Chinese Lives of Uli

The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg focuses on a key figure in taking art to the West.

Sigg, as do wide shots of the ever-rising skyline of China’s changing landscape.

It’s a country Schindhelm is familiar with, having toured it first with opera, and then having spent years filming Bird’s Nest—the story of the building of the Olympic stadium in Beijing.

That years-long project brought him into contact with Ai Weiwei, and also, not surprisingly, with Sigg. “He was kind of the string-puller behind the scenes of the architecture in 2002,” Schindhelm explains, speaking of the facility designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architectural team slated to build our new Vancouver Art Gallery.

The story of how Sigg came to be that “string-puller” in China starts in the late 1970s, when the former journalist is sent by the Schindler elevator company to try to painstakingly broker a deal with post-Mao dignitaries.

It turns out to be one of China’s first forays into capitalism with the West— and one of the people he negotiates with is future president Jiang Zemin.

“You could say he introduced China to capitalism,” Schindhelm marvels. “And later, when he returned as an ambassador in the mid-’90s, he was appreciated for his efforts 10 to 15 years earlier.…This all gave him some

kind of autonomy to mingle with artists to discover Chinese art.

“I lived under Soviet rule for 30 years. I really can understand what it meant for him in the ’70s to travel freely in the country. He even knew the country better than the Chinese people themselves, because they were very restricted for travel.”

Schindhelm is able to build a sense of those closed times with rare archival footage. For the present day, he tours with Sigg to several artists’ studios in modern-day China—though Ai Weiwei can only be interviewed when restrictions are lifted midway through filming and he’s allowed to fly to Berlin.

Schindhelm comments: “I often work with countries with limited freedom of expression, where this issue must be tackled. It’s always important to be able to be aware of sensitivity, but at the same time not to chicken out about talking about these things.” Bird’s Nest, he adds, was in fact a more precarious film to shoot, given the building’s importance as a symbol of China opening up to the world and the falling-out between officials and Ai Weiwei, who ended up under surveillance.

One of the key points in the movie is that the great artists of contemporary China entrusted Sigg with their millions of dollars’ worth of works because they did not believe their own country would protect them. Sigg still dreams of taking those pieces back to a museum in mainland China, but for now, Hong Kong will have to suffice.

“Forty to 50 million mainland Chinese are coming to Hong Kong, and they’re not only coming for shopping now—it’s to enjoy things like freedom of expression,” says the filmmaker. The Vancouver International Film Festival presents The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg at SFU Woodward’s on Friday (September 30) at 3:45 p.m. and at International Village on October 10 at 7:15 p.m.

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SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 33

ARTS

Digital Folk manoeuvres a multifaceted world DANCE DIGITAL FOLK A plastic orchid factory production.

At SFU Woodward’s in the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts on Wednesday, September 21. No remaining performances

If folk dances reflect the life and

2 culture of a people, what will be

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HONOUREES AND EMERGING ARTISTS! The City of Vancouver celebrates our creative community through the Mayor’s Arts Awards which recognize established and emerging artists and individuals or organizations who have made significant contributions to arts and culture in our city.

SPECIAL HONOURS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gordon Smith CIVIC MERIT AWARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Susan Point POET LAUREATE (2014 – 2017) . . . . . . . . . Rachel Rose PERFORMING ARTS

HONOUREE

EMERGING ARTIST

THEATRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jan Hodgson . . . . . . . Ruth Bruhn

MUSIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jocelyn Morlock . . . . Marina Hasselberg

DANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Emily Molnar. . . . . . . . Lexi Vajda

STUDIO ARTS

HONOUREE

CRAFT AND DESIGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sharon Kallis. . . . . . . . Rebecca Graham

CULINARY ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Meeru Dhalwala . . . . . Arka Lwin

FILM AND NEW MEDIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lorna Boschman . . . . Sebnem Ozpeta

LITERARY ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Betsy Warland . . . . . . Jónína Kirton

VISUAL ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dana Claxton . . . . . . . Carlos Colín

PUBLIC ART . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Instant Coffee . . . . . . Krista Belle Stewart

COMMUNITY ENGAGED ART. . . . . . . . . . .

Jay Hamburger . . . . . Jerilynn Webster

EMERGING ARTIST

(aka JB the First Lady) SUPPORT OF THE ARTS PHILANTHROPY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hassan and Nezhat Khosrowshahi ARTS BOARD MEMBER OF THE YEAR . . . Amy Nugent VOLUNTEERISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mary Jane Morita BUSINESS SUPPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Georgia Straight ARTIST LIVE-WORK STUDIO AWARD RECIPIENTS: 2015 – 2018 FILM ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fiona Rayher VISUAL ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo VISUAL ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Colleen Heslin DANCE ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daelik Hackenbrook VISUAL ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carol A. Young FILM ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soran Mardookhi VISUAL ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Brown vancouver.ca/artsawards Phone: 3-1-1 TTY: 7-1-1 34 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

our folk dance?

In an immersive and interactive new dance work meets installation, James Gnam and collaborators are exploring how video-game culture and technology might shape today’s dance.

Digital Folk was hosted in the basement theatre at SFU Woodward’s.

Walking from the dimly lit hallway into the vibrant performance space was like stepping into an exclusive, rave-inspired dance party— “exclusive” because it was tucked away and not crowded, and also because designer Natalie Purschwitz and lighting designer James Proudfoot had created such a unique world.

Guests entered through the costume corridor, where accessories and garments hung for the taking. The space fits up to 55 audience members, all dressed up next to the performers (Gnam, Bevin Poole Leinweber, Vanessa Goodman, Natalie LeFebvre Gnam, Jane Osborne, Diego Romer, Lexi Vajda, and SFU students Shion Carter, Kayla DeVos, Rachel Helten, Hannah Jackson, and Rachel Silver).

Around the corner, the actual performance space was one big room.

In Purschwitz’s world, quilts hung as projection screens and white cardboard boxes created mountainous landscapes. Lights with lampshades descended from the ceiling and cast a warm glow, while a giant block marked the middle of the space. A stage for Just Dance–style video-game dancing and

a stage for a Rock Band–style videogame band sat off to the sides.

The main surface was not exempt from the party: it had squares of marley flooring taped in place with bright colours and a couple of strips of AstroTurf, raising further questions about where in the world this scene might be.

The top of Digital Folk is a soft start.

Performers blend in with the audience, some people playing the Just Dance video game, others greeting the ongoing flow of new visitors to the space.

At one point, though, I noticed LeFebvre Gnam standing under a spotlight, eyes shut, softly moving through a sensorial phrase. Soon the rest of the performers, located throughout the space, were doing the same.

Scenes blended and the audience was free to move around. At one moment, all of the performers took out their phones (we were also encouraged to use ours) and attempted to mimic the same traditional folk dance.

Digital Folk ran three times in one evening, technically starting on the hour, but the end of the work and its new beginning bleed. The performers enveloped the audience in a paradoxical, at times ironic, installation.

The onslaught of scenes settled in one final moment when the Just Dance video game replayed a scene featuring Goodman and a bunch of the audience dancing along behind her. The replay was in slow motion to the sounds of Poole Leinweber stroking a banjo, singing a soft folk tune, as everyone watched and listened. It was a chance to see how everyone had come together and what had been shared.

In an age when so many people exist in relative isolation, engaging with the world through technology, Digital Folk is a flash of energy— energy that dance, song, and community uniquely extract. > BRITTANY DUGGAN

ARTS

VSO gives Rite of Spring new power MUSIC VANCOUVER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA At the Orpheum on Sunday, September 25. No remaining performances

Good performances of great music are common. But performances that change the way you hear a great and famous work are rare, and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, under music director Bramwell Tovey, has recently treated local audiences to a pair of them. The first, in 2014, was a revelatory reading of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 4 in F Minor that unearthed both the English pastoralist’s hidden modernism and his ability to stare horror in the face. And the latest was Sunday afternoon’s performance of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which suggested that this once-controversial suite was a glimpse into the brutal future, rather than an invocation of the barbaric past.

Humour me for a moment.

The Rite was met by a riot on its debut, with the Ballets Russes, in 1913; conventional wisdom is that the Parisian audience’s response was due to the score’s astringent dissonance and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky’s fervid depiction of human sacrifice.

Bourgeois complacency was certainly affronted, but perhaps the real offence was the way that Stravinsky and his fellow Russians anticipated the German push for Paris not much more than a year later. Those sirens in the higher strings. The funereal tramping of army boots in the lower.

Those harsh, grinding rhythms, so redolent of machinery gearing up for war. And most of all, the hammer blows of bass drum and timpani, like the migraine-inducing pounding of howitzers.

Perhaps it was prescient fear, not reactionary anger, that drove the crowd mad.

We have become inured to worse things since, alas. Still, the VSO’s Rite was alive, menacing, and potent enough to inspire a frisson of anxiety. And in the orchestra’s season opener it was paired with two similarly engaging, if considerably lighter, pieces, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, and VSO composer in residence Jocelyn Morlock’s Oiseaux Bleus et Sauvages.

Morlock’s piece, premiered by the VSO in 2005, was the perfect introduction: airy but rhythmic, tuneful but complex, it grew from a dawn chorus of “avian flutes”—to quote Tovey’s introductory quip—into a blazing noon. And while the Tchaikovsky concerto is far more familiar—familiar enough, in fact, to have been lampooned in a Monty Python sketch—in guest soloist Alexander Gavrylyuk’s hands it, too, shone.

The Ukraine-born pianist came on-stage in the customary tails, but played Tchaikovsky’s fortissimo introduction as if he were dressed in a tight white T-shirt, yelling “Stella!” That’s a compliment, by the way: it was a muscular, attentiongetting, and masterful gambit. Later on, Gavrylyuk effected another odd transformation: between his round, close-cropped head and his enigmatic half-smile, he began to resemble Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat—if that feline could play piano with an utterly winning mix of scientific control and stunt-pilot abandon.

For his encore, after a well-deserved standing ovation, Gavrylyuk chose to perform the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen, “Of Foreign Lands and Peoples”. It might not be entirely fair to read that as sly commentary on the otherworldly Morlock and the provocative Stravinsky, but it’s tempting.

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THEATRE 2OPENINGS STRANGER TO HARD WORK Canadian actor and comedian Cathy Jones shares her unique perspective on a variety of topics from food to money, and from the troublesome people in her life to the benefits of laughter. Sep 28–Oct 8, 8 pm, Firehall Arts Centre (280 E. Cordova). Tix from $25, info www.firehallartscentre.ca/.

HELEN & EDGAR Catherine Burns directs celebrated orator Edgar Oliver in a production that tells the story of Oliver and his sister Helen’s strange childhood in Savannah. Sep 29–Oct 8, York Theatre (639 Commercial). Tix from $20, info www. thecultch.com/events/helen-edgar-2/.

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EDWARD II UBC Theatre and Film presents Christopher Marlowe’s play about a newly crowned king who alienates his queen and court when he recalls his lover from exile. Sep 29–Oct 15, 7:30 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts (6265 Crescent Rd., UBC). Tix $11.50-24.50, info www.ubctheatretickets.com/.

ANGELS IN AMERICA Rachel Peake directs the Pulitzer Prize-winning play set during the AIDS epidemic in Reaganera New York City. Sep 29–Oct 16, 8 pm, Studio 58 (Langara College, 100 W. 49th).

Tix $15-25, info www.langara.ca/studio-58/ current-season/index.html.

COMFORT COTTAGES Western Gold Theatre presents the story of four single female friends of retirement age who are unsettled financially and emotionally.

Sep 30–Oct 23, PAL Theatre (8th floor, 581 Cardero). Tix $30, info www.western goldtheatre.org/.

BAD GIRLS THE MUSICAL Play tells the story of a group of prison inmates and their battle against the entrenched old guard system. Oct 1-15, 8-10:30 pm, Renegade Arts Studio (125 E. 2nd). Tix $27, info www.dramanatrixproductions.com/.

MOTHERLOAD Emelia Symington Fedy, Jody-Kay Marklew, Gillian Bennett, and Una Memisevic star in a dark comedy about the reality of modern parenting.

Oct 4-15, The Cultch (1895 Venables). Tix from $20, info www.thecultch.com/events/ motherload-2/.

FLARE PATH The Slamming Door Artist Collective presents Terence Rattigan’s drama that paints an evocative portrait of life in wartime Britain for the RAF bomber crews. Oct 4-22, Jericho Arts Centre (1675 Discovery). Tix $15-25, info www.jerichoartscentre.com/.

DEN OF THIEVES Offside Theatre presents the Vancouver premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s play about a recovering kleptomaniac. Oct 4-8, 8 pm; Oct 9, 3 pm, Studio 16 (1545 W. 7th). Tix $20, info www.offsidetheatre.com/.

IN THE DARK James & Jamesy present an adventure about discovery and creation, performed in darkness. Oct 5-16, 8 pm, Waterfront Theatre (1412 Cartwright St., Granville Island). Tix $15-27, info www.jamesandjamesy.com/.

2ONGOING BASKERVILLE: A SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY The Arts Club Theatre Company presents director John Murphy’s version of Ken Ludwig’s zany whodunit. Based on the Arthur Conan Doyle story. To Oct 9, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage (2750 Granville).

Tix from $29, info www.artsclub.com/.

HUNGER GAMES—CATCHING FIRE: THE MUSICAL Pop-culture parody sees Katniss Everdeen continue to defy the Capitol, play with Peeta’s heart, and belt out songs in the style of Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande. To Oct 1, 8 pm, Studio 1398 (1398 Cartwright, Granville Island). Tix $20, info www.facebook.com/D13Presents/.

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36 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

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WEDNESDAY NOON HOURS: JAMIE LAVAL AND DAN COMPTON Fiddler Jamie Laval and guitarist Dan Compton play traditional Celtic music from Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany. Oct 5, 12-1 pm, Roy Barnett Recital Hall (6361 Memorial Rd., UBC).

Tix $5 at the door, cash only, info www.music. ubc.ca/wednesday.noon.hours/.

THE MUSIC OF DAVID BOWIE Conductor Brent Havens leads vocalist Tony Vincent, Rock Ensemble, and the VSO in an exploration of David Bowie’s innovative musical style. Oct 5, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Info www.vancouversymphony.ca/.

2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS IMPROV MANIA Any limited definitions you might have of improv theatre or comedy should be nicely blown to smithereens from Tuesday to Saturday (October 4 to 8) on Granville Island. That’s when the Vancouver International Improv Festival hits town—complete with an entire one-man improvised musical from New York City’s LimboLand (pictured here) and a spontaneously created silent film. This year’s festival, in its impressive 17th annual edition, also welcomes U.S. troupes Sexy Baby and Amie and Kristen Show, as well as local faves like Vancouver TheatreSports League, the Fictionals, and the Sunday Service. There are more than 30 interactive performances to catch, so get ready to fly by the seat of your pants.

A GOOD WAY OUT Pacific Theatre presents the world premiere of a fierce, compelling look into the precarious world of crime and compromise. To Oct 15, 8 am, Pacific Theatre (1440 W. 12th). Tix $23.95-34.95, info www.pacifictheatre.org/season/20162017-season/mainstage/a-good-way-out/.

SONIC ELDER The Chop Theatre presents an on-stage documentary with live music from the generation that invented youth culture. To Oct 1, 7 pm; Oct 2, 2 pm, Penthouse (1019 Seymour Street). Tix $28, info www. thechoptheatre.com/plays/sonic-elder/.

DROP IN ROCK CHOIR Sing classic and contemporary rock, pop, and indie songs with a vibrant community choir. Sep 29; Oct 6, 7:30-9 pm, Presentation House Theatre (333 Chesterfield Ave.). Tix $10, info www.impromptumusic.ca/.

FRANKIE CENA BENEFIT CONCERT Frankie Cena presents a benefit concert in support of the British Columbia Boys Choir. Sep 30, 7:15 pm, Michael J. Fox Theatre (7373 MacPherson Ave., Burnaby).

Tix $18-36, info www.bcboyschoir.org/.

DISCOVER DANCE! SHIAMAK’S BOLLYWOOD JAZZ Vancouver’s Shiamak dance team showcases the dynamic fusion of jazz, folk, and modern dance styles seen in Bollywood films. Sep 29, 12-1 pm, Scotiabank Dance Centre (677 Davie).

Tix $14/12, info www.thedancecentre.ca/.

VOLIÈRE ÉLECTRIQUE: NEW WORK

BY TERRI HRON AND HILDEGARD WESTERKAMP Recorder virtuoso Terri Hron returns to Vancouver to premiere a new work created in collaboration with Vancouver-based composer Hildegard Westerkamp, along with works by Hron and Robert Normandeau, and Hron and Monty Adkins. Sep 30, 8 pm, Vancouver Community College Broadway (1155 E. Broadway). Free admission, info www.newmusic.org/ terri-hron-voliere-electrique-sept-30/.

NEW WORKS 16/17 SEASON LAUNCH Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg’s Porno Death Cult sees characters confront the unanswerable questions that contort our collective perceptions. Sep 29, 30, 8 pm, Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre (181 Roundhouse Mews). Tix $25/20, info www. newworks.ca/2016/06/september_29-30_ nw_16-17_season_launch/.

EARTH/SEA/SKY: MUSIC OF OUR NATURAL WORLD Jon Washburn conducts the Vancouver Chamber Choir in a concert of nature-inspired music by Morley, Monteverdi, Weelkes, Josquin, Schumann, Whitacre, Britten, Barber, Chatman, and Chilcott. Sep 30, 8-10 pm, Ryerson United Church (2195 W. 45th). Tix $10-33, info www.vancouverchamberchoir.com/.

CONDUIT Contemporary dance work by Jenn Edwards, based on the movements of orchestral conductors. Oct 1-2, 8 pm, Gold Saucer Studio (211 - 207 W. Hastings).

Tix $10, cash only, info www.jennedwards dance.com/.

DANIEL TONES’S ECOLOGY AND THE ART OF PERCUSSION Percussionist Daniel Tones presents a concert of contemporary music for solo percussion that invites you to reflect on humankind’s influence on its natural surroundings.

Oct 1, 4-5 pm, Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art (2121 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver). Admission by donation, info www.danieltones.com/.

DANCE 2THIS WEEK

SCHOLARSHIP SHOWCASE Highlights include performances by 2016 Vancouver Ballet Society scholarship winners and a silent auction. Oct 2, 1 pm, Scotiabank Dance Centre (677 Davie). Tix $75, info www.vancouverballetsociety.ca/.

ALOHA POLYNESIA Performance features colourful costumes, music, and dances from the islands of Hawai’i, Tahiti, New Zealand, Samoa, and Fiji. Proceeds go to the ALS (Lou Gehrig) Society, Doctors Without Borders, Operation Smile, and Union Gospel Mission’s Christmas Dinner for the Homeless. Oct 2, 2-4 pm, Surrey Arts Centre (13750 88th Ave.). Tix $20/15/10, info www. surrey.ca/culture-recreation/9785.aspx/.

MUSIC 2THIS WEEK VINO & FORTE AUTUMN CONCERT Evening of classical piano and flamenco guitar fusion. Sep 29, 7-9:30 pm, Hycroft Manor (1489 McRae). Tix $29, info www. vinoandforte.com/.

MUSIC FOR TWO ORGANS Organists Michael Murray, Nicholas Fairbank, Suzanne Gibson Coulthard, and PJ Janson play classical music. Oct 1, 7:309:30 pm, Queens Avenue United Church (529 Queens Ave., New West). Tix $20, info www.queensavenue.org/.

DROP IN ROCK CHOIR Sing classic and contemporary rock, pop, and indie songs with a vibrant community choir. Oct 4, 7:30-9 pm, WISE Hall (1882 Adanac). Tix $10, info www.impromptumusic.ca/.

MUSICAL MORNINGS WITH ELIZABETH AND MARCEL BERGMANN: BEETHOVEN AND THE BEATLES Wideranging concert features Vancouver Opera Orchestra concertmaster and Yaletown String Quartet member Mark Ferris. Oct 5, 10 am, Evergreen Cultural Centre (1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam). Tix $22/15, info www.evergreenculturalcentre.ca/event/ musical-mornings-beethoven-beatles/.

THE VSO AT THE MOVIES: ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S PSYCHO Scott Terrell conducts the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Psycho as the film plays on the big screen. Oct 12, 7:30 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe).

Info www.vancouversymphony.ca/.

COMEDY 2ONGOING THE COMEDY MIX 1015 Burrard, Century Plaza Hotel & Spa, 604-684-5050, www. thecomedymix.com/. Comedy club with pro-am night Tue at 8:30 pm, showcase Wed at 8:30 pm, and featured headliners Thu at 8:30 pm and Fri-Sat at 8 and 10:30 pm. Cover $8 Tue, $10 Wed, $15 Thu, $18 Fri, $20 Sat. 2PAUL MYREHAUG Sep 29-Oct 1 2MATT BILLON Oct 6-8 2IAN BAGG Nov 3-5 2BETH STELLING Dec 1-3 2BRENT MORIN Jan 12-14 2SCOTT THOMPSON Jan 26-28 2BRIAN POSEHN Feb 16-18 YUK YUK’S COMEDY CLUB 2837 Cambie, 604-696-9857, www.yukyuks. com/vancouver. Comedy club with Top Talent Tue at 8 pm, amateur night Wed at 8 pm, and professional headliners Thu-Fri at 8 pm and Sat at 7 and 9:30 pm. Cover Tue $10, Wed $7, Thu $10, and Fri-Sat $20.

2ANGELO TSAROUCHAS Sep 30-Oct 1 LAFFLINES COMEDY CLUB 530 Columbia St., New Westminster, 604525-2262, www.lafflines.com/. 2BRUCE MCCULLOCH Oct 1.

VANCOUVER THEATRESPORTS LEAGUE Some of the world’s most daring and innovative improv. Firecracker! (Thu, 9:15 pm); Improv After Dark (Fri and Sat, 11:15 pm); OK Tinder (Wed, 9:15 pm); Rookie Night (Sun, 7:30 pm); TheatreSports (Fri and Sat, 9:30 pm); Trump Card (Wed,Thu, Fri, and Sat, 7:30 pm). Sep 28–Oct 5, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). Tix $8-22, info www.vtsl.com/.

2THIS WEEK FIRECRACKER! The Vancouver TheatreSports League presents evenings of improv comedy that explore what it means to be a woman in Vancouver. To Dec 22, 9:15 pm, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). Info www.vtsl.com/.

OK TINDER The Vancouver TheatreSports League presents an improv-comedy show inspired by Vancouver’s notorious and ludicrous dating scene. To Dec 21, 9:15 pm, every Wed, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). Info www.vtsl.com/.

TRUMP CARD The Vancouver TheatreSports League presents an improv-comedy show that examines the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Sep 28–Nov 12, 7:30-9 pm, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). Info www.vtsl.com/.

PAUL MYREHAUG Canadian standup comedian performs a solo show. Sep 29– Oct 1, The Comedy MIX (1015 Burrard). Tix $20/18/15, info www.thecomedymix.com/.

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ANGELO TSAROUCHAS Comedian known for appearing on Mad Men, Sullivan and Son, and Blue Mountain State.

Sep 30, 8 pm; Oct 1, 7 pm; Oct 1, 9:30 pm, Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club (2837 Cambie). Tix $20, info www.yukyuks.com/vancouver/.

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SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 37

LOVE FILMS? Browse this issue and for our comprehensive guide to the Film Festival. Proud Media Sponsor

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BRUCE MCCULLOCH Comedian, writer, director and former Kids in the Hall star combines stand up, live music, and assorted autobiographical insights. Oct 1, Lafflines Comedy Club (530 Columbia Street, New Westminster). Tix $29.95, info www.lafflines.com/.

COMEDY SHOCKER: DECALOGUE OF DEATH Canadian comedian Sean Proudlove performs a standup show, with support by Kyle Jones, Mark Nesbitt, Sam Tonning, Mark O’Keeffe, and Ollie Maughan. Oct 1, 7 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $10, info www.rick shawtheatre.com/.

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL IMPROV FESTIVAL The 17th annual celebration of improv comedy features over 30 interactive performances, workshops, and an opening-night gala. Oct 4-8, 7:3011:30 pm, Granville Island. Info www.van couverimprovfest.com/.

2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS HANNIBAL BURESS The Georgia Straight presents American comedian performing two shows on his Hannibal Montanabal Experience tour. Oct 21, 7 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts (6265 Crescent Rd., UBC). Tix $39.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

TOGETHER AGAIN AT LAST...FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME English comedians and Monty Python alumni John Cleese and Eric Idle give a performance that blends scripted and improvised bits with storytelling, musical numbers, exclusive footage, and aquatic juggling. Oct 20-22, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre (650 Hamilton). Tix $69.5099.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketmaster.ca/.

straight choices

TRUMPED-UP ELECTION The great TV debate this week was just the appetizer: for the next two months, U.S. election fever will be at full heat. With that in mind, head to Vancouver TheatreSports League’s latest sendup, Trump Card—Winner Takes All, where the jokesters are getting conceptual. The first half is set in 2040, when news anchors and political commentators are looking back at 2016 and trying to understand where it all went wrong. Part 2 of the evening? The audience picks two “candidates” from the characters in the first half of the show. They’ll run for world leadership in the 2040 campaign. And let the games begin!

2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS THE VANCOUVER WRITERS FEST Annual celebration turns reading into a community experience, bringing people together to share thoughts, explore ideas, and witness conversations. Participating authors this year include Yann Martel, Wade Davis, Teva Harrison, Sam Wiebe, Sarah Glidden, Madeleine Thien, Michael Helm, M.G. Vassanji, Lindy West, Joy Kogawa, Ivan Coyote, Kenneth Oppel, Guy Gavriel Kay, Gordon Korman, Erin Bow, C.C. Humphreys, and Billie Livingston. Oct 17-23, Granville Island. Info 604-681-6330 x111, www.writersfest.bc.ca/.

ET CETERA

LITERARY EVENTS

2THIS WEEK

2THIS WEEK

TALK: WALID RAAD The Lebanese artist discusses two of his long-term art projects. Sep 29, 7 pm, Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre (149 W. Hastings).

Free admission, info www.sfu.ca/galleries/ SFUGalleriesEvents/past-events/2016/ Walid-Raad.html/.

EXPERTS IN OUR COMMUNITY: RUMI, THE MYSTIC AND POET OF LOVE Mehdi Meshgini presents an introduction to the 13th-century Persian mystic and poet Mowlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi, known as Rumi. Oct 3, 2-3:30 pm, West Vancouver Memorial Library (1950 Marine Dr., West Van). Free admission, info www.westvanlibrary.ca/.

TO WRITE IS TO RESIST. TO WRITE IS TO RECREATE. Wanda John-Kehewin, Carmen Aguirre, and Rita Wong read from their work and discuss their writing. Oct 3, 7-9 pm, Britannia Centre, Canuck Family Education Centre (1655 Williams Street).

Free admission, info www.vlacc.ca/.

B.C. CULTURE DAYS Annual event promotes direct interaction between creators and the public, as well as increases understanding and appreciation of arts, culture, and heritage. Highlights includes over 400 registered activities in visual arts, music, dance, theatre, architecture, heritage, film and video, literature, culinary arts, and multimedia. Sep 30–Oct 2, various Lower Mainland venues. Free admission, info www.bc.culturedays.ca/.

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38 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

BATTLE OF THE BRUSH 30: SEASON 6 EPISODE 4 An 80-minute live-painting competition features five teams of two artists each. Sep 30, 8-11 pm, Heritage Hall (3102 Main Street). Tix $20, info www.goldenbrushart.com/.

BIG DRAW VANCOUVER Highlights include over 40 diverse and hands-on drawing workshops designed and led by local professional artists. Oct 1, various Vancouver venues. Free admission, info www.drawvancouver.com/.

GASTOWN NIGHT PHOTOWALK This night photowalk begins at twilight, where you can capture the rich blue sky and continue with darker night photography. Oct 2, 6:30-8:30 pm, Canada Place Welcome Centre (999 Canada Place). Tix $99, info www.vancouverphotowalks.ca/ photowalks/gastown-night/.

GALLERIES VANCOUVER ART GALLERY 750 Hornby, 604-662-4719, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/.

2PICASSO: THE ARTIST AND HIS MUSES (exhibition examines the significance of the six women who were inspirational to the artistic development of Picasso) to Oct 2 2BHARTI KHER MATTER (exhibition brings together sculptures and paintings that represent the diversity of New Delhi-based artist Bharti Kher’s practice) to Oct 10

MUSEUMS THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC 6393 NW Marine Drive, 604822-5087, www.moa.ubc.ca/. 2IN THE FOOTPRINT OF THE CROCODILE MAN: CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE SEPIK RIVER, PAPUA NEW GUINEA (exhibition features the carvings of Papua New Guinea’s Iatmul people) to Jan 31, 2017 2LAWRENCE PAUL YUXWELUPTUN: UNCEDED TERRITORIES (works that confront the colonialist suppression of First Nations peoples and reflect the ongoing struggle for indigenous rights) to Oct 16

OUT OF TOWN 2THIS WEEK ARTWALK 2016 Arts Whistler presents its annual self-guided walking tour of more than 40 pop-up galleries. To Nov 30, various Whistler venues. Free, info www. artswhistler.com/events/artwalk-0/.

TIME OUT ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit listings 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.

Westbank proposes new tower

V

ancouver city council has According to staff, the proportion referred to public hearing of family units exceeds the 35-pera proposed condo tower cent requirement for new market that will redefine the home developments set by the city downtown skyline. in July 2016 for rezoning projects.

With its distinctive curved silThe public hearing is set for Ochouette, the 43-storey building will tober 20. be a development by Westbank Projects Corp. The high-rise, planned PEOPLE WITH LOW and moderfor the southeast corner of Alberni ate incomes will soon be able to live and Cardero streets, has been de- in a new waterfront community in signed by Kengo Kuma, a Japanese Vancouver.

The City of Vancouver is planning architect who will be coming up to build 247 affordwith a plan for a able rental homes new stadium in south of Marine Tokyo for the Drive. Formerly 2020 Olympics.

Carlito Pablo known as East FraAn analysis by city staff of the urban design notes serlands, the 53-hectare River Disthat the building form constitutes trict site in the southeast corner of a “recognizable new benchmark for the city will be home to 15,000 residents once it is fully developed. architectural creativity”.

Through the Vancouver AffordAccording to the design rationale submitted to the city, the pro- able Housing Agency (VAHA), the file of the building “constantly city aims to construct three resichanges” because of the way it will dential buildings in the area.

One is at 3183 Pierview Crescent, be built, “creating illusionary prowith 89 rental homes. A second is files of arching cantilevers”.

“The 43-storey tower is carved planned at 3245 Pierview Crescent, by two emphatic scoops that form for 51 units, and the third will be deep balconies furnished in wood,” located at 3185 Riverwalk Avenue, the submission reads. “In both in- with 107 homes. stances, the carvings create semiIn 2008, city council approved enclosures that strengthen their the rezoning of lands in the forrelations to the street and to the mer industrial district, laying the views—to its urban and geographic groundwork for the development of context while optimizing neigh- private homes and retail, educationbourhood views past the project.” al, service, and recreational uses.

The development, at 1550 AlLocated on the banks of the Fraberni Street, will replace an eight- ser River, and extending from Kerr storey office building currently on Street on the west to Boundary Road the site. on the east, the former East FraserThe condo tower will have 181 lands is envisioned to be a complete units, with commercial uses at the community with a range of housing ground level. options and amenities. In 2012, the In a report to council, city staff first residents moved in.

VAHA is mandated to develop noted that 88 percent of the proposed homes are intended for fam- 2,500 affordable housing units by ilies. These are 140 two-bedroom 2021. On October 17, the development units, and 20 three-bedroom units. permit board, which is composed of

Real Estate

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 10AM & 11:30AM AM M Playhouse Theatre, Vancouver 30AM SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 10AM & 11:30AM Anvil Centre, New Westminster

LISA GRACE & LINDA SEBENIUS lisalindashine.com

Arts time out

senior city staff, will review the housing agency’s application to build rental homes in the River District.

A NEW LUXURY residence for seniors in Vancouver that will allow spouses with different health conditions to stay together begins construction this year.

Called Opal, the development will take the form of one six-storey building and two four-storey buildings connected at ground level.

The seniors’ housing, a project

by Element Lifestyle Retirement Inc., will replace what used to be eight single-family homes at 408488 West King Edward Avenue, east of Cambie Street.

According to Candy Ho, director and vice president for marketing and corporate relations, Opal will provide a continuum of care, from assisted living to complex care, so that senior couples do not have to be separated as their health needs change.

Ho told the Straight in a phone interview that the development will have 56 rental suites and 44 condo units for future residents needing help in their everyday life. In addition, there will be 30 beds in the facility for complex care, an arrangement that will make it possible for the healthier spouse to visit an ailing partner several times a day.

In 2015, Vancouver city council approved the rezoning application for the project in order to expand housing options for seniors.

According to a staff report considered at the time by council, the project ref lects the city’s priority to encourage strong and inclusive communities, where residents can “age in place”.

Ho said that Opal is expected to open its doors in either late 2018 or early 2019. -

CAREERS & EMPLOYMENT CHILD CARE Looking for a Responsible Nanny

EMPLOYMENT

> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < TIMBERTRAIN IN GASTOWN

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 26, 2016 WHERE: Timbertrain Coffee Roasters, Gastown I saw you today in Timbertrain Coffee roasters in Gastown. I smiled at you. You too) You: tall man in a blue t-shirt, drinking americano and typing green text on black screen. Hmm... I was sitting behind you. Let’s have a coffee next time)

CHRIS IN HR

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 WHERE: Wreck Beach Wreck Beach, me with my nose in a book. Eventually, I enjoyed the view, and then our chat. Would enjoy more.

Keith. You liked my beard.

STORMCROW ALEHOUSE

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 24, 2016 WHERE: Stormcrow Alehouse You work as a server and every time I see you I want to talk with you but I don’t want to interrupt you doing your job. There’s something about you that I find endearing and I’m really curious to find out more but I can never talk myself into it. You have long brown hair and sometimes where red lipstick. You’re thin and very cute and always have a bit of a smile on your face, which I find very attractive.

I bring my notebook and often sit alone, I’m tall and pretty much keep to myself, but I think you might know I am interested in you.

Honestly I’m not sure though. If you do realize it and are interested as well, we should get together sometime and get to know one another! Beer? Coffee?

AT THE GRIND...

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 24, 2016 WHERE: Grouse Grind A. - We chatted at the base of the Grind, before the race.

I did not end our conversation particularly gracefully and I did not see you at the top. Now you’re off stealing passwords...what now? C.

YOU PROBABLY CAUGHT ME LOOKING A FEW TIMES

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 25, 2016 WHERE: Central City Brewery Vancouver Just came in with my buds from work. I guess it’s a Sunday night, and that’s why you are both our hostess and server. You have definitely caught my eye with that smile of yours. You probably saw me looked a few times.

Would you want to hang out sometime?

VALUE VILLAGE ON HASTINGS

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 WHERE: Value Village on Hastings I was in a daze vintage shopping at Value Village on Sunday when a tall handsome fella with longer hair wearing denim overalls crossed my path. You caught me off guard when you said hello and asked how I was. I was the blonde wearing a blue/white hippy shirt and jeans. As I was leaving a rainbow appeared outside - not everyday a handsome fella says hello and a rainbow appears! Shoot me a message if you see this :)

SAFEWAY WORKER ON ROBSON

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 25, 2016 WHERE: Safeway Robson and Denman You were stacking some stuff at the edge of the meat department and caught my eye as you apologized for being in the way - I laughed and said no worries... but wish I had said more. If this is you and you - let’s maybe plan another time to run into each other when you are off work?

STADIUM SKYTRAIN AND OUTSIDE ABBOTT LIQUOR STORE

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: APRIL 16, 2016 WHERE: Stadium SkyTrain Saw you in April in Tinseltown. You were tall, brown guy carrying a bag. It was nice to cross your path that fine day :) Coffee???

SKATEBOARD ON HAND COMMERCIAL.

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 22, 2016 WHERE: Commercial St. Vancouver Walking with my sister towards the SkyTrain, September 22nd. 5:50pm.

You :Blond , skateboard on hand coming looking straight into my eyes,... In an instant there was lots to say, your eyes wanting to speak... And I felt it... Me: shaved head, tan, and looking back at you...

Coffee?

WONTON SOUP AND SPRING ROLLS ON MAIN STREET

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 24, 2016 WHERE: Au petite Cafe Main Street.

We made eye contact when you first came in and you sat with your back to me. I was with my mom, you were with an older man (your dad?). You had 2 bowls of wonton soup and spring rolls. On my way out I chickened on passing you my number, but we stared at each other as I left.

Walked by an hour later and saw you getting in your truck.

Barely missed you. Do over?

MATCHSTUCK

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 22, 2016 WHERE: Matchstick Cafe, E. Georgia Location.

You were reading the Ethical Slut in Matchstick on Georgia.

I hesitated, was lost and by the time I came back to the front of the shop where you sat by the window you were as gone as me. It’s a good book, though Sex at Dawn is better, IMO. I suppose that’s the gist of what I wanted to say but somehow you haven’t left me, so here is hoping.

SUSHI IN NEW WEST

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 22, 2016 WHERE: Ki Sushi Our eyes met when you were waiting to be seated; then again later as I walked past. I wanted to introduce myself but didn’t want to interrupt your dinner with your friend.

You had shoulder length hair; I had a hoodie with green stripes on. Sushi or coffee?

FUJIYA BABE

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 21, 2016 WHERE: Fujiya - Clark and Venables You were wearing a white button up and tight black pants. You also had some cool septum jewelry. I was the guy with slicked back hair wearing all black w/backpack and had a septum clicker.

Unfortunately, you were there with what looked like your tall boyfriend. You two didn’t look so happy! We met eyes a few times, I couldn’t help myself. I wish I could have said ‘Hi’ but I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. We could go out for dinner some time. I’d like to see your smile.

HOSPITALITY/FOOD SERVICE LINE COOK Central City Brewers and Distillers Ltd. Surrey,BC Permanent, F/T, $13.00/hr High School required & 1 year exp Main duties: Prepare & cook complete meals according to recipes, product quality & completed according to Food Safe guidelines. Cleanliness of restaurant & ensure that food & service meet quality control standards. Maintain inventory & records of food, supplies & equipment, establishing methods to meet work schedules.

Must have Food Safe Level 1 To apply please send your resume and cover letter to: hr@centralcitybrewing.com

for 2 toddlers in Vancouver. Duties: Feeding, housekeeping, cooking meals, maintain a safe environment in home, assisting with bathing and bedtime. High School required and 1 year exp. or 6 mon. professional training. Permanent F/T, $11/h.

Optional accommodation available at no charge on a live-in basis. Note: This is not a condition of employment. Please contact Mr. J. Jiang at v63744@gmail.com

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Female Hairdresser Required

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LOST $2000 REWARD FOR LOST 5 LB (F) DOG (YORKIE)!

Yorkshire Terrier DAISY! 604-839-7369

s

I saw you a while ago while biking up a street just off Davie. I don’t remember exactly what you looked like.

You had dark hair. I do remember that you were super cute. I had short brown hair. People say I look “ethnic” (whatever that means). We looked at each other while I biked passed you. We kept looking back at each other. I should’ve written this earlier.

I’m pretty sure this was early August. I hope you see this and reply. Would love to go for coffee sometime :)

MATCHSTICK COFFEE

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 16, 2016 WHERE: Matchstick Coffee Herbal tea. Great smile. Sideshaved head and a ponytail; You asked me if the cafe had wifi, and said your phone browser wouldn’t ‘prompt’ a log-in page which was an endearing AF choice of words.

There were notebooks and loose paper- some of it crumpled into a ball because you were, presumably, unimpressed with what you had written. Then you left in a rush before I could drop my earphones and return your smile with anything other than one of my own. Are you free to sit next to each other on purpose some time?

MUSIC

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WORK FROM HOME

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Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: AUGUST 10, 2016 WHERE: Vancouver, Side Street Just Off Davie.

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Moving & Storage, Free EST. Visa Okay.

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savage love I’m a guy,

35, and a cheating piece of shit. I’m engaged to a woman I love, but earlier this year I cheated on her. I have no excuse. She discovered the dating app I used, and we worked through that. But she doesn’t know that shortly after her discovery, I went ahead and cheated.

To my meagre, meagre credit, I did seek out only women who were looking for NSA hookups. But I quickly came to realize how big of a mistake this was, how much I love my fiancée, and that I’m a shitty person. I see a therapist, and he advised that, if I’m certain this was a one-time thing, and if I’m convinced that I’m happy with my fiancée, I should keep quiet. I shouldn’t burden my fiancée with this knowledge. I’m inclined to agree, but, dear God, the guilt. I feel like I’m not the person my fiancée thought I was. What do I do? Should I just accept this as a lesson learned and keep it to myself? Perhaps there’s selfishness at play here, since I’m trying to make myself feel better, but I’m struggling.

unburdening yourself is absolutely the wrong thing to do. The person who confesses may wind up feeling better—because at least now they’re being honest—but the person to whom they’ve confessed can wind up feeling a whole lot worse. Some burdens should be borne, not shifted. If your fiancée is going to inevitably find out, CPOS, better she find out about it from you. But if the secret can be kept and if living with the guilt motivates you not to cheat again, then you can keep your mouth shut with a semiclear-ish conscience.

This advice is not a licence for serial adulterers. If you can’t be faithful to someone—if that’s what you discovered when you had the affair—then you should extract yourself from the monogamous commitment you’ve already made to your fiancée and refrain from making monogamous commitments to anyone else in the future. But if you honestly believe you can be faithful, CPOS, you don’t have to see yourself as a cheating piece of shit. A serial adulterer/betrayer/liar is > CAN’T PERSONALLY OVERLOOK a cheating piece of shit; someone who SELFISHNESS cheated once, regrets it, and makes a good-faith, multidecade effort not to I’m with your therapist, CPOS—and, do it again is a fallible human being. hey, it’s nice to see “keep your mouth shut about a one-time infidelity” My boyfriend of five years is a make the jump from our finer ad- sweet, smart, handsome, loving, supvice columns (Dear Prudence, Dear portive, middle-aged, chubby white Sugar, Savage Love) to some of our guy. We have a fulfi lling sex life.

When we first met, he shared a fanactual therapists.

While honesty (best policy) and tasy he had about watching me get confession (good for the soul) get all fucked by a black guy. (He knows it’s the positive press, there are times when not something I’m interested in IRL.)

> BY DAN SAVAGE I’ve caught him several times posing online as a young, buff, handsome black guy looking for a “snowbunny”.

I call him out on it every time, and it causes huge fights. He says he’ll stop, but he never does. Weighed against all his other good qualities, this isn’t that big of a deal. Clearly, he’s not going to meet up with the women he’s chatting with. What makes me sad is that I adore him as he is—I love his big white belly, his bald head, and his rosy cheeks. I think I do a good job of communicating this to him. I guess I’m writing to you for some reassurance that I’m doing the right thing by letting this behaviour go and also for some insight into why he’s doing it in the first place.

We can’t gloss over the racial/ racist cultural forces that shaped your boyfriend’s kinks, of course, but it’s possible to explore those kinds of fantasies online or IRL without being a racist piece of shit. And a person can pretend to be someone of another race online—because it turns them on— without injecting racial hate into online spaces and/or thoughtlessly reinforcing damaging stereotypes about people of other races. You’ve seen your boyfriend’s online chats, UGHERS, so you’re in a better position to judge whether he’s exploring his fantasies without making the world a worse place than it already is for actual black men. > UPSET GIRLFRIEND HATES If he’s being a racist piece of shit EROTICIZED RACIAL SECRETS online, UGHERS, call him out on that. If he isn’t, stop policing If this isn’t that big of a deal, UGH- his fantasies.

ERS, why are you calling him out on it? Why are you monitoring his on- I am a 36-year-old Italian straight man. I love my girlfriend endlessly. line activities/fantasies at all?

What your boyfriend is doing One month ago, she told me she has sounds relatively harmless—he’s pre- thoughts about missing out on the tending to be someone he’s not while things she didn’t get to do in her flirting with other people online teens. She is 29 years old now. Also, who are most likely pretending to be she says she feels only a mild love for someone they’re not. (I promise you me now and is curious about other most of the “snowbunnies” he’s chat- men. Yesterday we met and cried ted with were other men.) The world is and talked and made love and it felt full of people who enjoy pretending to like she still loves me passionately. be someone they’re not, from cosplay- But she also told me she had sex ers pretending to be Captain America with a stranger a week ago and she or Poison Ivy to creative anachronists is going for one-and-a-half months pretending to be knights and ladies to to Los Angeles on her own. Now I Donald Trump Jr. pretending to be a feel confused. I should hate her for what she did to me, I should tell her human being.

to fuck off, but I can’t do it. I am so in love and I want to be together again after her trip. How do I exit this turmoil?

> PENSIVE AND INSECURE NOW

You exit this turmoil by breaking up with your girlfriend.

She wants to get out there and do “things she didn’t get to do in her teens”, i.e., fuck other guys and most likely date other guys. Th is isn’t what you want, PAIN, you’ve made that clear to her, but she’s gonna fuck other guys anyway. You don’t have to pretend to hate her, PAIN, and you don’t have to tell her to fuck off. But you do have to tell her that it’s over— at least for now.

And once she goes, PAIN, don’t lie around tormenting yourself with mental images of all the things/men she’s doing in Los Angeles. Don’t put your life on hold—love life included—while she’s gone. You’re going to be single. So get out there, date other women, do some things/women you haven’t done. If she wants to get back together when she returns, and if you still want to get back together with her, you can pick things up where you left off.

But you should act like it’s over while she’s gone, PAIN, because it most likely is. On the Lovecast , Cheryl Strayed schools Dan on hiking sex: savage lovecast.com. E-mail: mail@savage love.net . Follow Dan on Twitter: @fakedansavage.

The Georgia Straight Confessions, an outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives—or for the voyeurs among us who want to read what other people have disclosed.

Scan to confess Life Imitates Art? Whenever I go over the viaduct, I can’t help but think about Deadpool.

VP of Phlegm

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

I have worked at this office for 5 months and the boss has been sick the entire time. Every day all day constantly he coughs, gags, horks, and makes the most disgusting and loud throat-clearing noises imaginable. It makes me want to rip my eyeballs out, being trapped at my desk forced to listen to it. I gave my notice and am counting down the days till I can prance out of here!!

I’m weirded out by your kid He’s so rude. And you let him be rude. Who’s the parent here? My parents would’ve killed me if I was as pathetic as your kid. I see the resemblance to the Dad. Ladies, be careful who you choose to be the father of your children.

Royal Pain

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Remind me again as to why the monarchy is relevant to Canadians today?

Does the general public stand to win from this taxpayer funded visit?

My friends are moving.

Most of my friends are moving. I’m thinking of picking up and leaving in a year.

I feel like we completely lost out to globalization. Is that a weird thing to think? :/

Viva la Coca el Van Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+

Why does everyone in this city do copious amounts of cocaine? I am not into drugs really. It seems to many people just rail hard drugs 24/7 in this city and it doesn’t phase them.

Fall into winter Summer came and went way too fast. Now we must settle into short days, long cold wet nights. Plus another tedious and boring hockey season. And then there’s Christmas.....ugh....

Providing for the care and rehabilitation of injured, orphaned, and pollution damaged wildlife.

www.wildliferescue.ca 42 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 6 / 2016

Visit

to post a Confession

straight stars September 29 to October 5, 2016

V

enus, freshly into Scorpio, and Mars, freshly into Capricorn, are both good for getting a better handle on whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most important. While Mercury in Virgo concentrates on health, healing, work, and fi x-it projects through the end of next week, Venus and Mars put money agendas and relationships to the top of the list. Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new moon in Libra supports the agenda quite well.

Building through Saturday, passionate Venus is in harmony with Neptune. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a tune-in, feel-it, ease-into-it, or give-in-to-it combination. Tapping imagination, inspiration, compassion, and desire, this emotionally responsive, music-to-the-soul pairing is ideal for deepening intimacy, openhearted sharing, and for bettering relationship bonds. Venus/Neptune is also a sweet-talker influence. We can be easily swayed or sold.

Sunday, Mercuryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opposition to Chiron can trigger a dialogue or play it out in some poignant, necessary, corrective, or saving-grace way.

Monday/Tuesday sets the workweek onto a productive track. Use your time wisely and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get the goods. For the most part, folks are ready to talk, listen, spend, accommodate, or negotiate.

Wednesday takes it to the next level, significantly so. The big push is on. Mars in Capricorn is on a major agenda-setting initiative with Jupiter in Libra. Mars aims to get it under better control, to legitimize it, make it official, to get justice served or enforced. Motivation, cause, enterprise,

> BY ROSE MARCUS

ingenuity, and impetuousness are deliver the message, move the money greatly heightened. It is a highly ef- or something more. fective, take-charge, ambitious, and CANCER potentially volatile combination.

June 21â&#x20AC;&#x201C;July 22 Watch for big announcements or Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paint, furniheadlines. A new reality sets into play. ture, or something more, a spruceARIES up does the heart and mind plenty of March 20â&#x20AC;&#x201C;April 20 good. Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new moon is ideal for All talk, no action? Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s launching a fresh home, family, or about to change. Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new moon living-with-yourself chapter. A new supplies a fresh wind where it does you roommate or partnership is also a the best good. This next week or few plus. Monday/Tuesday, your timing, gives you something more substantial creative output, and ability to conto work with and toward. An important nect and to negotiate are optimized. contract, project, or legal or relation- Wednesday runs on its own steam. ship matter hits fruition, completion, LEO fresh start, or next step. Wednesdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s July 22â&#x20AC;&#x201C;August 23 a full-tilt, big-step, or big-news day.

Social, romantic, or on TAURUS your own, a pleasant weekend is April 20â&#x20AC;&#x201C;May 21 yours to enjoy. Monday/Tuesday, Use Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new moon you can make good inroads regardto launch a new health regimen, at- ing projects with those in charge titude, or conversation. A new job or and those you love. Wednesday, put work contract is also favoured. Apply yourself out there: attend an event, yourself and you are likely to see that travel, launch it, try your luck. The progress/results are faster and easier day is eventful or newsworthy. Mars/ than you anticipated. Saturday/Sun- Jupiter can fast-track you, them, or it. day, take it as it comes. Monday/ Spending or expenses can increase.

Tuesday, play it smart. Wednesday, VIRGO take action, take charge, go for it.

GEMINI

May 21â&#x20AC;&#x201C;June 21

Jupiter in Libra is already giving you a great big boost. In a quieter, subtler way, Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new moon in Libra also stokes the good fire. Saturday starts with Venus/ Neptune in the mood. Sunday, you could get carried away or drawn into it. Monday/Tuesday, you have sway.

Wednesdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prime; take action,

August 23â&#x20AC;&#x201C;September 23

Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new moon puts you on go and/or provides a good second wind. Saturday morning, indulge. Let romance, an inspired moment, the spa, or retail therapy sweep you away. Monday/Tuesday, immerse yourself. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get more than the usual out of it. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s push come to shove or simply well timed, Wednesday requires you to take a risk and give it your all.

LIBRA

September 23â&#x20AC;&#x201C;October 23

Last weekend, sun/Jupiter put it over the top. While perhaps not quite in the same way, Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Libra new moon fires it up with Jupiter again. Saturdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sweet Venus/Neptune starts the day with a peaceful, easy feeling. Romance or yoga in the morning, social in the evening hits it just right. Sunday through Tuesday, feel your way along. Wednesday strikes f lint in some major way.

SCORPIO

October 23â&#x20AC;&#x201C;November 22

This next week or so can put you into a great creative and manifesting spurt. Venus in Scorpio gives you the Midas feel, the Midas touch regarding money matters as well as affairs of the heart.

The weekend is great for romance or spiritual replenishment. Sunday through Tuesday are yours for the taking. Wednesdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mars/Jupiter makes it real or official in some substantial way.

SAGITTARIUS

November 22â&#x20AC;&#x201C;December 21

CAPRICORN

AQUARIUS

PISCES

December 21â&#x20AC;&#x201C;January 20

Sunday could produce added insight, or a new angle worth exploring, or fill in a blank. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advantage in reworking or revisiting it. Monday/Tuesday, good progress can be made. Instincts, perceptions, and impressions serve you well. Wednesday puts you/it into drive in some major way. Take control; call the shot; launch it; make it official.

January 20â&#x20AC;&#x201C;February 18

The weekend can provide an opportunity to pick up where you left off and/or to tackle something unfinished. Improvement is your net gain. Friday/Saturday, soak up the good stuff. Sunday through Tuesday is for working smarter, not harder. Wednesday gives you a lot more to go on. Mars/ Jupiter puts it into play and/or makes the potential real.

February 18â&#x20AC;&#x201C;March 20

Saturday/Sunday, your intuitive radar is particularly sharp.

Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll pick up much more than is said or meets the eye. Watch for an opportunity to speak up, gain, revisit, resume, score a deal, or take advantage of a saving-grace moment. Monday/Tuesday continues your good streak. Wednesday, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s official. The time is right; action nets a big payoff. -

While Mercury continues to keep you working at it for another week, Jupiter and Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new moon begin a good-flow money and social cycle. Over this next week or so, you can make better inroads with friends and potential income sources. Easy-rolling stars keep you productive and well occupied through Tuesday. Wed- Book a reading or sign up for Roseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nesday is full-tilt. Hit the road; sur- free monthly newsletter: www.rosemarcus.com/astrolink/. pass go and collect.

, E L I M S , P U E K A W â&#x20AC;&#x153; , F L E S R U O Y L L E T AND â&#x20AC;? !

Y A D Y M S I Y A TOD

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