VIFF -- Review: Our Mr. Matsura

Matsura (right) with a local in Okanogan County

Frank (Sakae) Matsura, was the son of a Samurai in Hirado, Japan, but by the time he was growing up, feudalism was in decline. In 1901 he left this deteriorating aristocratic lifestyle and got on a ship to Washington State.

Our Mr. Matsura opens with present-day locals pointing out their relatives in the photographs they have that were taken by the Japanese photographer.

But who was he? The documentary tries to piece him together in the film.

Matsura wasn't shy in front of the camera

Matsura first arrived in Seattle, but feeling adventurous, he went east to Okanogan County, a small town that had miners, ranchers, Indigenous people, and immigrants. Matsura was fluent in English, Christian (he converted in Japan), and learned photography.

Interestingly he was the only Japanese in Okanogan County, and because he spoke good English and was well-dressed, the locals took to him quickly. He took lots of photographs of them, some in their regular clothes, others dressed up, or of the scenery of the area, which are wonderful evidence of what the place was like in the early 20th century.

There are also many photographs Matsura took of himself and with others; in some of them he pokes fun of himself, showing his easy going humour. He was far from reserved and shy.

But it was sad to discover that he died of tuberculosis at the age of 39, though his funeral had a massive turnout of mourners.

Director Beth Harrington who also wrote and produced the documentary creates an interesting portrait of Matsura, gathering as much information as she could about him from Japan and Okanogan County. 

He also took pictures of Indigenous people

His Japanese relatives send postcards and letters to him, but we don't know what he replied back to them. They always asked how he was, and if he was coming back home. But perhaps he was having too much fun, or couldn't see himself being back in Japan.

"A Japanese immigrant alone in a region hundreds of miles from the nearest compatriot, forming deep connections with people of different backgrounds," Harrington says.

"One can't help but admire the combination of emotional intelligence, empathy, humour, and inner resilience it took to navigate the complex landscape of the Pacific Northwest during a time of great change."

She also says his photographs do not show stereotypes, but individual personalities; Matsura respected people for who they were.

"In Matsura's photographs, we encounter his humanity, the humanity of others depicted who may not be 'like' us, and we also feel our own humanity rise in a kind of sympathetic vibration," Harrington says. "That depth, that joy, that connection form a bridge."

Our Mr. Matsura

Directed by Beth Harrington

97 minutes

VIFF -- Review: Nous, L'orchestre De Paris

The audience seeing musicians up close in the orchestra

Nous, L'orchestre De Paris (2026)

When the audience sits down to listen to an orchestra, they see lots of musicians in black on the stage, but as a collective they produce amazing music under the guidance of the conductor; people may not know or appreciate the individual players and their motivations for performing in an orchestra.

The documentary, Nous, L'orchestre De Paris by director Philippe Beziat gives viewers an idea of what it's like, sitting from their point of view on the stage, and a bit of their backstory of how they became one of the 120 members of the Orchestre de Paris.

Makela leads the orchestra in a rehearsal

The film opens with the orchestra's young 30-year-old Finnish music director Klaus Makela, but he isn't interviewed; instead some of the players are taken aside and asked to listen to a rehearsal and to explain what they hear.

They listen intently, and as musicians they can hear details many of us don't hear, or they praise their fellow colleagues. One remarks, "Eighteen violinists make the same gesture in a fraction of a second. That really impresses me."

However, early in the documentary, the audience doesn't hear their voices, and instead their answers or comments are transcribed on screen, which was kind of frustrating; only later on we can hear their own voices.

But then there are other comments that are just written in English on the screen, like "being in an orchestra is like being in a forced marriage" -- it wouldn't be fair to attribute that to any particular person because they were truthful observations that he or she said.

Some consider the 30-year-old a prodigy

We meet a violinist from Serbia who cycles to work, a double bassist who came from a punk rock background and became entranced with classical music, a percussionist at the drums, and a flautist who leaves the orchestra after 40 years there.

One scene early on shows guest conductor Elim Chan rehearsing and then performing with the orchestra. She describes that it can be tough parachuting in to work with the orchestra, but in the end we see it's a job and everyone gets on with it. It was cool to see Hong Kong-born Chan in the film, and she is now the music director at the San Francisco Symphony.

In a way the musicians are part of a family, spending a lot of time together. Some break off into small groups to do chamber music, or even jazz. But the most interesting part is the musicians explaining where they sit, who sits next to them, and how not only do we see their point of view, but also hear it too, instead of from the audience's side.

We also get to see the modern concert hall up close, the Philharmonie de Paris, in the outskirts of Paris. Director Beziat is no stranger to making films about classical music and opera. Perhaps Nous, L'orchestre De Paris satisfies his own curiosity of what it's like to be part of a powerful musical collective and gives the audience a greater appreciation for these musicians.

Nous, L'orchestre De Paris

Directed by Philippe Beziat

90 minutes

VIFF -- Review: School for Defectors

An intimate look at North Korean students in the south

School for Defectors (2026)

North Koreans who want to escape to the south face enormous challenges, not only the physical one of traveling over 3,000 miles through China, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, but also the emotional trauma of leaving their families behind, or the possibility of being killed during their journey, and what will happen to their children if they die? 

There are no statistics on how many North Koreans attempt to escape, but they are desperate for a better life.

If they make it to the south, the next challenge is settling in, as their accent is different, let alone their appearance being malnourished and wearing dowdy clothes, and how will their children adapt and catch up academically?

The documentary focused on this school

In South Korea there are 10 special schools for these North Korean children to study and help them not only integrate into society, but also learn about democracy, freedom and become good people.

School for Defectors focuses on one senior high school which is different from the other nine in that it only accepts 20 students and they all must board; the principal says it helps the children integrate faster if they are not with their parents. 

The audience basically observe a whole academic school year, from the intake of students through interviews with the principal and teachers, to attending classes, applying for university, and graduating. There is also a peek into dorm life, watching them clean their rooms for inspection, and eating meals in the cafeteria.

The principal and teachers are so supportive of the students, praising and encouraging them, as they know their escaping to the south was no easy feat, and that they may feel inferior or insecure, but the students in turn are also eager to learn, hardworking and some of them eventually come out of their shells to be talkative, boisterous, and even exceptional dancers.

The students are hardworking a funny

One segment shows interviews with some of the parents who described their plight to the south, with one poignant scene of a father who had thought of what to do if he and his wife and daughter were caught by North Korean soldiers, while another family had to leave their older son and elderly grandmother behind.

Nevertheless, the optimistic energy from the students, teachers and principal are what uplifts School for Defectors, which resulted in lots of clapping in the theatre when the documentary ended.

Director Jeremy Workman attended the screening with producer and Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim.

It turns out I had seen Workman's previous documentary, Secret Mall Apartment two years ago and thought it was a crazy but intriguing story.

He explained that when he was in South Korea screening another film he had made, Workman was asked to show it at that school, and that's how he met the principal, who speaks good English.

Workman learned about more about the school, and was fascinated by it and was eager to possibly do a documentary about it. He got the green light from the principal, and anyone who didn't want to participate was not filmed, or their faces were pixelated if they were worried about relatives back in North Korea.

Workman (centre) and Kim (right) at the Q&A

He said he went back several times to film at the school, though he had a crew based there who filmed as well. One of the students at first was so painfully shy that she barely said a word, but by the end of the school year, she was willing to talk on camera about her school project, collecting first-hand accounts of North Koreans who escaped to the south and compiling them into a booklet.

What was not clearly explained in the film, that Kim talked about in the Q&A, was that the journey to escape was extremely dangerous, not only in avoiding getting shot by North Korean soldiers, but also avoiding arrest and deportation in China, sometimes having to stay there for years to earn enough money to continue their escape, or women being sex trafficked and being forced to marry Chinese men.

Then they had to trek through Cambodia, Laos and Thailand which involved going through jungles, difficult terrain, and having enough stamina to make it to South Korea.

School for Defectors was definitely one of the more memorable documentaries I saw this year, appreciating how much the students and their parents have gone through, and hoping they will succeed in whatever they do after high school.

School for Defectors

Directed by Jeremy Workman

92 minutes

VIFF -- Review: A Girl Unknown

The film traces the lives of girls and women in China

A Girl Unknown (2026)

The film opens showing a shy six-year-old girl sitting on a rock as she watches other children play in the water. Lin Juan (Cao Ruofan) is a tomboy who doesn't like wearing dresses or following the expectations of how a girl should behave.

But her father doesn't seem to mind, and makes her a kite out of bamboo and paper. However, when he dies suddenly, her mother soon finds another partner and is pregnant in a rural village. 

Lin Juan is played by Cao Ruofan

She takes Juan to an auntie in the city, perhaps Guangzhou, for what the girl is initially told a few months. But the reality is that her mother is not coming back, and thus begins Juan living a new identity, and trying to adapt to her new surroundings.

The auntie is kind, sophisticated, but her husband dislikes to the girl. Ten years later Juan (now played by Li Gengxi) is a teenager in the mid-1980s who loves dancing, listening to Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing and hanging out with her friends. But does she really belong?

Throughout A Girl Unknown we see how girls and women are treated in Chinese society, and how Juan tries to navigate the system on her own terms. At one point she gets a job in a textile factory, and viewers get a glimpse of what life is like, and how workers try to survive being cogs in a big, never-ending wheel.

Li Gengxi is the older Ruan in the film

Juan lives a difficult life, psychologically, trying to understand how her life came to be this way, and the audience is too. 

It is a reminder that women in China are theoretically supposed to be "holding up half the sky" according to Mao Zedong, but in reality they are expected to do that and more without much appreciation or respect.

A Girl Unknown is first-time director Zou Jing's subtle but devastating critique of women's lives in China, both rich and poor, and her two leading actresses playing Juan at six and 17 are excellent. Not only do they look very similar, but they each retain that tomboyishness and rebellious streak.

While the pace of the film may seem slow at times, a lot of things happen, and the motif of water recurs over and over again to great effect.

This is Zou's debut film

A Girl Unknown

Directed by Zou Jing

128 mins

VIFF -- Review: We Are All Strangers

One of two wedding scenes in We Are All Strangers

We Are All Strangers (2026)

This film with seven Golden Horse nominations is the third in the trilogy by director Anthony Chen who also wrote and produced this drama about a father and son and how divergent their lives are despite living in the same social housing flat in Singapore.

Father Boon Kiat (Andi Lim) is a hardworking, humble cook who makes bowls of noodles at his hawker stall. His wife died 10 years ago, while his wayward son Junyang (Koh Jia Ler) doesn't know what he's going to do after completing mandatory military service, and refuses to help his father out, believing it is too lowly a job for him.

Tensions between Bee Hwa and Junyang

Instead Junyang romances an academically-minded girl called Lydia (Regene Lim) in senior high school, whose mother is a teacher and expects her to go to university. However, things go awry when Lydia gets pregnant and wants to keep the baby...

Meanwhile Boon Kiat has his eyes on Bee Hwa (Yeo Yann Yann), a "beer auntie" who sells beers to customers at the hawker centre. She is desperate to find a place to live after her boyfriend ran off with her savings which results in her having to stay with her younger brother's family.

The relationship between Junyang and Lydia is fast and intense, whereas Bee Hwa slowly develops a fondness for Boon Kiat, who has wanted to be with her for a long time, but is patient and kind, which she reciprocates.

Early on Bee Hwa remarks Singapore is so wealthy, but she isn't. It's a theme played throughout in We Are All Strangers, a fictional snapshot of characters near the bottom of society struggling to stay afloat.

Seven Golden Horse nods

The only character that isn't fully developed is Lydia, which is a pity because viewers may find it hard to understand what she sees in Junyang, and how she sees her life now that it has gone from privilege to struggle because of him.

Nevertheless director Chen's We Are All Strangers is a kind of winding morality play over two and a half hours: what happens when you don't work hard, don't know what you want to do with your life, or the consequences of not listening to your father's advice. 

We Are All Strangers

Directed by Anthony Chen

157 minutes

VIFF -- Review: Iron Boy

Clichy draws from his childhood in his first feature, Iron Boy

Iron Boy (2026)

Iron Boy is a lovely, funny, endearing animation feature debut by Louis Clichy, who has worked at Pixar on Wall-E and Up, and has directed two Asterix animation films.

Making its North American premiere at TIFF and then Vancouver at VIFF, Iron Boy won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes last spring.

The family lives on a farm in France

It's about Christophe, a 10-year-old boy whose family has a farm, and he is keen to learn how to drive the tractor, but he starts leaning sideways, which causes an accident and he must wear a torturous metal back brace to hold his head up 24 hours a day, even while sleeping.

But Christophe discovers the beauty of the sounds the organ makes in the church, and thanks to an encouraging teacher, the boy shows talent in playing the magnificent instrument, which soon becomes his passion, much to the chagrin of his father who is desperately trying to make ends meet and resents his son's inability to physically help out on the farm.

The scenes are beautifully hand painted with watercolours that look simple, and yet convey so much emotion and nuance, that viewers can easily relate to Christophe and his coming-of-age story, the financial pressures on the family, and tensions in familial relationships.

Christophe is keen to drive the tractor

The scenes along with the dialogue are both funny and heartbreaking, and the audience couldn't help but cheer at the end of the film.

It turns out Iron Boy was inspired by Clichy's own childhood, as he grew up on a farm in the Beauce region in north-central France until he was 10 years old and wore a back brace. His son Gary is the voice of Christophe, while the other voices are from non-actors, giving it a more realistic effect.

In French, the name is Le Corset, not Iron Boy, but possibly to avoid any misinterpretations, the English title is different. Nevertheless, hopefully Iron Boy will have a greater release, as it has universal themes of growing up, finding one's passions and standing up for oneself.

Iron Boy

Directed by Louis Clichy

90 minutes

VIFF -- Review: Farruquito: A Flamenco Dynasty

A scene shows Farruquito's brilliance as a dancer (centre) 

As I was writing my posts about Paris (finally finished!), I attended the 45th Vancouver International Film Festival and saw 12 films, a mixture of dramas, documentaries and animation.

For 11 days I had quite the schedule, in many instances seeing two films per day! It almost felt like a job, having to wake up early to take public transit downtown and get there at least 30 minutes before the screening to queue up in order to get a good seat in the movie theatre!

In some cases there was already a long line half an hour before. To pass the time I either chatted up someone in front of me in the queue, or read a book -- the most reading I've done in 11 days.

Some screenings included interviews with the filmmakers which just added a greater appreciation for their work.

Here are my brief reviews in the order in which I saw the films:

Farruquito: a Flamenco Dynasty (2025)

I've always found flamenco dancing fascinating because of its raw emotion and intense endurance, which is why I picked this documentary. Farruquito is the stage name of Juan Manuel Fernandez Montoya, the third generation to dance in his family.

It was his grandfather Farruco who was a legend for creating his own steps that were inspired by nature, like horses' hooves as they run on the grasslands. He had one son who was destined to be great -- Farruquito -- but he died at the age of 18 in a car accident.

But when the young Montoya showed talent in dancing, he inherited his uncle's stage name and learned dancing from his grandfather, and music from his guitar-playing father. The budding Farrquito became quite the celebrity in Spain.

The documentary is filled with a treasure trove of old videos of the grandfather, and of Farruquito as a child -- watching them gives viewers an insight into how he learned from his master, and also the family dynamics. At the same time the film doesn't hold back on confronting Farruquito's demons and how he must reconcile them to move forward.

There is already a fourth generation coming up -- Farruquito's son, who is a teenager and beginning to develop his own style of dancing, which Farruquito is more than encouraging. 

Some of the present-day scenes are staged, but for the most part viewers get to know most of the key family members and their own take on what it's like to be part of this flamenco dynasty.

Farruquito: a Flamenco Dynasty

Directed by Santi Aguado Reuben Atlas

90 minutes

Review: Mistura

Mistura is a cinematic vehicle to promote Peruvian cuisine

It was almost a full house at VIFF at dinnertime to make us salivate while watching Mistura, a 2024 Peruvian foodie film.

Set in 1965 in Lima, Norma is half French and half Peruvian, the daughter of a French ambassador who has lived in rarified circles. But she discovers her husband has cheated on her, leaving her to figure out how to pay off the mortgage on the house.

Viewers quickly see what pressure she is under with everyone gossiping about her situation, and how Norma deals with it. Despite her husband's infidelity reported in the papers, Norma is determined to keep her head held high, and retain the house -- her house -- somehow.

Norma's driver inspires her to open a restaurant

At the encouragement of her chauffeur, Norma decides to open a restaurant in her mansion, and hires a Spanish-speaking Japanese chef who had once cooked for her father. The chef makes food that diners cannot relate to, let alone pronounce the names of the dishes.

There are also scenes showing her relationship with her adult son. As she is prim and proper, Norma vehemently disapproves of his hippie look and lifestyle, but an incident later brings them closer.

Eventually the restaurant evolves to reflect Peru and the people in the kitchen, and the film's end note explains "mistura" means mixture, combining different things together, which best describes Peruvian cuisine -- featuring Indigenous, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern, African and Italian influences. 

While the scenes in the kitchen didn't show as much cooking as the 2023 film The Taste of Things (Le Pot-au-Feu), we got the idea, watching Norma chop luscious tender beef cubes with her manicured hands, see how ceviche is made, and grilled meat skewers.

Norma is a half-French, half-Peruvian socialite

Mistura is a good movie, though in some parts one wonders if it's really possible for Norma to have a 180-transformation in her perception of others, or maybe she realises she needs all the help she can get? 

Actress Barbara Mori who plays Norma carries the film, and subtly shows her character's emotions below the surface, while having an unconventional relationship with her driver, played by Cesar Ballumbrosio.

Nevertheless, the film is a cinematic vehicle to promote Peruvian cuisine, and it definitely gets viewers curious (and hungry) to try some!

Mistura

Written and directed by Ricardo de Montreuil

101 minutes

Review: Tough Old Broads

The documentary features three trailblazing women

The other day I watched a documentary paying tribute to wise women, called Tough Old Broads. It was screened at VIFF and was it surprising that the entire audience make up was women, most of them seniors?

It's directed by Stacey Tenenbaum, and profiles three trailblazing women, Katherine Switzer, who was the first woman to officially run in the Boston Marathon in 1967, Siila "Sheila" Watt-Cloutier, an Inuk climate change activist, and Sharon Farmer, who was the first woman to run the White House Photography Office.

Switzer has promoted running since 1967

Switzer's story is very compelling and easy to relate to. She recalls when she ran the Boston Marathon, a few miles in, the race director was in a car with the media and caught up with her. He tried to pull off her bib number -- 261 -- and luckily Switzer's boyfriend who was running with her, pushed the race director off to the sidelines and told her to run like hell.

As a result of the media coverage, Switzer inspired other women to take up running, and she got companies like Avon to sponsor women-only marathon races. They were less intimidated and felt they were just running with the girls. 

These days Switzer, 79, gives inspiration speeches to young women and travels the world. In one scene she is in Germany with muslim women and goes running with them. Switzer is gracious in encouraging them, that they can do anything they want if they put their minds to it.

Watt-Cloutier's profile is the most complicated because a lot of her work involves making presentations and talks with diplomats, a lot of technical knowledge to explain how toxins were found in water up in the Canadian north, and how this affected mothers and children. She links this environmental issue with human rights.

Watt-Cloutier is worried about climate change

She says as a child her family was very close and lived on the land, but when she was 10 years old, she was sent to the south, to Nova Scotia and Manitoba to go to residential schools. Watt-Cloutier remembers she was given no warning this would happen to her, and as a result of this western schooling, she didn't learn much about her language and culture.

Today she continues to advocate for the Inuit and how global warming is affecting ice and snow in the Arctic. She was awarded an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006, and nominated along with Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize and 180 other people.

Finally, tough old broad, definitely defines Farmer, and she has funny one-liners, like how gray hair is a badge of honour of what she has survived. At one point Farmer says a photo editor can tell the picture was taken by her without checking the caption which is very cool.

Originally she was into music and wanted to join the marching band, but was told it was for men only because it was tradition. Instead she turned to photography at a young age, and was very focused on capturing the lives of black people in America. One photograph she took was a black and white image of an older black woman swinging her hips with a hula hoop around her waist.

Farmer once worked in the White House

In the 1970s Farmer shot album covers, and in 1993 she was hired to cover US President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton; Farmer later was promoted to become director of White House Photography, the first woman and person of colour to do this job.

The documentary follows her in November 2024 when Donald Trump won his second term; Farmer goes out into the streets hoping to capture reaction from the election, but instead finds nothing, perhaps people were too shocked or depressed to even come out.

For Switzer and Watt-Cloutier, there was some archival footage in their stories, in the case of Farmer, there wasn't much to illustrate her story per se; going to her storage unit to dig out some old photos was the best director Tenenbaum could do.

Nevertheless these are three women we should be cheering about, and hopefully this could be an ongoing series of other accomplished women and what we can learn from them!

Tough Old Broads

Directed by Stacey Tenenbaum

89 minutes

Review: Fantasia

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is just one of eight segments

Each month VIFF in Vancouver has its Pantheon series, featuring what they think are the greatest movies of all time. In addition to the showing is a film expert who gives some comments beforehand and there's some feedback afterwards from the audience.

Yesterday was the showing of Walt Disney's Fantasia. I watched it so long ago that I can't remember when, and thought it would be neat to watch it on the big screen. So did over 150 other people! The show was practically sold out on a rainy Sunday late morning.

Before the screening, Alla Gadassic, associate professor in Media History and Theory at Emily Carr gave a talk on the history of Fantasia, and explained how Disney poured a lot of money into the film and how it was such a risk for the studio, which lost money when it was first released in 1940.

The dancing Chinese mushrooms

She said nowadays we live in a very visual world, more than other senses, like sound. But in the 1910s and 20s people were thinking about how to represent sound visually. Gadassic showed a painting by the abstract Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, who is believed to have synesthesia, where people associate music with colours, or certain letters or numbers with colours. 

Around this time film was believed to be a way to represent sound visually and there were many experimental films at this time, showing sound waves, or shapes representing sounds. People like animator Oskar Fishinger believed that since music or sound didn't have historical or cultural context, neither should the visual representation of it, which is why simple shapes were believed to be a good way of doing this.

Disney probably saw Fishinger's work, and recruited him to work on Fantasia. However, they later had a falling out, as Fishinger felt his work was possibly too abstract for mass audiences and left the studio; he was never credited for his work on the first of eight segments of Fantasia, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

There are eight in total, each different from the others, which is why Gadassic suggests looking at Fantasia as an anthology. Disney himself chose the music, while different teams of animators worked on the segments and Gadassic says it was a group effort, where everyone collaborated. One theory is that Mickey Mouse was included because his popularity was flagging.

When a hippo and an alligator dance together

The eight segments are:

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: Live action of the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski gradually fades into abstract patterns determined by the music.

The Nutcracker Suite: Various pieces were chosen, such as the Asian-looking mushrooms dancing in "Chinese Dance", beautiful fish frolicking in the sea in "Arabian Dance", and flowers and leaves blown by the wind in "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies".

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Mickey Mouse is is an apprentice told by the sorcerer to gather water to put in the cauldron, and tries to use magic to make his life easier...

The Rite of Spring: How life began on earth from protozoa to eventually dinosaurs and how they became extinct.

Intermission/Meet the Soundtrack: The master of ceremonies announces there's a 15-minute intermission to which we snicker. The film cuts back to the orchestra members returning to their seats and have an impromptu jazz jam session.

A giant devil in Night on Bald Mountain

The Pastoral Symphony: A romantic scene of centaurs and "centaurettes" complete with cupids and fauns. Interestingly the female centaurs don't have their breasts defined which somehow escaped the censors, though they do wear revealing organic tops, covering their chests with leaves and flowers. Bacchus is super drunk, and they are all caught in a big thunderstorm created by Zeus above.

Dance of the Hours: A strange scenario of dancing ostriches, hippos and alligators.

Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria: A giant devil summons spirits and ghosts to dance for him (and there are brief shots of bared breasts) until dawn breaks and robed monks are carrying lights through the forest as Ave Maria is sung.

Gassadic also explained that a large number of women worked on Fantasia. They not only painted all the cells by hand, but a handful of them were the lead designers of some of the segments. She said Disney was a good manager, they didn't just work on Fantasia, but also Dumbo and Pinocchio, hence the dancing elephants and pastoral scenes, having already experimented with drawing and painting them in Fantasia.

Fascinating to get the context of the film before watching it to have a greater appreciation and understanding of the anthology. No wonder it felt so disparate before!

Review: The Space Architect

Adams designed living spaces for astronauts

After watching the documentary Changing Lanes, I had a quick break eating a Japanese sausage roll (a sausage wrapped in a croissant-like fluffy, flaky pastry), I returned to VIFF to watch The Space Architect, directed by Rebecca Carpenter.

Who's the space architect? It's Constance Adams, a woman who took her skills as an architect and applied them to space, imagining how astronauts live outside of the Earth, what their lives will be like, what they would need, and how they would survive.

She got to experience zero gravity

But she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and contacted Carpenter, her college classmate who is a filmmaker, asking her to come film her last words.

Carpenter rushed over to Houston and filmed Adams, who by this point was quite ill, needing oxygen to help her breathe. Dressed in a green shirt and black vest, Adams looked very animated, and her nails were painted bright red.

She got a bachelors degree in social studies at Harvard, then a masters in architecture at Yale. She interned with Cesar Pelli, then went to Tokyo to work for the architectural firm Kenzo Tange, then Berlin to work for Josef Paul Kleihues.

However, the economy in Germany wasn't doing well following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Adams returned to the US to interview for a firm in Houston. While she was there she toured NASA and thought it was so interesting she left them her resume.

Her inflatable TransHub project

They later contacted her and asked if she was still interested. She was. Lockheed Martin hired her as a consultant and she worked on various projects, though she was best known for TransHab, or Transit Habitat, an inflatable module where astronauts could live and work.

Her way of solving problems was to gather all different kinds of experts together, from engineers to psychologists to talk about various scenarios and imagine what it would be like to live in space and how that would affect design and architecture in space.

Adams says all her work with NASA isn't really about humans going into space and finding the final frontier, it's about finding ways for humans to survive on Earth with climate change happening. To find solutions, she created the Mothership project.

Towards the end of the film, it says that four days after Carpenter finished filming, Adams died at the age of 53.

We were lucky that Carpenter came to Vancouver to talk to audiences after the screening. She started by saying Adams wanted her to tell everyone to get a colonoscopy after the age of 50... if she had done so she would have detected the cancer earlier.

Then she talked about filming Adams, that she was sicker than she thought she was, and they did the best they could.

Adams when she was filmed in 2018

After filming wrapped, Carpenter didn't know what she had and let her daughter watch some raw footage; she said this woman is iconic, and that her story had to be told. Her daughter's friend said the same, and so did a film editor friend.

Then the pandemic hit and Carpenter couldn't deal with this project while isolating, finding it a depressing subject. But it seems like it was a group of women in the film industry who encouraged Carpenter to keep going, and they helped her out to eventually finish the film this year.

Adams' daughters have seen the film and say it captures their mother well, and Carpenter confirms they are doing well under the guardianship of Adams' friend.

One audience member asked Carpenter what she learned from making this film and she replied that she is so grateful for every moment, sharing the moment of being with us, being thankful for everything... it seemed like she basically meant that she was grateful to be alive.

Adams accomplished so much in her short time on Earth, and we need to remember trailblazers like her, and be inspired by her great ambitions for all of us.

The Space Architect

Directed by Rebecca Carpenter

40 minutes

Review: Changing Lanes

Changing Lanes looks at how to make streets safer

The Architecture & Design Film Festival was on this week and I caught two documentaries back to back. Most of the audience at the VIFF were architects, low key but cool dressing, talking shop with their colleagues in the waiting area.

The first film was Changing Lanes directed by Ben Wolf and while it's about an area in Brooklyn, New York, it applies to any neighbourhood that is fighting to make things better. Wolf notes at the beginning of the film that he made the entire documentary by hauling equipment with his bicycle.

It opens with the death of a beloved elementary school teacher who was killed in a hit-and-run accident at Greenpoint and the residents in the area as well as grassroots activists mourn his death, and also call for the street to be designed safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

Activists rally for safer streets for pedestrians

When cities first sprang into life, there were no street lights because there were horse-drawn carriages and people walked or ran. But with the advent of cars, people were getting killed trying to cross the street. 

One activist explains it's the carmakers who blamed the accidents on the pedestrians, creating the word "jaywalking" and making it a crime for people to cross the street willy nilly, when it was something they did before cars existed.

Mayor Ed Koch tried to make New York more bike friendly and turned 6th and 7th avenues into bike lanes, but car drivers hated it and then the bike lanes were soon gone.

It wasn't until Michael Bloomberg in 2012 hired Janette Sadik-Khan as transportation commissioner did they begin bringing in bike lanes and started the Citi Bike sharing program. It also made political sense -- mayors who bring in bike lanes get re-elected again and again.

Hmmm maybe not Gregor Robertson, who got voted out of City Hall in Vancouver...

But we digress.

Numerous activists and pro-cycling people appear in Changing Lanes, most notably musician David Byrne, who is filmed riding his bike and explaining how it helps him get around the city and meet people, something he continues to do while on tour.

Byrne admits it can be dangerous cycling in NYC

There's someone who used to work at the city's transportation department, and Sadik-Khan, while activists hold rallies to get people to support their cause, but they get pushback from a businessman in the area who thinks redesigning the street will affect his business.

At first current Mayor Eric Adams is for changing the street design at Greenpoint, but then backs off; it turns out the businessman gave Adams a lot of money and was eventually indicted along with Adams.

So Changing Lanes shows that grassroots activism is important to voice your opinion, but also money can sway politicians to not necessarily do what's best for the community.

Redesigning streets, activists argue, will give people options of how they want to get around the city. Building more lanes doesn't necessarily relieve traffic james; in many cases it makes the situation worse. It was found that with more bike lanes, local businesses saw increases in customer sales because it was more accessible in terms of pedestrian and cyclists.

This is something all mayors should think about when considering how to make their cities better.

Changing Lanes

Directed by Ben Wolf

73 minutes

 

The Park Theatre is Saved from Closure

Thank goodness the Park theatre is under new ownership

On the weekend there was shocking news that the Park theatre, a single-screen cinema on Cambie Street in Vancouver was going to close after 84 years. It was owned by Cineplex, but was giving it up.

I vividly remember the Park was where I saw The Muppet Movie, and possibly Star Wars. Have to admit I haven't been back in decades.

The landlord of the Park reached out to independent Rio Theatre, run by Corinne Lea to see if they were interested and they were... except they didn't have enough money to take the Park over.

The Park has been around for 84 years

But they knew some people in the movie business in Vancouver, like producer Chris Ferguson.

"If anyone other than Corinne had reached out to me, I would have said, 'Absolutely not.' We'd just be flushing away a bunch of people's money," Ferguson said. "But I know how good of a job she's done with the Rio, so this was exciting."

He made some calls and said, "I've never had an easier time raising money for a project in my life."

Those Ferguson contacted were all in, including the producers of the Oscar winning Anora, Samantha Quan and director Sean Baker.

The couple released a statement saying: "Under the leadership of Corinne Lea, whose incredible work with the Rio Theatre has inspired so many, we're confident the Park will once again be a vibrant home for cinema in Vancouver."

So while the Park showed its last film under Cineplex yesterday, the new owners promise the neighbourhood theatre will be back up and running in December of January, with the first order of business being the installation of a new 70-mm projector. 

Lea from the Rio will run the Park too

Located on Broadway and Commercial in east Vancouver, Rio Theatre is known for showing classics and hosting events, including comedy shows, live music and even burlesque, the plan is for the Park to show first-run movies and classics.

It sounds like the programming could complement VIFF downtown, which will be fantastic for people like me looking for alternative films to watch that are closer to me. That area of Cambie village is getting more buzz, with a hopping restaurant called June that opened over six months ago and houses a speakeasy called Lala in the basement.

Hopefully the revival of the Park energises the neighbourhood and lures back people like me!

Review: Cover-Up

Hersh talked to a lot of people to get tips that led to stories

Journalism students idolise people like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate scandal in 1972. 

But there's another journalist they should look up to too -- Seymour Hersh.

Poitras and Obenhaus who directed Cover-Up

His life and career is covered in the fascinating 117-minute documentary, Cover-Up, by directors Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus. She is best known for her documentaries on Edward Snowden and the Sackler family.

In 2005 Poitras approached Hersh about doing a documentary about him, but it took him 20 years to finally agree.

He's a prickly character, and Hersh is filmed in his office, with piles of files all around him, files filled with faded yellow note pads filled with illegible handwriting, and a Rolodex on his desk. But hey, he uses an iPhone and Macbook to keep reporting.

During the Vietnam War Hersh was a freelancer -- a freelancer(!) when he uncovered American soldiers had shot and killed up to 500 civilian men, women, children and babies in a remote Vietnamese village.

Hersh says the US military officials were angry their soldiers were being killed and to up the numbers of Vietnamese deaths, they randomly killed innocent people. He managed to get a tip on the soldier charged with killing 109 people, tracked him down and spoke to him.

He then managed to interview other soldiers who were eyewitnesses or participated in the massacre. 

Hersh's reporting gave more ammunition to those opposed to the war.

Hersh is still his prickly self, trusting no one

It was his ability to track down and talk to people that made Hersh either praised or feared. US President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were caught on tape calling the journalist "a son of a bitch", angered that he was able to find out so much information.

Is it no wonder Hersh was either praised or feared.

After Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate story, Hersh, who was then at the New York Times, was told to go find stories, and he managed to find out the burglars who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters were still being paid hush money. 

This story helped keep the story alive and bring more information to the public about the scandal, that eventually led to Nixon's resignation. Hersh wrote over 40 stories about Watergate, that were mostly published on the front page.

Hersh also reported on how the CIA spent millions to destabilise the socialist government of Chilean President Salvador Allende and after a coup d'etat, installed a military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet.

The documentary also gets Hersh to talk about his father, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania who played the violin. He says his family was very short on words and he never knew his father had escaped the horrors of the Nazis and wished he had known before so he could ask.

He still has lots of files all over his office

His family had two sets of twins -- Hersh had two twin older sisters, and he and his brother were twins too. His father had a dry cleaning business, and expected Hersh to take over. He didn't like the work but did what was expected of him. He had to quit school to look after his ailing father and on the side Hersh read a lot of books. But when his father died of cancer, this gives Hersh the opportunity to get a college education and the instructor felt he was more qualified for university and got him enrolled into the University of Chicago.

He randomly met a reporter and thought the job was so exciting that he started as a copyboy and a month later became a crime reporter.

Cover-Up also recounts the torture in the prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq from 2004-2007. When he was able to get the photographs of prisoners tortured by US soldiers, and obtained a report by a general that listed all the things that were done to prisoners, Hersh was able to write the story that put Secretary for Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the hot seat.

Rumsfeld even tried to explain the difference between abuse and torture in a bid to disclaim the article.

But Hersh didn't get everything right. When he was researching into US President John F Kennedy's alleged romance with Marilyn Monroe, he claimed to have letters between the two, but they turned out to be fabricated by a known forger. That put a big dent into Hersh's reputation, but he looks back at it as dodging a bullet, as those so-called letters did not make it into his book, The Dark Side of Camelot.

Strangely he also felt Syrian President Bashir al-Assad couldn't have used chemical warfare on his own people...

Nevertheless, Hersh is still kicking and writing on his Substack account. During the filming he is shown talking to a source on the phone, getting information about Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Cover-Up was intense to watch, with a few sarcastic moments sprinkled throughout, but also eye-opening for someone like myself who is not familiar with Hersh's work. It's people like him who inspire younger journalists to try to find the truth. What he did was just talk to people and you never know -- they might just slip some information that could lead to something big.

Cover-Up

Directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus

117 minutes

Review: The Shadow Scholars

Kingori is a professor at Oxford University

University students desperate to get a research paper completed can pay a few hundred dollars for a ghostwriter to write it for them -- sometimes in hours. These are "shadow scholars", but who are they?

They are the subject of a documentary by Eloise King, who uses the research of Professor Patricia Kingori, a sociologist and the youngest female black professor at Oxford University. King follows the academic as she discovers these online essay mills are a $15 billion industry, with 72 percent of writers coming from her home country, Kenya. Some 40,000 of them live in Nairobi alone.

She goes to Nairobi to meet Kenyan ghost writers

She goes to the Kenyan capital city to meet these shadow scholars to find out who they are and why they are churning out these papers. Kingori discovers they are bright, hardworking, but also desperate for work. They have all graduated from university, but can't find any decent jobs except ghostwrite someone else's research papers.

There's Mercy who has to support not only herself but also her daughter in kindergarten; Chege has made enough money to not only support his sister through tertiary education, but also built his parents' a house, and bought himself a car. There's also a married couple who also write essays for a fee.

Not only do they have to write these papers, but also bid for the work too. After the film was screened, King explained the writers only get 30 percent of the fee -- the lion's share goes to the online platform advertising these writers. They also get fined if they don't make the deadline, or don't make revisions ot the client's requirements.

And the writers can't even promote themselves -- they give themselves Western names and white profiles otherwise no one would believe someone from Kenya is able to write their papers to ensure they can graduate and get a degree.

Kenyan grads have difficulty finding jobs

For Kingori this is infuriating: why can't these Kenyans show their true identity and be credited for the work that they do? But these shadow scholars don't seem to mind. For them this is a decent job and in the process of writing these papers they also gain more knowledge.

On the other side of the world, professors and educators are sounding the alarm of these essay mills and politicians start cracking down on them. There are hundreds of thousands of students who have been able to graduate because they paid someone to write their essays or tests for them. Are there people who are now doctors, nurses and lawyers really qualified for their jobs?

One student in the United States talks about how desperate she is to graduate from university because it's what her parents want and have poured their savings into her education. Meanwhile she saves up money for a shadow scholar to write a research paper for her by selling nudes of herself online.

However, now with the advent of artificial intelligence, students are turning to ChatGPT, which scrapes all the research papers online -- some of which were written by these ghostwriters... how is that any better?

King was inspired by Kingori's research

The Shadow Scholars asks many ethical questions, like who is taking advantage of who, why isn't the Kenyan government supporting this generation of young bright graduates, how have essay mills been allowed to exist and how can the message be sent across to students that they should do their own work?

King explained after the screening that The Shadow Scholars was originally supposed to focus on these writers and shine a spotlight on them, but as countries like the United Kingdom and Australia were cracking down on these ghostwriters, the director could not specifically focus on them anymore, and so she had to turn to AI generated digital disguises to protect these writers. 

Instead King focused more on Kingori, how her mother drilled it into her head to do better than her by studying harder. For a long time people believed getting a good education would lead to good jobs, but that isn't the case anymore. The system of education is broken, so what can fresh graduates do now?

It's a fascinating documentary that makes viewers sympathetic to these writers, and how they are caught up in the system. In the end they just want to make money, but at what cost?

The Shadow Scholars

Directed by Eloise King

Starring Dr Patricia Kingori

98 minutes