The Film: Messages To Younger Selves, Victory Square, Regalia and other shorts
Leo award winning drama Victory Square had its world premiere at in the shorts corner at the Cannes Film Festival and is inspired by director Jacquie Gould’s own intersections with Vancouver’s DTES. Having lost her grandfather to opium addiction and after supporting a niece currently struggling with mental illness and addiction on the DTES, Gould set out to make a film that captures the complex realities of the DTES: homelessness, mental illness, addiction, gentrification, community spirit, and in turn reveal the invisible, and often permeable line between “us” and “them.”
Love Intersections is a creative love note from a group of hopeful millennials creating short films and other artistic endeavours. Co-founded in 2014 by Jen Sungshine and David Ng, both artist-activists based in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded, occupied and ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish Nations. Love Intersections is a work in progress that thrives in queerness. In this program Reel Causes is pleased to find our common threads in the films Regalia: Pride in Two Spirits, and Carla and Hayfa. Duane Stewart shares his story as a First Nations queer person, who identifies as “Two Spirited” in Regalia. Duane talks about the importance of culture in his life, and his journey coming out to his family. Carla & Hayfa investigates the impact of historical trauma on communities of refugees and their queer family members through an intimate and touching lens of looking at the relationship between a mother and her queer daughter.
Kate Green’s touching local documentary, Not a Stranger, profiles one man’s attempt to create real-life human connection. By striking up impromptu conversations with a new stranger every day over 365 days, the film chronicles and weaves together the common threads that connect us all.
