by Robert Alstead

After years of anticipation, the Vancouver International Film Centre – the newest cinema in town – is finally opening its doors. As I write, there are a few loose wires and the odd stack of building materials littering hallways and entrances, but Vancouver International Film Festival staff have moved into their salubrious downtown residence at 1181 Seymour Street, and are gearing up for the fortnight film feast starting on September 29.
Festival director Alan Franey, whose office looks down on the spacious, curved lobby, is as excited as a new dad. Understandably. The plush 175-seat cinema is extravagant by normal standards. “The room is as large as many 500-seat theatres,” says Franey. The seats, “the premium seats in the world,” were shipped in from Paris. The 35mm, 16mm, and digital projectors came from Germany, “the Mercedes Benz of projectors,” he says.
“The difference is that we’ve emphasized quality over quantity: that’s true in everything we’ve done. It’s the exact opposite sort of logic of most theatres, which is, ‘Get ‘em in! Get ‘em out! Distract them with arcade games. Get as much of their money at the concession stand as possible’… We encourage people to stay.”
At a time when the public is turning its back on the cinema for DVD, this kind of luxury may rekindle people’s appetite for the big screen experience. That, and a diverse, international programme that will be radically different from mainstream fare. As a non-profit, VIFF doesn’t have a commercial remit, so Franey will be catering the year-round for his constituency of 40,000 VIFF Society members. (To see a film at the festival, you must buy a membership as most films are unclassified).
With the festival still to get through, Franey expects that he won’t be scheduling full VIFC monthly programs until January 2006, but he will be using the festival to “signal” what kind of programming we can expect when VIFC is fully operational. For example, Argentinian filmmaker Adolfo Aristarain (A Place in the World, Common Ground) will bring his latest film Roma to VIFF, tying in with a planned retrospective of his work at VIFC. The first event to use the new centre will be the annual Film and Television Trade Forum (September 28 – 30).
As always, there’s a strong quotient of documentaries at VIFF. Franey recommends The White Diamond, by veteran German documentarian Werner Herzog, about a project to explore the dense, tropical rainforest in the heart of Guyana using a jungle airship. The Devil’s Miner is another, which is about child silver miners in Bolivia. Franey calls it “extraordinary… amazingly shot.” He also recommends Mahaleo, about a Madagascan big band. “It’s got a very fine photographic eye, so you really feel like you are in Madagascar, and there’s lots more happening than just the music.” Sound like The Buena Vista Social Club? “It’s way better,” insists Franey.
He also loved Shape of the Moon (Stand van de Maan), an intimate portrait of a poor family in Indonesia. The film won the Sundance Film Festival grand jury award, although Franey is not sure that everybody will appreciate it. “It makes you much more worldly and empathetic, and your bullshit metre is improved, because we hear a lot of stuff that we don’t know how to interpret in the Third World.”
Monte Grande – What Is Life? about Chilean neurobiologist Francisco Varela, who spent his whole life working on the question of how body and mind exist as a whole, has a commendable scientific rigour.
Franey has been impressed by the quality of Central and Eastern European films, like Hungarian historical drama Fateless (Sorstalanság), which he describes as “another film about the holocaust, but…really, really good.”
He’s noticing a new tone in some of the US films, almost too subtle to put his finger on. He hesitates to call it shame. “An introspective, muted quality,” he suggests. “I don’t think it’s just Americans. A lot of young people have been humbled or put slightly off step by political events… there seems to be a real sort of alienation, but almost a healthy alienation.” Examples are dysfunctional family drama Forty Shades of Blue and Police Beat, about a Senegalese, Seattle cop.
On a lighter note, Vancouver-based, writer-director Julia Kwan’s Eve and the Fire Horse is a humorous look at the spiritual quest of a troublesome, nine-year-old, and Bombon El Perro is a droll comedy about an unemployed gas attendant in Argentina whose life finds meaning when he becomes the owner of a big, ugly dog. Fans of Francophone cinema can catch period family drama CRAZY which has gone mad at the Quebec box office. Finally, US indie Keane has been creating a massive buzz on the festival circuit and sounds like one of those films where the less you know beforehand, the more you will appreciate it.
For pre-festival, family entertainment, Terry Gilliam’s period fantasy The Brothers Grimm is an enjoyable way to while away a couple of hours.

VIFF (www.viff.org) runs September 29 to October 14.

Robert Alstead, who also writes for iofilm, is currently making a documentary about cycling called You Never Bike Alone.