Festival wraps: the Vancouver International Film Festival (09/22-10/05/00).

While in a cab on my way to the Opening Night Gala -- Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- my cab driver innocently asked me what I did for a living. Replying that I worked for the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), prompted him to launch into an excited disquisition on the "subtle comedy" of John Candy (I'm not making this up). And he knew his stuff. Yes, it was festival time again in Vancouver, a two-week window on the world when the surreal and the sublime comingled to invigorating and disorienting effect.

Still reeling from my taxi driver's genuinely heartfelt eulogy to M. Candy, I found myself listening to festival director Alan Franey address the sold-out crowd at the cavernous Vogue Theatre. "Yes, we're tired of answering questions about why we have no `stars' here," said Franey. "But the truth is we do have stars -- many of our guests are stars in their own countries ..." Yes! Franey took a much-needed, succinct and subtle jab at the "Hooray for Hollywood" mentality that is still present in some of the local press, before going on to introduce "our kind of star" -- a magnificent Bengal tiger brought out on stage, to gasps from a stunned audience. The surreal and the sublime, indeed.... Of course, all of the staff showed tip just to see if the tiger would run amok and eat Telefilm's Laurier LaPierre or one of the other dignitaries.

Like past festivals, the 19th VIFF ("shorter but undiminished in scope," as it shrunk from 17 days to a more manageable 14) stayed as far away from Hollywood as possible, a long-time policy that sets it apart from, for example, the Toronto festival. And given the critical post-Toronto fest editorial in The Globe and Mail that concluded, "Both [the TIFF], and the media, need to rethink the star-spangled navel gazing," Vancouver's anti-Hollywood focus seems to be gaining in popularity elsewhere.

Here on the still-political West Coast, however, the VIFF's stance has always been popular where it counts -- with the film-going public. Aside from the Canadian Images section -- the largest sidebar of Canadian cinema in the world -- one of the VIFF's primary goals has been the promotion of the documentary form. The Nonfiction Features sidebar has grown to the point that no fewer than six of the top 15 most popular films at the 2000 festival were documentaries, with three of them -- Audrey Brohy's and Gerard Ungerman's damning look at American involvement in the Gulf War, Hidden Wars of Desert Storm; Kevin McKiernan's damning look at American foreign policy vis-a-vis the Kurdish nation, Good Kurds Bad Kurds: No Friends But the Mountains; and veteran John Pilger's damning look at UN sanctions in Iraq, Paying the Price: The Killing of the Children of Iraq -- representing the kind of political filmmaking that Vancouver audiences eat up. Those widely publicized APEC demonstrations a couple of years ago did not spring out of nowhere.

The other major focus of the VIFF has been the Dragons and Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia sidebar, wherein the Dragons and Tigers Award for Young Cinema -- given to a director of a first or second feature -- has served to alert the international film community to rising young talent. The eighth annual award went to Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng for Fah Talai Jone, a "wholly original, stylistically bold and utterly enjoyable homage to Thailand's cinematic past." Sasanatieng's gorgeous film was the most prominent of a strong Thai contingent consisting of five features, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul's haunting blend of reality and fiction, Mysterious Object at Noon (winner of a Special Mention from the Dragons and Tigers Award jury), Yongyoot Thongkongtoon's immensely popular Thai transvestite volleyball team epic Iron Ladies, and Danny and Oxide Pang's hyperstylish and ultra-violent Bangkok: Dangerous (which nabbed the FIPRESCI prize in Toronto). Together they served notice that Thailand is undergoing something of a production renaissance.

Now that I've mentioned awards, the People's Choice Award for Most Popular Film went to Jan Hrebejk's Divided We Fall, a dramatic comedy about a couple in Second World War Czechoslovakia who shelter a Jewish neighbour. Most Popular Canadian Film was won by Gary Burns's waydowntown, which also garnered the Rogers Award for Best Western Canadian Screenplay. James Ronald Whitney's brave look at the history of abuse in his family's past, Just, Melvin, copped fine NFB Award for Best Documentary. Edward Yang's Yi Yi (A One and a Two) nabbed the Chief Dan George Humanitarian Award. And, finally, Ross Weber's No More Monkey's Jumpin' on the Bed was given the Telefilm Canada Award for Best Emerging Director of a Feature Film from Western Canada. Weber couldn't resist an ironic comment when picking up the award. Smiling ruefully he said, "It's nice to be called `emerging' at 41 years old." The same attitude of slightly melancholy self-deprecation permeates his black-and-white debut, an ensemble relationship comedy/drama that is as modest in its ambitions (a positive thing) as it is successful in capturing the Zeitgeist amongst single, thirtysomething Vancouverites.

No More Monkeys is a good starting point for what I found to be the most exciting development on the local front. Actors Nancy Sivak and Tom Scholte -- frequent collaborators with Brace Sweeney (Dirty) -- have leading roles in the film, which was written and directed by Sweeney's former editor. Sivak also stars in Bruce Spangler's Protection, which was shot by DOP Briton Johnson, who lives with actor Marya Delver (she's the lovely and talented recipient of some workplace oral sex in Dirty), who appears in both No More Monkeys and Arne Olsen's Here's to Life. Cinematographer Dave Pelletier, another Sweeney collaborator, shot Anne Wheeler's Marine Life. Add to this, new work by Lynne Stopkewich (Suspicious River) and the recent success of Reg Harkema (A Girl Is a Girl) and James Dunnison (Stuff) ... I think you can see where I'm going here. I don't think it's stretching things to say that the local scene has reached a critical mass not unlike the Toronto new wave of the 1980s -- the rise of Egoyan, McDonald, Mckellar et al. -- written about in these pages a couple of issues ago (Take One No. 28). The cross-fertilization happening here in Vancouver is paying off in spades and things can only get more interesting. All eyes are on Sweeney's upcoming Last Wedding, which involves many of the aforementioned talents.

I wish I had more room to get into such things as The Great Vancouver One Piece! challenge (local filmmakers like Sweeney, Harkema, Dunnison, Spangler and others competing against a host of Japanese filmmakers in a showdown of shorts shot during the course of the festival) and the Trade Forum's session on new digital technology. Next time, maybe. Suffice it to say that, with only 36 hours of rain over the course of the whole festival (an unheard of streak of good weather), it did seem like the gods were watching over this year's event.