In 2002, Robert Wiliam Pickton was arrested for a series of shocking murders that took place on the rural property he owned with his brother, just a few kilometers east of Vancouver, British Columbia. For years, Pickton had been hunting women in the city’s notorious Downtown East Side. He chose sex workers, many of whom were Indigenous women and other women of colour, as his victims. The nature and details of Pickton’s crimes, which included…
Shannon Page’s coverage of this year’s Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival (VHS) concludes with reviews of two spooky features – Faceless After Dark and V/H/S/85.
The Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival (VHS) has been scaring the socks off west coast audiences since 2018. In just a few short years, VHS has developed a reputation as one of the most diverse and exciting genre film festivals in Canada.
Let’s assume that bad things are always happening. While someone finds enjoyment in life, someone else may be barely hanging on to their reality. That’s basically the gist of Wayne Wapeemukwa’s debut feature Luk’Luk’I, an obvious stream of consciousness that doesn’t expand beyond that idea.
By: Jessica Goddard Mina Shum’s Meditation Park is an engaging, quirky, and empowering film about the overdue self-actualization of a Vancouver woman (Cheng Pei-pei) in light of the discovery of her husband’s affair. This thoroughly modern film also expertly highlights the immigrant experience in multicultural Canada, while making clear that the narrative is culturally universal. There is an exquisite balance of humour and poignancy in the writing, strengthened by an excellent cast.
If documentaries were solely graded on how much they teach, then Charles Wilkinson’s Vancouver: No Fixed Address would get full marks.
