The Georgia Straight - The Last Tourist - September 30, 2021 by The Georgia Straight

FREE | SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7 / 2021 Volume 55 | Number 2798

RECASTING RENTALS Coliving eyed for SFU

STRAIGHT HISTORY Covers become digital assets

THE LAST TOURIST The Vancouver International Film Festival presents the world premiere of Tyson Sadler’s new film, which aims to revolutionize global travel; plus, VIFF previews and reviews

DALMORE WHISKY

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WINE LIPS

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AERIAL DANCE

VIFF

The Six reveals untold tale of Titanic’s Chinese survivors

CONTENTS

September 30 - October 7 / 2021

COVER

Director Tyson Sadler hopes that his documentary The Last Tourist sparks a global conversation about how people can become more responsible travellers.

by Charlie Smith

By Charlie Smith Cover photo by Tyson Sadler/The Last Tourist

REAL ESTATE

A Vancouver development company wants to introduce a rental concept called coliving that is gaining ground in U.S. cities. By Carlito Pablo

LIQUOR

You don’t have to win Lotto Max to be able to afford the exclusive Dalmore Decades No. 6 Collection, but it would definitely help. By Mike Usinger

The director of the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, James Cameron, is executive producer of The Six, a documentary chronicling outrageous racism against Chinese passengers on the doomed boat.

he sinking of the RMS Titanic in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic is the most famous shipwreck in history. The subject of Hollywood fi lms, countless books, fan pages, and even a virtual-reality simulation project, it’s hard to conceive that more can be learned from this disaster. But The Six does this with aplomb, telling the riveting and untold tale of eight thirdclass Chinese passengers aboard the vessel, six of whom survived. One of them, Fang Lang, clutched to a door at sea as he was pulled to safety—inspiring a similar scene with Rose, played by Kate Winslet, in James Cameron’s famous 1997 film Titanic. But who was Fang Lang? Why did he and seven other Chinese third-class passengers board the Titanic in Southampton on April 10, 1914? And why haven’t the stories of these Chinese passengers ever been told before when so many other Titanic survival stories have been documented in incredible detail? Shanghai-based lead researcher Steven Schwankert, along with a team of his colleagues, take viewers on an astonishing documentary journey to find the answers. There are stops in London, Halifax, New York, Chicago, a village in China’s Guangdong province, and the Ontario cities of Toronto and Cambridge in unravelling this mystery. With Cameron as an executive producer, it’s not surprising that this documentary has exceptionally high production values. Shanghai-based British director Arthur Jones (The Poseidon Project) makes outstanding use of historical photography, animation, and even a re-creation of one of the lifeboats in bringing this story to life. Viewers are taken aboard the Titanic and shown various escape routes. The fi lm’s producer, Luo Tong, ensured

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that the director had all the tools he needed. The Six even includes a vivid demonstration featuring Schwankert submerged in cold water. This is intended to show how very tough Fang Lang had to be to make history as the shipwreck’s final survivor. But it’s the Chinese passengers’ lives, both before and after the voyage, that are the most compelling aspect of the story. This is not only about a supposedly unsinkable ship colliding with a giant iceberg; it’s an inspiring tale of the resilience and strength of Chinese pioneers who faced untold discrimination on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in the first half of the 20th century. With meticulous historical research, Schwankert’s team demonstrates without a doubt that these Chinese passengers were defamed in subsequent accounts of their escape from the ship. Viewers learn about their shameful treatment upon their arrival in New York. The fi lm also includes a respectful and accurate depiction of the so-called paper sons: immigrants who had to change their names in order to get into North America because of draconian and racist legislation. The Six likely won’t generate anywhere near the box-office revenue of Cameron’s blockbuster starring Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. But this documentary is a far more important fi lm. That’s because by telling a fully contextualized story, The Six builds empathy and appreciation for the struggles of Chinese pioneers who built Canada into the country it is today. It’s a powerful statement against anti-Asian hate and offers a beacon to a brighter future.g The Six will have its North American premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs from October 1 to 11 in theatres and online.

SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7 / 2021

e Start Here 15 ARTS 18 CLASSIFIED ADS 8 FOOD 13 I SAW YOU 17 MUSIC 17 SAVAGE LOVE 4 TECHNOLOGY 10 VIFF COEXTINCTION 11 VIFF NIGHT RAIDERS 12 VIFF TIN CAN 13 VIFF HANDLE WITH CARE 14 VIFF REVIEWS 2 VIFF THE SIX

Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly Volume 55 | Number 2798 #300 - 1375 West 6th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6H 0B1 T: 604.730.7000 F: 604.730.7010 E: gs.info@straight.com straight.com

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EDITOR Charlie Smith GENERAL MANAGER (ACTING) Sandra Oswald SECTION EDITORS Mike Usinger (ESports/Liquor/Music) Steve Newton SENIOR EDITOR Martin Dunphy STAFF WRITERS Carlito Pablo (Real Estate) Craig Takeuchi SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT Jeff Li ART DEPARTMENT MANAGER Janet McDonald

e Online TOP 5

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

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Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou has two Vancouver homes worth at least $18.2 million. Burnaby homeowner complains that $1.3-million assessment is “too low”. COVID-19 in B.C.: More than 2,200 new cases and more than 6,000 active cases. Grimes and partner of three years, Elon Musk, are now semi-separated. Georgia Straight website blocked in China after column about Xi Jinping. @GeorgiaStraight

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TECH

NFTs of historic Straight and NOW covers go on sale

by Staff

or decades, readers have come to love many of the covers of the Georgia Straight and its sister publication, NOW magazine in Toronto. In a few instances, some of Canada’s most famous musical artists, writers, and actors have been delighted to autograph individual copies of themselves on the cover of the Straight. Back in 1992, singer-songwriter k. d. lang was one such example. In her message on the cover, she expressed her appreciation for all the years of support that

she had received from the Straight. Also in 1992, the late Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler signed the 25th-anniversary cover of the Straight, which featured him with a cigarette in his mouth. All the members of Blue Rodeo signed a 1989 cover of the Straight; nine years later, it was Sarah McLachlan’s turn—the same year that she launched her landmark Lilith Fair tour showcasing female musicians. Now the company that owns the

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Straight and NOW, Media Central Corporation, is making digital versions of these and five other covers available as one-of-a-kind digital non-fungible tokens, also known as NFTs. Buyers who purchase Georgia Straight or NOW magazine NFTs will have a record and a hashtag code proving their ownership of these unique assets. In the future, the owners can sell these NFTs if they choose to do so. The NFTs of the nine covers are displayed and are open for bids at www. ra r ible.com /georg ia straight and www.rarible. com/nowmagazine. What’s are NFTs, you may ask? They are unique digital assets that are part of the Ethereum blockchain. And they are an extension of the types of investments that people have traditionally made in other collectibles, such as baseball cards, Beanie Babies, and vintage comic books. There’s already a booming market in NFTs. According to DappRadar, sales reached US$2.5 billion in the first half of 2021. One of the largest sales came in March when Mike Winkelmann—the digital artist known as Beeple—sold an NFT through Christie’s for US$69 million. This price was paid for Beeple’s purely digital work of art, Everydays: The First 5000 Days. Media Central board chair Manos Pavlakis pointed out in a company news release that there’s a growing understanding of the investment value of NFTs and how they can become appreciating assets. “As we track the rapid evolution of media, it is evident that crypto as a currency and the blockchain as a secure place to record and store transactions will play a role in the future of media and the purchasing habits of consumers,” Pavlakis said.

The other Straight autographed cover that’s available as an NFT features actor, writer, director, and producer Seth Rogen, who has become one of Vancouver’s most beloved entertainment icons. The NOW covers available as NFTs include pop artist Grimes, who hails from Vancouver, as well as Drake, Arcade Fire, and Daniel Caesar. “The generational popularity of the Georgia Straight and NOW magazine, spanning nearly 100 years…is our first attempt to take advantage of the opportunity that NFTs provide for diversified revenue growth,” Pavlakis said. Media Central’s decision to market NFTs aligns with its overall strategy to develop new digital revenue models while still showcasing the quality of its print and digital products. Another innovation came earlier this year when the company launched its Creatornews.com arts and e n - tertainment aggregation site. It features articles from the Georgia Straight and NOW magazine, as well as pieces from other publications and websites from around the world. Media Central stated that its NFTs are stored in digital wallets, which can be found at MetaMask.io. People bid for the NFTs and the company decides whether to accept them after they’ve been placed. “We have no illusions that future NFT sales, for us, will be akin to winning the lottery,” Media Central president Kirk MacDonald said in the company’s news release. “That said, we do have confidence that we have novel digital assets that will appeal to NFT buyers and allow them to own a slice of history in our communities.” g

REAL ESTATE

New rental concept to get a trial at SFU project by Carlito Pablo

The company hopes to later test the concept of coliving rental in two of those units. “Our project at SFU seems like a great place to try it out, so we’ve got a couple of slightly larger homes there and we’ve tested a couple of layouts,” Duffell said. The SFU development is expected to come after Rize Alliance’s project in L.A.’s Sawtelle Japantown neighbourhood. In addition to L.A., Duffell said that coliving rentals are getting popular in U.S. cities like San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. “If someone’s moving to L.A. and they don’t have any friends or anybody they could roommate with but they want to potentially move into a ready-made community, they might go to a coliving building Benn Duffell, vice president of development with Rize Alliance, describes coliving rental as “learning to live with a group of people...with shared amenities that encourage interaction”.

Vancouver development company wants to introduce a rental concept that is gaining ground in major cities in the U.S. It’s called coliving rental, and Rize Alliance Properties hopes to build the first project of its kind in the Lower Mainland. By the time Rize Alliance gets to do this here, the boutique real-estate developer expects it will have already gained valuable lessons. How and where? In its first foray into the U.S., the company is going to build a coliving rental project near UCLA in Los Angeles. Benn Duffell, vice president of development with Rize Alliance, describes coliving rental as a “modern form of communal living”. “Residents are given a private bedroom in a furnished multibedroom unit with shared living areas,” Duffell told the Straight in a phone interview. Think of it as a swanky version of living with roommates. In Vancouver, some people, often unrelated to each other, rent a single detached home and share the house and expenses. This is known as collective housing. Another form of shared living is cohousing, where each household in a group of neighbours owns a private house and shares common facilities like a separate amenity building and playground for children. Coliving rental takes a key feature of these two housing models, which is community-building, then incorporates it into purpose-built rental developments. “We’re particularly interested in the focus on community in these places, because it’s about learning to live with a group of people and providing that group with shared amenities that encourage interaction and the development of a community,” Duffell explained. In its Los Angeles project, Rize Alliance is building a multilevel development with

and then apply to rent one room in a four-, five-bedrom suite,” Duffell explained. “Or,” he added, “you might sometimes get a group of people who can take a suite themselves; so they come as a group, a collective of roommates who want to live in that kind of building.” The Los Angeles and SFU initiatives form part of a growing portfolio of projects under Rize Alliance’s rental division, called Comma Properties. The Straight asked if renting living in a coliving development is affordable. “Whenever you provide additional housing options for people, it can only be a positive when it comes to improving overall affordability,” Duffell said. g

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18 units. These units have four to five bedrooms each, for a total of 80 bedrooms. “It’s the inverse of what you might see in a typical apartment building, where you have an enclosed corridor with a bunch of front doors off it with the living spaces facing out,” Duffell explained. In this building designed by L.A.’s Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, the living spaces of the multibedroom units face inward into a shared courtyard on each level of the building. “On that courtyard, there’s a number of spaces people can gather on the different levels, and the living areas themselves have these large glass doors that can open up and extend out into the courtyard, where your neighbours are gathering or passing through as they go through their day-today lives,” Duffell said. In addition, there is a rooftop deck with amenities like lounges, outdoor kitchens, and spaces where residents can hang out. Duffell added that one might also see an interior amenity area where residents can share work spaces and get access to Wi-Fi. The Rize Alliance executive said that the L.A. project is currently in its permitting stages. Excavation work is expected to start next spring. Here in Metro Vancouver, the real-estate developer has filed a rezoning application for a mixed rental project at SFU with 168 units.

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LIQUOR

Dalmore No. 6 whisky is worth dreaming about

by Mike Usinger

ssuming your name isn’t Jimmy Pattison, Jeff Bezos, or the newly liberated Elon Musk, the beginning of this week’s Liquor Nerd isn’t for you. That doesn’t mean you can’t dream. And as anyone who has ever wasted five bucks on the tax on the stupid known as a lottery ticket knows, sometimes dreaming can be enough. Who hasn’t purchased a Lotto Max ticket after the jackpot has climbed to $70 million and then started mentally spending the money. A house on the beach in Tofino, complete with floor-to-ceiling glass for storm-watching season. A robin’s egg blue ’57 Chevy, a Vanishing Point-white Dodge Challenger R/T, and Smokey and the Bandit black Trans Am, complete with the gold eagle on the hood. And sashimi-grade seafood for dinner every night of the week, not just when it’s on sale at T & T—hello fresh B.C. Dungeness crab and flash-frozen Nova Scotia sea scallops. And let’s not forget the Dalmore Decades No. 6 Collection, which, conveniently, is about to go up for auction on October 8 in Shanghai, China. The expected price for six bottles, each representing a decade starting in 1951 and ending in 2000? “We’re hoping that it’s going to be the

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Dalmore Decades No. 6 Collection is expected to fetch US$500,000 at auction on October 8.

highest at auction yet on record,” says Dalmore spokesman Louis-Jérôme Doise, interviewed by the Straight at the Fairmont Pacific in Coal Harbour. “The estimate is $500,000 US dollars.” Which is to say a mere fraction of your upcoming Lotto Max win. And money well spent from a collector’s point of view: there is only one Dalmore Decades No. 6 Collection in the world. Should that be a little too rich for even

SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7 / 2021

you, the options for the deservedly fabled Scotch whisky don’t stop there. In the coming months 15 five-bottle collections of Dalmore will be put up for retail sale around the world, including stores in Beverly Hills, the U.K., and France. The No. 5 Collection will likely run somewhere around $340,000 in Canadian currency. Dalmore is also making 25 sets of fourbottles available around the world. Six will be held back at the distillery in Scotland, meaning there are only 19 to get your hands on around the planet. One of those Dalmore No. 4 sets, comprised of whiskies from ’79, ’80, ’95, and 2000, will land in Vancouver. “We were lucky to get one for Canada,” Doise says. “The collector’s world in Vancouver is really quite unique—there’s a higher draw to these high-end collectible whiskies in Vancouver than there is in say Montreal or Toronto.” At the end of October BC Liquor stores will open an online draw for the Dalmore No. 4 collection, where the winner will pony up around $172,000 for the set. The official story of the Dalmore distillery with the famous stag logo goes back not just decades, but in fact centuries, to 1839. And, unofficially, even further back to a time when whisky production was like something from a U.K. version of the wild west. “A major pillar of our DNA is our royal heritage,” Doise notes of the Dalmore story. “Although we were founded in 1839 by a fellow named Alexander Matheson, the claim to fame of our stag logo and our royal heritage dates back to 1367.” The Coles Notes version is that King Alexander the Third of Scotland was out on a hunting party with Colin of Kintail of the Mackenzie Clan. “Out of nowhere came a raging stag,” Doise relates. “Colin killed the stag which was heading right for the King. Out of gratitude the King gave the Mackenzie clan the right to use a 12-pointed stag. The Mackenzies came into the picture at Dalmore in the 1860s, and put their family crest and emblem on the

bottles and into marketing materials before marketing was even a thing.” While most distillers were busy making whisky in their washtubs in the mid-1800s, Dalmore was already serious about the business. “It was around the 1860s that we rolled out our first 12-year-old age statement,” Doise says. “Back in those days, no one was really doing age statements at all. It was still about bootlegging because it was illegal to produce whisky. That really shows that, early on, we were putting quality, time, and effort into the scotches that we were producing.” Over the past 180 years Dalmore has had just five master distilleries, including Richard Paterson who retired after a 50-year run in 2020. (The No. 6, No. 5, and No. 4 bottle collections hitting the market in the coming months are partially inspired by his legacy.) The big question for recent Lotto Max winners new to the collectible whisky game is what they’re getting. Given the price tag, an obvious one is quality. If you’ve ever tasted even a 30-year-old whisky then you’re well aware it comes from a different place than what most of us buy at the liquor store, even for special occasions. “One of the goals and tasks of Richard, and his predecessors, was travelling the world and finding some of the best casks in which to lay these spirits to rest,” Doise relates. “The casks we use accentuate and develop the spirits. When you’re talking whisky production, it’s not ‘You put it in a cask and let it sit for 25 years.’ You need to nurture the whisky. Sometimes you play with whisky by putting it into sherry casks, and then port pipes and maybe even a red wine casks.” Whoever walks away with the coveted Dalmore Decades No. 6 set will contribute to the pursuit of excellence in another way. Fifteen percent of the auction sale will go to the Scottish design museum V&A Dundee which Dalmore has had an ongoing relationship with. “Some brands are partnering with luxury cars,” Doise observes. “In our case we’re with the only design museum in Scotland in Dundee. This is a multi-year collaboration where we’ll be creating and ideating on ‘What is the future of luxury? What is the future of design? And how do those integrate into each other’s worlds?’ It goes far beyond the packaging. It’s about the steps of time, about mastery and vision.” For those who’ve yet to cash in a winning ticket, Dalmore also has options that included the brand’s Sherry Cask Select 12 Year Old ($119 at B.C. Liquor stores), and a 12 Year Old that punches in at $99.99. But remember that there’s also nothing wrong with daring to dream. This week’s Lotto Max jackpot sits at $70 million. And you’ve got a week and a bit before the Dalmore auction in Shanghai. Good luck. g

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FOOD

Unvaxxed activists protest near local restaurants

by Charlie Smith

ow that the federal election is out of the way, hardcore opponents of vaccine passports have set their sights on food and beverage establishments in Metro Vancouver. They’re doing this despite B.C. government officials pointing out that bars and eateries are required under a provincial health order to verify that patrons have been vaccinated. Without this verification through the B.C. Vaccine Card program, customers aren’t permitted on the premises of these businesses. On September 24, the “We Are All Essential” Facebook page featured a video of one of these activists, Samantha H. Flatman, marching with about 50 other vaccine-passport opponents down Robson Street. “What we are going to do is check to see if restaurants are enforcing the passports,” Flatman said in the video. “And if they are, we’re going to break off in twos and sit in front of the restaurants with our signs and really make a public demonstration.” Among the targeted restaurants included a Jugo Juice outlet on West Georgia Street, Cactus Club on Robson Street, Joe Fortes Seafood & Chop House on Thurlow Street,

Antivaccine-passport activists have decided to picket restaurants. Photo by Janet McDonald.

and Earls Restaurant on Hornby Street, where one of the demonstrators was arrested. As police subdued the man, another male protester is heard on video shouting outside the front door. “Welcome to Nazi Germany,” the protester declared. “This is segregation. Great job, brother.”

On September 25, Coast Restaurant on Alberni Street was targeted. In the September 24 video, Flatman claimed that the B.C. Vaccine Card program has never been about protecting people’s health. “It’s been about control,” she insisted. “And this is their coercion tactic to get more people to take the shot because they don’t want to lose their ability to go to restaurants with friends or to go to concerts or sporting events, et cetera. “But this is a slippery slope,” Flatman continued. “This is now a two-tiered society and we cannot allow for that, right?” At that point, she turned her camera behind her. One of the protesters called on the others to march to Yaletown, where there are more restaurants. Flatman then replied that “further down to Denman, there are lots of restaurants”. There are signs that these roving crowds of protesters will be targeting small businesses in other cities. Another of the activists, Ryan Kulbaba, posted a message on social media saying “a local pub here in the Surrey / Clayton Heights area that needs education on our BC HR Code!!!!! They only allow jibjabbers.”

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Kulbaba added that he needed about 20 or 30 people to join him to visit this pub. “The sooner the date the better,” he stated. “We cannot wait any longer.” These tactics ref lect a three-pronged strategy announced by one of Canada’s most famous antivaxxers, Chris Sky, at a rally at Sunset Beach on April 20. At that time, he urged people in the audience to confront and harass frontline retail workers, defy public-health orders, and block anti-COVID measures in schools. One B.C. opponent of vaccine passports, Marco Pietro, has been a vocal critic of Sky, a.k.a. Chris Soccoccia. Over social media, Pietro condemned recent tactics targeting workers as “inciting violence against innocent people”, “reprehensible”, “abhorrent”, “ignorant”, “harmful”, “unproductive”, “destructive”, and “beyond disgusting”. On September 27, B.C.’s provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, announced that there were 2,239 new COVID-19 cases over the previous three-day period. There were an additional 18 COVID-related deaths over the same time span. More than 300 people are in hospitals in B.C. with COVID-19. g

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VIFF

Last Tourist dishes up some inconvenient truths by Charlie Smith

based founder of the Sustainable Travel & Tourism Agenda. She points out that only 14 percent of tourist spending stays in Kenya; the rest flows out of the country. “Tourism can perpetrate poverty by not integrating communities,” Kepher-Gona says. “And you find, unfortunately, for some destinations, the most acclaimed destinations have the highest levels of poverty. Why does it happen? Because they were never integrated into the tourism value chain.” A central message driven home by Kepher-Gona, Poon Tip, and others is the importance of being a conscious traveller. They explain that when travellers do their research, it becomes easier to take steps to ensure that all the revenue doesn’t wind up

in corporate coffers. G Adventures, for example, has steered travellers toward a Peruvian community near Machu Picchu, where guests stay inside residents’ homes rather than shacking up in foreign-owned hotels. After the pandemic struck, Sadler had to pivot and revisit the documentary, noting that many locally owned tourist businesses in the developing world didn’t survive the collapse in visits. “It did delay the fi lm about a year and a half,” Sadler said. “But it was a very necessary component because if we…did not address what the global pandemic has done to the travel industry, then we have an outdated fi lm.” g

Vancouver-born Tyson Sadler’s The Last Tourist includes spectacular images of visitor hot spots, including a drone shot of this crowded beach in Jamaica. Photo by The Last Tourist.

here are more than a few disturbing images in Tyson Sadler’s lavish new documentary about the global tourism industry. Elephants cavort for hordes of tourists in Thailand, but only after being tortured into submission by their trainers. Monkeys are seen riding tricycles on zip lines. Hideously drugged tigers are backdrops for human selfies. At times, The Last Tourist, which will have its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival, is like the PETA chamber of horrors. On other occasions, it demonstrates the crassness of the cruise-ship industry. Corporations are documented doing virtually whatever they can to ensure that as many tourist dollars as possible flow into the pockets of the ship’s owner and remain out of impoverished local communities in the Caribbean and other parts of the world. Then there are beaches overrun with bodies, turning what were once placid pieces of paradise into belching masses of humanity. But it doesn’t have to be this way, say more than a dozen tourism-industry experts and animal-welfare activists who speak on-screen in The Last Tourist. “Travel can be the greatest form of wealth distribution,” G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip says. But as the various speakers in the fi lm emphasize, it will take a major change in travellers’ mindsets to get there. The film’s origins go back to 2018, when G Adventures invited directors to make proposals to do a short movie about the company. Sadler, who was born and raised in Vancouver, had spent the last 20 years travelling to or working or living in more than 70 countries. In a phone interview with the Straight, Sadler explained that he offered an alternative vision to Poon Tip, who is The Last Tourist’s executive producer. “Why don’t we set out to make something much larger than this?” Sadler said he told the company. “Let’s go make An

Oct 01 — Oct 11

Tourism can perpetuate poverty by not integrating communities. – Judy Kepher-Gona

Inconvenient Truth for the travel industry. Not something that’s pitching any brands. Not a piece of advertisement. But just something that’s editorially independent where we can actually be the Food Inc. for the travel industry, An Inconvenient Truth for the travel industry, and we can have a global conversation about the issue.” The idea struck a chord with Poon Tip, who chose Sadler, a veteran international journalist, to direct the fi lm. Over the next two years, Sadler travelled to 15 countries to fi lm images and conduct interviews. He told the Straight that more than 50 countries are represented in the fi lm. “I was able to create a large network of filmmakers from around the world that were able to contribute some footage,” he said. As a result, there’s plenty of spectacular scenery, including masses of flamingoes in Africa and pristine waterfalls at the headwaters of the Amazon. “Mass tourism has led to the destruction of the very things they’ve come to see,” famed primatologist Jane Goodall says in an interview filmed at the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver during the 2018 Vancouver International Film Festival. Among the most articulate speakers in the fi lm is Judy Kepher-Gona, the Kenya-

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VIFF

Orca doc includes salmon, pipeline, river issues

by Martin Dunphy

ilmmakers Gloria Pancrazi and Elena Jean didn’t start out to make a feature-length documentary about B.C.’s southern resident orcas when they first met in 2017. Pancrazi was tracking J-pod’s members off Saturna Island, at the southern boundary of the Salish Sea’s Gulf Islands, and Jean joined the team studying the salmoneating marine mammals that some call “killer whales”. (That label is a misnomer: orcas are not whales but the largest member of the dolphin family and will not harm humans.) Jean, a conservationist and filmmaker, had travelled the world, filming species at risk, and she found the plight of the endangered J-pod to be a compelling story, as did Pancrazi. In Toronto later that year, they decided to make a short film together. “It was the following summer when we were out in the field,” Jean told the Straight by phone recently from a car carrying her, Pancrazi, and other film-crew members to Jackson Wild, a film festival in Wyoming where the finished doc, Coextinction, is getting its world premiere on September 29. “It’s been a four-year total process, but three years making it.”

The makers of Coextinction, a documentary that was to examine threatened B.C. orcas, had to expand their focus once the interconnectedness of environmental concerns became clearer.

Jean added that they are just setting out on the festival circuit, which includes two upcoming live screenings and a weeklong B.C. virtual availability at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF). “It’s the beginning of a long month of travel,” she said, throwing in a mention that their film has been nominated for VIFF’s Rob Stewart Eco Warrior Award, first presented in 2019. She also said that the filmmakers are looking for a distribution deal, something that might come easier after the reviews for their polished, well-shot, and affecting documentary start making the rounds.

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Although the two documentary makers set out to focus Coextinction on the local issues that have brought the southern resident orcas their official endangered status—including the near-collapse of chinook salmon stocks (which make up about 80 percent of their diet), pollution, and noise from commercial marine traffic—they found that the greater conservation picture started dictating the course of their film’s production. “There’s a point of divergence [in Coextinction] where we’re following the pipeline expansion into the Interior of B.C.,”

Jean said. That meant travelling to and filming on the territories of 15 different First Nations in Canada and the U.S. while studying two of the main threats to the salmon that feed the southern residents: dams on salmonbearing river systems and the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline that will bring a huge increase in oil-tanker traffic to J-pod’s Salish Sea. The southern residents—made up of three pods, J,K, and L, with about 73 members that are continually tracked by researchers alert to any changes in their numbers and behaviour—have had few births during the past several years. As one of the orca experts interviewed for the film says, no births for five years will mean that the local population will be “functionally extinct”. And at that point, there had been no births for three years (though a couple of recent births have encouraged researchers). “I’m very worried, but I still have hope,” Pancrazi said. “I believe that there is no other option but hope. “I’m going to work very, very hard,” she added, “and we’re going to need everybody’s help.” g

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VIFF

Night Raiders sheds light on residential schools

by Steve Newton

or her debut feature film, Night Raiders, Danis Goulet set her sights high, tackling the monumentally heavy subject of Canada’s Indian residential school system. The Saskatchewan-born Cree-Métis director set about creating a dystopian sci-fi thriller about Indigenous children being stolen from their families by the state and taught to be something that they aren’t—in this case, child soldiers. It’s a message about the residential schools that Goulet has wanted to convey for a long time. “I started writing this back in 2013,” she says on the line from her home base of Toronto, “and I would say all of my work up until that point in some ways had explored the impact of colonization on Indigenous people. So when I went to make my first feature, I was very much interested in talking about the impact of colonial policy on every aspect of Indigenous life, and, of course, the residential-school policy is such a big one. “But there are others. All the events and elements of [Night Raiders’] dystopian world are based on real policies that were inflicted upon Indigenous people, so, for example, their freedom of movement is restricted, which was a nod to the reserve system. And there’s also an element of disease in the film—which is really chilling now that we’re in COVID times—but it was actually based on smallpox and the effect of that coming into communities. “The residential-school system was a system that was in place for seven generations of Indigenous families,” she adds, “so the impact of that has been absolutely profound, and obviously we are very much still grappling with it today. It’s just so important that we continue to acknowledge the truth of what happened and keep the conversation alive somehow, and that’s why I chose to tell a story about it.” Of course, the horrifying history of Canada’s residential schools was magnified this year by the shocking revelations of unmarked mass graves being discovered at various former school sites. By the time those findings were making headlines, Night Raiders was already finished, but one wonders whether, if the project had begun after the news broke, Goulet would have aimed for a much darker film. “Well, first off, this discovery of unmarked graves has been something that has been known, and has been covered as an aspect of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report. But obviously the recent revelations bring up a lot for many communities, and I think in this year, especially, September 30 is gonna feel like a national day of mourning. “So it’s been a really painful time, and it does situate the film in a different way. It certainly made me think, ‘Oh, my good-

It’s just so important that we continue to acknowledge the truth of what happened… – Danis Goulet

“I like thrillers,” she admits, “but in general I’m more drawn to the heart of the story and what it’s talking about, and then, for me, the genre happens to be the container in which the heart of the story takes place. It gives you fresh entry points into topics and also a kind of artistic freedom in the way that you talk about these things— like residential schools in Night Raiders. I love it and I will continue to work in it, but I’ll just move forward on projects that really grab me in terms of what they’re trying to say.” g

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (right) and Brooklyn Letexier-Hart star in Night Raiders, Danis Goulet’s dystopian sci-fi thriller about Indigenous children taken away from their families by the state.

ness, maybe it could have or it should have been darker,’ and at the same time, real life is so dark. And I also, as a part of the story, wanted to talk about resistance and the power of it, and love, you know, really being at the heart of the story. For me, it was important that when we were telling the story that it wasn’t just about the trauma itself.” Set in 2043, Night Raiders stars Blackfoot and Sámi actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as Niska, a mother trying desperately to rescue her young daughter Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) from the prisonlike military academy that all children under 18 are forced to attend. “I knew about Elle-Máijá,” Goulet explains, “but mostly as a director, because she’s an incredible filmmaker. So when her audition came in, I kind of remembered that she was also an actor, and when we got back to the callback stage, she just made me weep in the audition that she did. I knew right then and there that she was the one.” Goulet was also thrilled that American actor Amanda Plummer got cast in the film as Roberta, Niska’s longtime friend, whose child has also been taken. Although best known for her explosive role as Hunny Bunny in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Goulet claims it was Plummer’s performance in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire that made her think she could fit well into Night Raider’s harsh world. “I mean, she is legendary,” Goulet raves, “especially in independent-film circles. But as an actor, she is just incredibly riveting to watch. She is so committed and she absolutely makes interesting choices in every single take—and different choices, because she so responds to what’s happening in the moment. To work with an actor that is that kind of liberated in their process is really an amazing thing for me as a director.” While Goulet talks about Night Raiders,

she is actually in the editing suite for Ivy, the upcoming Netflix thriller she directed that stars Alice Braga from the USA Network series Queen of the South. So does the fact that both of her latest films fall under the thriller category mean that she’s particularly drawn to the genre?

Night Raiders screens as a special presentation of the Vancouver International Film Festival at the Vancouver Playhouse on October 2 at 9:30 p.m. and at the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts on October 3 at noon.

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VIFF

Cronenberg-style body horror sealed in Tin Can

by Steve Newton

eth A. Smith got into gore early. When he was seven years old, he would put on little skits with his dog where he’d pretend it bit people and then use dollops of ketchup to imitate a wound. He wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies at home, so he stayed over at a friend’s place to view his first fright flick, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which is also known for its generous dispersal of fake blood. You’ll see icky stuff abound in Tin Can, director-cowriter Smith’s new low-budget horror–sci-fi mind messer. It’s the story of a young parasitologist named Fret (Anna Hopkins) who is on the verge of discovering a cure for a disease that’s ravaging

the world when she is kidnapped and put in a watery life-suspension chamber. She can hear the voices of others, similarly trapped, nearby. The purpose of their imprisonment isn’t immediately clear, but much cringe-inducing removal of rubber tubing from orifices ensues. In one flashback, Fret tells her boyfriend: “I’m a slime person”, which is apt, considering how much goo eventually winds up in her vicinity. “Yeah, fluids have been a part of our films over the last few years,” Smith explains on the line from his home just outside Halifax. “You know, I bought some slime mould and I was studying it, and it was very interesting to watch it under a

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The COVID-19 pandemic started happening just as director Seth A. Smith was completing Tin Can. “It made the film a little darker for us,” he says, “because it made it a little more real.”

I started getting fascinated by fungus and slime mould…the secret world that’s in them… – Seth A. Smith

microscope—it’s just unlike a lot of other organisms. I mean, I guess I didn’t intend for the movie to be super slimy, but I started getting fascinated by fungus and slime mould and just kind of the secret world that’s in them at the microscopic level.” Smith—whose previous fright flicks include 2012’s Lowlife and 2017’s The Crescent, both cowritten by Darcy Spidle—comes by his fascination with yucky biological bits honestly. He was heavily influenced by iconic Canadian director David Cronenberg’s “body horror” films, which include Shivers and Rabid and his remake of The Fly. “I grew up on the Cronenberg VHSes,” he says. “It was like one of the only horror movies that were at our local store. That totally dates me, but, yeah. His son, Brandon Cronenberg, actually was a script editor on this. We met at TIFF [Toronto International Film Festival] and I really liked his previous movie, Antiviral, and thought with this that he’d have some interesting ideas, and he did.” The plague for which Fret’s character tries to find a cure—before she gets trapped in the titular metal box—is a fungal infection that affixes itself to human skin and grows into something resembling a milky jellyfish—picture the “facehuggers” from the Alien movies. But even with all the contagion and quarantining seen in Tin Can, Smith claims that it wasn’t inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic at all. “One interesting thing is that we shot the film before COVID,” he says, “and

COVID started happening just as we were completing the movie. It made the film a little darker for us, because it made it a little more real. Through the whole two years of making it, we were kinda in this fantasy world of confinement, and then all of a sudden it was happening in the real world. “As the cowriter, it has been interesting watching the meaning of the film change, for me, now that COVID’s happened. At first it felt like, ‘Okay, this is a film about confinement by people at a distance, hearing their voices, not seeing them, and just the isolation that goes with that.’ But now that I’ve been living with COVID, it has a slightly different meaning to me, where it’s like this ever-present force that’s after you and you have to kind of live with it and, you know, the show must go on.” While COVID, sadly, doesn’t appear to be fading away anytime soon, neither is Smith’s fondness for horror. His next project could be an adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s supernatural 1907 novella The Willows, which H. P. Lovecraft used to rave about. “I gravitate towards more elevated horror,” he says, “horror that is abstract or allows some interpretation or some contemplation. What I’m not really a fan of is just a guy with a chainsaw murdering people for no reason, or just violence for the sake of violence. “So I have a love-hate relationship with horror,” he concludes. “There’s some horror that I just am not interested in at all, and on the other side, I think it’s the genre that’s the most experimental of all the film genres, because you don’t really have as many restrictions and you can see a lot of things that aren’t often done, and you can do a lot of things that haven’t been seen yet.” g The Vancouver International Film Festival presents screenings of Tin Can at the Rio Theatre on October 5 at 9 p.m. and at the Cinematheque on October 8 at 9 p.m.

VIFF

The Notic crew immortalized in Handle With Care by Charlie Smith

“I feel like, unprompted, almost every guy talked about how that time was just super-foundational in their lives and to this day inspires them in terms of their creativity and in terms of their families,” Schaulin-Rioux said. “Just being a part of something when you’re coming of age is an important part of everyone’s life.” Their wizardry on the basketball court two decades ago was captured by SchaulinRioux and Thomas in scores of videotapes that were stored in Schaulin-Rioux’s father’s home near Pemberton. In addition, the codirectors took a bunch of extra footage of Haywood over the years as he maintained a steely determination to play professionally. The racism that Haywood experienced

in Canada’s official basketball circles for simply “playing Black”, as he told the Straight last year, weighed heavily on him. And it comes across very vividly on-screen. Others, such as Wenn and Jonathan Mubanda, became deeply spiritual. But there were difficult times for some of them along the way. Grace’s nickname, Disaster, proved prophetic until he managed to conquer his inner demons and turn his life around. Schaulin-Rioux is impressed by how so many of the Notic players turned out as adults. That includes Haywood, who became a successful entrepreneur teaching streetball to the next generation. “He’s like a superhero,” Schaulin-Rioux said. “He always has been.” g

> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < Joey Haywood, a.k.a. King Handles, explains his deep love of basketball in a documentary about how he and his friends in the Notic crew blew away Vancouverites with their on-court artistry.

t would be natural for moviegoers to think they are about to see a basketball movie when they settle into their seats at Vancouver International Film Festival’s world premiere of Handle With Care: The Legend of the Notic Streetball Crew. After all, the Notic was the most dazzling and imaginative group of basketball players who performed their version of hoops at Kits Beach and other local venues 20 years ago. The Notic was the subject of two mixtapes by Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux and Kirk Thomas, two white boys from Surrey who documented the amazing theatrics of the mostly Black team. Their star, Joey Haywood, a.k.a. King Handles, was himself featured in a short film last year that encapsulated his career, which included playing pro ball in Canada and Europe and touring the Far East. But Handle With Care is so much more than a basketball film. It’s a story about brotherhood and growing up, with all the deep emotions that this can entail. Audiences may want to brace themselves, because what they’ll see on-screen is visceral and real. A true-life, homegrown Vancouver story of discrimination and triumph, trauma and redemption, and joy and forgiveness. Plus a whole lot of streetball. In a phone interview with the Straight from Toronto, where he now lives, codirector Schaulin-Rioux talked about how he had an inkling that one of the members of the Notic, Jermaine Foster, a.k.a. Fresh, was nursing a grudge against him and Thomas, who codirected the film. It was because they had sold the mixtapes around the world of the Notic playing streetball without sharing the revenue with the players, including Foster, who went on to work

SHIPYARD FESTIVAL , TAN COLOUR TOP WITH BLUE JEANS , OPEN HAIRS

I feel like we fixed a part of our childhood, in a way.

– codirector Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux

at Foot Locker before becoming a deejay. It didn’t help that Foster wasn’t invited to a photo shoot many years ago in Slam magazine, a publication that they all worshipped as youths. This tension plays out on-screen in the movie, turning the codirectors into characters in their own film. “It’s a pretty shitty feeling,” Foster tells Schaulin-Rioux at one point in the film. “It’s why I have had a bad feeling for the two of you.” Schaulin-Rioux told the Straight that this long-simmering issue caused him to look back on his experiences filming the Notic with “melancholy feelings” for many years. But the opportunity to create the new feature-length documentary, along with an upcoming Notic 3 mixtape, has gone a long way toward healing old wounds. “Now I feel like we can all just kind of enjoy it,” Schaulin-Rioux said in the interview. “I feel like we fixed a part of our childhood, in a way.” In addition to Foster and Haywood, the film includes interviews with the other Notic players: Rory Grace (“Disaster”), Andrew Liew (“Six Fingaz”), David Mubanda (“David Dazzle”), Jonathan Mubanda (“Johnny Blaze”), Dauphin Ngongo (“Delight”), Jamal Parker (“Where you at”), and Mohammed Wenn (“Goosebumps”).

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 25, 2021 WHERE: Shipyard festival North Vancouver , next to booth in front of stage Hi everyone. I saw a girl yesterday at shipyard festival wearing a tan colour top and blue jeans , little pink coloured flowers embroidered on the jeans ! You was with 2 of your friends and drinking a lager from a 6 pack ! Your friend was wearing blue jeans and blue shirt. You was chatting with your friends in your mother tongue which was not English but cute to hear! I just wanna say you was the most beautiful girl at the festival! I am the guy from the concert standing next to you for an hour ish ! I was wearing a check shirt and blue jeans! I could not gather the courage to talk to you due to my social anxiety but I‚Äôm regretting more now. I wish I could see you second time in my life and ask you for a date! Thanks

RIDING NEXT TO YOU IN TRAFFIC BESIDE THE PNE

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 WHERE: PNE block of Hastings PNE block of Hastings, we caught eyes in traffic, I think both of us were a little taken back by eachother. Your grey Honda civic slowly rolled by at the turn off onto the #1 at Cassiar and you mouthed “You’re hot” as you went by...very cute blonde eyeing up a biker :)

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 11, 2021 WHERE: Rad Power Bikes Hey - I was admiring your lovely e-bike & getting advice on my faulty battery; you were waiting in line behind me. Fancy a coffee?

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 23, 2021 WHERE: Amsterdam cafe Came in to your with a friend yesterday evening for the first time after the changed.. you were our super cute server.. if the connection was mutual coffee?

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 21, 2021 WHERE: Abbot st, outside crosstown liquor store Hey. You were exiting Crosstown liquor store on Abbot street yesterday evening, around 6 or 7pm. Presumably packing a 6 pack into your bike side saddle. You‚Äôre female, late 20‚Äôs, had on shorts (bike shorts I think), you have a few cool leg tattoos, no helmet so as to accentuate your hair that blows in the wind like William Wallace on the battlefield. Pretty sweet road bike. I was wearing blue touque, headphones overtop, black jeans, blue denim jacket, really big backpack, no helmet, was locking my bike up just as you were leaving. We exchanged like three glances. You definitely seem like my kind of human, I knew I should‚Äôve said hi as soon as you biked away but it was all too fast. So this is me asking: hey, what‚Äôs your name?

CUTE BLONDE FLAGGER, RICHMOND.

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 18, 2021 WHERE: Richmond, near Canada Line bridge You were riding your bike, I assume to visit a friend of yours in my apartment building. I saw you at the front door and commented “nice bike”, and you said “thanks, I just got it today actually!”. We ended up riding in the elevator together and had a very brief chat. Anyway, it’s a long shot, but if you see this, want to get coffee sometime? Maybe ride our bikes somewhere?

HORSESHOE BAY B.C. FERRY WORKER MISSED OPPORTUNITY

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 12, 2021 WHERE: Horseshoe Bay, West Vancouver I was walking out of the long-term parking lot in Horseshoe Bay when you surprised me when you said “Hi” to me. Asked me how I was and wished me a good shift at work. I was very taken aback by this because you seemed so genuine and kind to a total stranger. I think you could see on my face I was stressed. Thank you for making my day. I regret not stopping to talk to you longer. My wish is that you see this & we can go for coffee! Maybe Horseshoe Bay again?

FIAT PARKING AT WHOLE FOODS - ROBSON

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 20, 2021 WHERE: Slow swampy side street in Richmond / Queensbourough

You were our cute blonde flagger, Natasha. I was the charming (I hope) guy on the crew you thought (or hoped) was the foreman. Yes I’m married, but bored - long shot, maybe you’re interested in a casual physical thing?

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: SEPTEMBER 8, 2021 WHERE: West End - Whole Foods Parking Enjoyed your smile as you pulled into the parking lot, as I was walking up Robson. You , a pretty blonde driving a little sports car. Me, the guy with the hat and grocery bag. Coffee?

Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _ SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7 / 2021

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VIFF

Fest’s Asian films deliver riveting performances

his year’s Vancouver International Film Festival runs online and in theatres from October 1 to 11. In last week’s Georgia Straight print edition, we highlighted five Canadian shorts at the festival. This week, you can read reviews of four feature-length films from Asia. For screening information, tickets, and more, visit viff.org/.

BARBARIAN INVASION (MALAYSIA/ HONG KONG/PHILIPPINES) The primal appeal of Barbarian Invasion lies in its steadfast focus on a question that humans ask over and over again: Who am I? It’s a nod to the unending search for a true self in a world where one lives multiple personas as a matter of necessity. The full-length feature by Malaysian filmmaker Chui Mui Tan also acclaims humans’ boundless capacity to adapt, evolve, and find happiness. In one scene, a monk asks Lee Yoon Moon, a washed-up and retired actor played by Tan in the movie she also wrote and directed, “Do you know where you’re going?” It speaks to the numerous journeys everyone takes in their lifetime, no matter where these eventually lead. Many of the memorable scenes in Barbarian Invasion have Moon and Roger Woo (Pete Teo) negotiating through the latter’s plan to cast her in a comeback vehicle as the lead in a Southeast Asian version of Matt Damon’s Bourne Identity. One exchange reveals perhaps one of the things that matter the most, in the end. “Do you still believe in love?” Moon asks. Woo replies, “I prefer friendship.” by Carlito Pablo

BONE MARROW (IRAN) Devoted parents Bahar (Parinaz Izadyar) and Hossein (Babak Hamidian) are willing to do anything to save the life of their child Payam, who is dying of leukemia. When a possible cure arises— it’s a long-shot option involving Bahar’s exhusband, who is facing a death sentence in jail—it’s not their unflinching commitment to their child that’s in question but a matter of how fast they can overcome the gauntlet of obstacles that arise in their path, how they can address the numerous secrets that rise to the surface, and, more importantly, how much they can withstand the consequences of the weighty sacrifices they are about to make. With restraint in sentimentality, this drama effectively conveys what the parents must endure, both in story and by the everyperson performances of Izadyar and Hamidian. Like many contemporary Iranian films, screenwriter Ali Zarnegar and director Hamid Reza Ghorbani take a seemingly simple story concept and progressively add evolving layers that transform the proceedings into an engrossing, complex situation, with everdeepening stakes that refuse to let up. by Craig Takeuchi

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

Lee Yoon Moon (Chui Mui Tan) looks after her son (Nik Hadiff Dani) in Barbarian Invasion. Satoko (Yū Aoi) and Yusaku Fukuhara (Issey Takahashi) struggle to cope with a terrible secret, not to mention issues of trust within their marriage, in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s thriller Wife of a Spy.

Parinaz Izadyar plays a determined mom of an ill child in Hamid Reza Ghorbani’s Bone Marrow.

Jitendra Joshi delivers a stellar performance as an Indian landlord under stress in Godavari.

GODAVARI (INDIA) For those used to the jumped-up pace and palette of bright colours of most Bollywood movies, it takes a while getting used to the only Indian film at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival. Director Nikhil Mahajan’s Marathi-language Godavari is a slowermoving character study centred around a grumpy landlord’s relationship to the river of the same name. It all takes place in the crowded city of Nashik, which is about 140 kilometres from Mumbai. The film opens with the stressed-out, chain-smoking Nishikant (Jitendra Joshi) zipping around on a moped, collecting rent from various tenants. The man seems irritated with everyone—his wife, his mother, and his senile grandfather, who repeatedly asks if the water in the river has touched Lord Hanuman’s ankles. When Nishikant’s daughter says she’s bored at home, Nishikant replies, “Me too”. Things unfold slowly, amid the pulsating beats of Av Prafullachandra’s soaring music, which drives home the misery of Nishikant’s existence. The gloomy mood is reinforced by the darkness of the apartment where Nishikant has fled to avoid his family. But two things happen to create new pressures on Nishikant. First there’s an offer

from a developer to purchase the family’s landholdings, which would require evicting his tenants. Then there’s a disturbing medical diagnosis. This sets Nishikant on a spiritual journey in which the mighty Godavari River occupies centre stage. The acting in Godavari is first-rate, most notably in Joshi’s fiery-eyed portrayal of the troubled Nishikant, but also in Priyadarshan Jadhav’s pensive and plaintive performance as his friend Kaasav. The mother, played by Neena Kulkarni, also shines with her subtle and authentic acting. This is Marathi arthouse cinema at its best. But for expat Indians used to the razzledazzle of a Salman Khan movie, Godavari might strike them as a tad slow. To them, I say be patient. Stick with it. With fine Indian cooking, things turn out better when spices are given time to marinate. The same is true of the central character in Godavari: Nishikant just needs some time to evolve.

SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7 / 2021

by Charlie Smith

WIFE OF A SPY (JAPAN) For decades, Japanese human-rights advocates have been trying to force the national establishment to fully acknowledge the magnitude of the country’s war crimes

in the Second World War. Historians have documented Japan’s use of biological weapons, sexual slavery, and torture in its various wars of aggression against other Asian countries. But the Second World War soldiers who perpetrated these atrocities are still lionized as heroes by some, including former prime minister Shinzo Abe. Unlike the war in the European theatre, which began in 1939, the Second World War in Asia was kicked off in 1931 with Japan’s annexation of Manchuria, followed by an attack on China in 1937. By 1940, relations had soured between Britain and Japan, which signed the Tripartite Pact that year with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. This is when Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s tension-packed film, Wife of a Spy, begins with the arrest of a British businessman in Kobe. This thriller offers up several surprising plot turns revolving around how a film director, Yusaku Fukuhara (Issey Takahashi), and his wife, Satoko (Yū Aoi), respond to creeping fascism and their country’s horrific conduct abroad. While everything seems so civilized on the surface, it’s clear that something’s not quite right when a woman’s body shows up in the water close to the shoreline. Aoi is an expressive actor, able to tap into deep emotions, whereas Takahashi’s character remains cool and composed, even while under extreme pressure. The contrast between the two lead characters raises questions about their long-term compatibility just as Japanese society is on the verge of falling apart. In Kurosawa’s world, police travel in packs, cosmopolitans like Fukuhara worry about being followed, and the lighting and cinematography come together to add another sinister element. For history buffs, Wife of a Spy offers a captivating glimpse into Japan in the period just before its pilots rained bombs on Pearl Harbor. It’s a well-packaged film that also helps peel back the truth about war crimes that still haven’t received due attention in Japan. by Charlie Smith

ARTS

Aeriosa’s mothlike dancers will fly in Vancouver by Charlie Smith

Home/Domicile, a new show by Aeriosa Dance Society, will explore themes of displacement through the use of camouflage. Photo by Tim Matheson.

or two decades, Aeriosa Dance Society has worked exceptionally hard to stand out as human figures and claim landscape in the city skyline. According to the artistic director, Julia Taffe, the first time she had a chance to direct and choreograph a group of dancers in an aerial-dance performance on a building came 20 years ago at the grand opening of the Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver. They were able to do this thanks to the development of autolocking devices for mountain climbers, which enabled Aeriosa dancers to be suspended hands-free. Taffe performed with them in the sky. “I had to be on the wall,” Taffe explained to the Straight by phone. “I had to recruit the dancers and I had to train them.” When the Scotiabank Dance Centre hosts its 20th-anniversary celebration on October 2, Aeriosa will return with a new performance. This time, though, the focus will not be on human figures; rather, this show will address the loss of biodiversity, with four aerial dancers appearing as moths. Home/Domicile is choreographed by Taffe in collaboration with visual artists Sarah E. Fuller and Stuart Ward. Fuller designed the “moth cloaks” that will be worn by the dancers as they perform on the north wall of the Scotiabank Dance Centre in the early evening. Taffe isn’t dancing this time; she’ll be on the ground while Winnipeg musician Keri Latimer provides the accompanying sound. “We’re working with the concept of camouflage appearing and disappearing,” Taffe said. “Also, we’re exploring themes of displacement—displacement of species from the urban environment, displacement of people from parts of the city.” The moth cloaks will enable the dancers to appear in camouflage and blend into

the walls. Taffe said Ward helped turn the vacant lot beside the Dance Centre into Aeriosa’s stage. “Over the last two weeks, we’ve really intensified production,” she noted. “And so we’re building that design right now, which involves lighting materials, physical materials, suspending some of these objects in the air, and also on the ground to make a temporary habitat for these moths.” Taffe was inspired by the endangered sand-verbena moth, which is in decline on Vancouver Island, where Taffe makes her home. A resident of Ucluelet, she pointed out that this insect is named after the yellow sand-verbena flower, which is essential for it to survive. She said that’s because sandverbena moths drink its nectar, lay their eggs on its leaves and flowers, and when the eggs hatch, the caterpillars feed exclusively on those leaves as they move through their life cycles. However, she added, human encroachment on Vancouver Island sand dunes has disturbed the moth’s natural habitat. “We have iconic species that are threatened, like orcas,” Taffe said. “But it’s also important to honour these other species that we don’t even know about that are at risk and are disappearing.” It’s not just sand-verbena moths that will be featured in Home/Domicile. Taffe said that Fuller has also created a moth cloak representing one of the many species of underwing moths. When some of these moths open their wings, they display bright colours that appear like large eyes. “Apparently, these are threatening to predators,” Taffe said. “That helps with their survival.” Fuller had already created one of these underwing moth cloaks for a video installation. So when she met with Taffe, they dis-

cussed including it along with a representation of a moth species native to where Taffe lives as part of an aerial dance show. There are two iterations. One is naturebased and performed on the ground, called Habitats in Camouflage.which was presented

as a workshop in Tofino in September. The other is Home/Domicile, which will premiere as an aerial show at the 20th-anniversary of the Scotiabank Dance Centre. At the end of her interview with the Straight, Taffe offered lavish praise for staff at the Dance Centre for making the former bank building a hub for inclusivity. The open house is a prime example. It will feature a wide range of performances, including contemporary dance by Company 605, flamenco dance with Kasandra “La China” of Al Mozaico Flamenco Dance Academy, a sneak preview of a work in progress by Dumb Instrument Dance, excerpts of Bharatanatyam dance in a new digital work by Sujit Vaidya, Afrobeats with AKS Bison, and tap-dancing instruction from Danny Nielsen and Shay Kuebler. “We’re so lucky—and I personally am very lucky—that they have supported me right from the beginning, even when nobody had any idea what vertical dance was and how it could be done,” Taffe said. g The Scotiabank Dance Centre’s 20th-anniversary open-house celebration takes place on October 2 with a daylong series of free events. To register, visit The DanceCentre.ca.

MANY ISLANDS III

DAVID A. HAUGHTON

SHIPS, MOUNTAINS & THE SEA V VISUAL SPACE GALLERY, 3352 DUNBAR ST, VANCOUVER, BC SEPTEMBER 23–OCTOBER 6, 2021 – NOON TO 5:00 DAILY EXTENDED HOURS TUESDAYS AND FRIDAYS UNTIL 8:00 VIEW PAINTINGS AT WWW.HAUGHTON-ART.CA SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7 / 2021

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SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7 / 2021

MUSIC / SAVAGE LOVE

“Eyes” has Wine Lips going full-bore in the trash

by Mike Usinger

here’s no shame in admitting you’ve fallen into something of a less-than-exiting routine over the past year and a half. Bingewatching everything from The Crown to The Queen’s Gambit to the fascinatingly execrable Richie Rich on Netflix. Ploughing through, each night, the collected works of Franz Kafka, John Steinbeck, and Cormac McCarthy for no other reason than they all make grinding misery an art form—something that’s been more-thanrelatable to for the last 16 months. And let’s not forget eating cold chili from a can in your ginch at one in the morning, usually half-cut while watching YouTube videos of Amyl and the Sniffers, Algiers, and Wolf Alice. Sometimes throwing things in the microwave simply seems like too much effort. This is your new reality, and it’s going to take something extra-special to get you excited about living again. Enter Wine Lips, who might be the best reason to be jealous of everything-Toronto since Metz, Fucked Up, and PUP. Before the end of times, the quartet was already on a mission to burn itself into the hearts of retro-rawk fans, ripping up the clubs of Eastern Canada, and ambitiously touring Hong Kong and China. An eponymous 2017 debut sounded like the clubs of circa-2000 Detroit channelling Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilations, with 2019’s Stressor upping the street-walkingcheetah swagger.

And then, everything changed in the world.

The members of Wine Lips learned the hard way that you don’t get your promo shots done at Sears.

And then everything changed in the world. Which, from the looks of the new video for the new single “Eyes”, didn’t slow down Wine Lips one fucking iota. The song—off the upcoming full-length Mushroom Death Sex Bummer Party—is double-

time, turbo-snotty garage rock slimed in gloriously vintage reverb. And, if possible, the video is even greater—a testimony to the power of setting up in a room, turning on the cameras, and then having at ’er. Think the spirit of the Clash’s “Tommy

Gun”. Or the Pretenders’ “Tattooed Love Boys”. Or D.O.A.’s “World War 3”. Except with “Eyes” the action seems to take place in the bottom of an old-fashioned garbage bag dumped in a grimy alley, which somehow seems appropriate. Once the trash receptacle is opened it’s a two-minute roar where shirts are optional (at least for singer Cam Hilborn), Radio Shack manager moustaches are the height of facial-hair fashion, and the two main colour schemes are hipster-belt white and Glad garbage-bag black. Powering everything is a Hilborn performance that suggests coffee, coffee, and espresso coffee are his three favourite things on the planet, and the sight of Aurora Evans playing tireless locomotive on the drums. It’s enough to make you excited about the idea of putting down that can of cold chili if, and when, Wine Lips ends up playing Vancouver. And, you know, maybe putting on pants and leaving the house. Don’t worry, you can bring The Road with you. g

Long-standing pee fetish is abuse, not a kink by Dan Savage

b I’M WORRIED THIS may be above your pay grade. LOL. My boyfriend and I have been together for nearly five years. When we first got together, he shared a fetish with me, which has honestly gotten out of hand. I’m not close-minded and I genuinely love pleasing people, and my approach to sex has always been, “Whatever turns you on, turns me on!” But his fetish has crossed the line from kink to obsession. Not to mention the onus of his “fetish” falls entirely on me. So, the big reveal: my boyfriend is a urophiliac. But not just your garden-variety one. If he doesn’t get to watch me pee every single time, he gets angry. The first two years of our relationship were terrifying because if I peed while he was at work, he would throw a fit of epic proportions. So I would hold it in. This caused UTIs and other problems. But he still insists that I must hold it in for as long as possible so I can give him “a strong stream” every time. I also have to let him watch me poop, which is embarrassing as hell, because I pee when I poop. If I need to pee in the middle of the night, I have to wake him up—which makes him mad—so instead of waking him up, I hold it in all night. It has gotten to the point where his obsession has become mine. But it’s not sexy for me. After I had our child, I literally wasn’t allowed to have 30 seconds alone in the bathroom after shoving a human out of my vagina in full view of 10 adults I did not know.

Even then—in the hospital—he had to watch me pee. I can’t use the bathroom in public unless I videotape it for him. I’m in hell. I haven’t had a private piss nobody has watched or made me feel guilty about for five years. I feel like my humanity is being leached away. I’ve said all these things to him, and He. Does. Not. Care. This has taken over my entire life. Sorry if it’s weird. I’ve read your columns for years, and you’re the only person I can ask about this. LOL. I don’t want to break up my family over this. Help me! - Unrelenting Requirements Inducing Nervous Exhaustion

You don’t wanna break up your family over this, URINE, but

I sure do. To be perfectly frank, I’d like to break up your boyfriend’s skull over this—figuratively speaking. I’m not advocating violence. It’s just that after reading your letter, I wanna figuratively slap your boyfriend upside the head so hard his figurative skull breaks into a thousand figurative pieces. And while I don’t think your question is above my pay grade—what you need to do seems obvious to me and will, no doubt, be obvious to everyone who reads your letter—I nevertheless called in a couple of experts. Dr. Ian Fields is a urogynecologist who specializes in pelvic-floor disorders and bladder conditions. I shared your letter with him to get his expert opinion on the risks you’re

taking with your physical health, URINE, but before Fields would address the health risks you’ve being bullied into running, he wanted to address the elephant in the bathroom and the bedroom and the delivery room. “Let’s call this behaviour what it is: abuse,” said Fields. “This woman needs to get out of this controlling and abusive relationship.” I am in complete agreement with Fields, URINE: you’re not indulging a kinky boyfriend; you’re being terrorized (your own words) by an abusive boyfriend. Leave him. “In terms of health risks, there are many,” Fields continued. “Keeping large amounts of urine in your bladder is a set up for recurrent urinary tract infections. These infections can track upwards to the kidneys in some cases and cause an infection in the kidney called pyelonephritis. Recurrent bouts of pyelonephritis can lead to permanent kidney damage. And you don’t want to lose your kidneys— once they lose function, it doesn’t return.” Destroying your kidneys isn’t the only health risk you’re running, URINE. “Keeping large amounts of urine in the bladder can lead to a bladder stretch injury and may lead to long-standing urinary retention—or the inability to empty the bladder—

SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7 / 2021

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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which may or may not recover over time,” said Fields. “The bladder is a pretty hearty muscle and can recover from many insults, but repeated damages like this could do irreparable harm. In addition, these insults could lead to overactive bladder and, with time, to urgency urinary incontinence, that is, leakage that you cannot control when you get the urge to go to the bathroom.” So, URINE, the health risks you’re running to avoid your boyfriend’s anger cannot be described as insignificant. Now let’s talk about the emotional and psychological damage your boyfriend has already inflicted on you. “If this woman came to me for individual therapy, I would be compelled to point out to her that her boyfriend is physically and emotionally abusing her,” said therapist Marissa Myers, LCP. “Getting ‘uncomfortably angry’ and ‘throwing a fit of epic proportions’ are examples of manipulative behaviours abusers use to make sure their victims know who’s in charge. The disregard this man has for her physical health and safety raises the bar to physical abuse, in my opinion.” Myers frequently works with individuals and couples to help them resolve conflicts around sex and intimacy, URINE, but she would not work with you—alone or as a couple—with the goal of saving this relationship. “Working with this reader on how to compromise or communicate better regarding this issue would amount to facilitating the continuation of an abusive relationship,” said Myers. “My advice to her is to begin gathering resources, telling safe people, and planning a safe exit. Once she’s safely out of the relationship, therapy can help her avoid getting into another abusive relationship.” Which is not to say this is your fault, URINE. Your boyfriend manipulated you with his anger and leveraged your own desire to be a good partner against you. And while it’s fine to fantasize about watching your partner pee every time she pees, it’s unrealistic and unfair and unworkable to demand that your partner allow you to watch them every single time they take a piss. There’s nothing LOL about any of this, URINE, and I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear. Yours is one of those letters that makes me wish I had a time machine so I could take you back to the start of this relationship— five years and one kid ago, back when your boyfriend first began terrorizing you—and implore you to leave him before things escalated to this point. And while I’m sure you love your kid and don’t regret having that baby, URINE, you can’t let your desire to keep your child’s home intact prevent you from escaping the hell your boyfriend has made of your life. Take Myers’s advice: make a plan, lean on

Holding one’s pee for a manipulative spouse can lead to potentially serious health complications. Photo by CR Onsuda/Getty.

supportive friends, take your kid, and get away from this man before your kidneys explode. b I’M A HAPPILY married (mostly) lesbian woman. I am somewhat attracted to men, but only in the context of a threesome with my wife. While I don’t have any desire to sleep with men on my own, I do like giving handjobs to men along with the occasional blowjob. My wife knows about this and is fine with it. We can’t really do much by way of threesomes right now for various reasons, so I’m considering finding a guy (if this pandemic ever ends) to indulge me. My wife is a former sex worker, and it bothers her that I do this for men—jerk them off, blow them—without any form of reciprocity. She said it’s a service that I shouldn’t be giving away for nothing. I see her point, but I’m not interested in money. An exchange of services sounds interesting, though! Like, I will jerk you off if you clean my bathroom or mow my lawn. I have two questions. First, what do you think about my wife’s view on the subject? Second, what’s the best way to find/approach someone who would be into an arrangement like this? - The System Called Reciprocity

enjoy giving men blowjobs or handjobs, TSCR, so she gets nothing out of blowing or handing some guy. That’s why her male clients had to pay her for her services. You, on the other hand, enjoy giving blowjobs and handjobs, TSCR, and that enjoyment is what you get out of them. Your wife sounds like one of those straight guys who doesn’t understand why his gay best friend loves giving head even if the guy he’s blowing doesn’t return the favour and/or clean the shower. As to finding someone who might be interested in being blown or jacked off by a lesbian in exchange for some light housework/yardwork, TSCR, there’s this thing called the Internet. Maybe you heard Katie Couric talking about it on the Today show in 1994? Well, I think the Internet is going to catch on and there are these things on the Internet called “hookup apps” where you can post explicit personal ads. But be careful: if you post a personal ad that reads, “Married lesbian seeks houseboy, will milk for chores,” your phone will “blow up”. I think that’s meant figuratively, TSCR, but the Internet is so new I can’t promise your phone won’t literally blow up. g Your wife doesn’t

Email: mail@savagelove.net. Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage! Check out my new website at www.savage.love!

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EMPLOYMENT Personals Airlux Heating and Air Conditioning Ltd is seeking Heating and Cooling Mechanics Greater Vancouver, BC. F/T, Perm, Wage: $32.00 per hour. Main duties: Read specifications for installation of air conditioners (a/c) and Mini-Split ductless systems; Measure and layout ductwork, piping, and wiring; Assemble and mount a/c equipment, join pipes; Recharge and start up a/c system; Test joints and connections for leaks; Perform maintenance; Inspect ventilation and a/c systems, repair and replace parts. Requirements: High school Completion of apprenticeship program or 2-3 years of work exp. Good English Company’s business address: 790 Baycrest Dr, North Vancouver, BC V7G 1N8 Please apply by e-mail: hr.airlux@gmail.com

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is Hiring Painters. Greater Vancouver, BC Wage - $ 25.00 /hour. Perm, FT. Requirements: good English, exp. 2-3 years, high school. Main duties: Read work order or receive instructions from supervisor; Determine the amount of painting materials required for a project; Prepare surfaces to be painted: repair cracks and holes, clean surfaces; Select premixed paints or mix and thin paint; Apply paint, wallpaper or other materials to exterior and interior surfaces; Assemble and erect scaffolding and swing stages. Company’s business address: 14-4160 Bond St., Burnaby BC V5H 1G2 Please apply by e-mail: aqua.painting.co@gmail.com

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