Saturday, October 31

Walking Tour
SITES OF EMPOWERMENT
with CCAP
Saturday October 31, 11:30am–1pm
Meet at steps of Carnegie Community Centre, 401 Main
This tour with researcher Wendy Pedersen and volunteers of the Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) will start at the front steps of the Carnegie Centre and visit some of the best loved places in the area according to the stories of low-income DTES residents. Contemplate how these key sites give us clues as to how to build a vision for a safe, healthy and affordable low-income neighbourhood and how this future is threatened by gentrification. CCAP is building consensus within the low-income community for a vision of the Downtown Eastside that hopefully the city will adopt. Visioning reports and information on gentrification can be found on their blog: www.ccapvancouver.wordpress.com. All proceeds to CCAP. $10 for non-residents, pay what you can for local residents

Open House
ST. JAMES’ ANGLICAN CHURCH
Saturday October 31, 12pm-5pm
St. James’ Anglican Church, 303 E. Cordova
Open Houses at St. James’ are a wonderful opportunity to see first hand this heritage building and to take in a wide range of parish activities! Wander around the unique architectural structure, built in the 1930s, and talk with Church historians. At 12:30pm join long-term parishioner Allan Duncan on a guided tour, at 1:30pm listen for students from the Music Academy throughout the church, and at 4pm enjoy ‘Songs and Arias for a Fall Afternoon.’ Relax in the splendid acoustic environment and be soothed by beautiful music from the heavenly duo Maestro Gerald Harder and the emerging artist Ruth Greenaway-Robbins. A collection will be taken in support of the St. James’ Music Academy, an initiative that offers classical music training for inner-city children. Everyone welcome. Free

Workshop
COMMUNITY LETTERPRESS
Saturday October 31, 1pm-5pm
W2 Perel Gallery, 112 W. Hastings
W2’s Letterpress Studio features an original Woodward’s printing press and workshops provide access to mentors, training, and a community of printers and typographers. As part of the Heart of the City Festival, design professional Jeremy Crowle and DTES artist Honey Mae Caffin will introduce the Studio and support community members’ access. During the month of November, W2 will host a range of workshops with artists-in-residence including internationally renowned printmaker Favianna Rodriguez and BC-based First Nations artists Tania Willard and Marika Swan. W2 engages the community with Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users/VANDU, Power to Women Group (DTES Women’s Centre), and W2’s new neighbour, AIDS Vancouver. To register: www.creativetechnology.org/group/w2letterpressstudio. Free

History Walk
THEY ALL STARTED HERE
East End History Walk
with James Johnstone
Saturday October 31, 1:30pm-3:30pm
Meet at SW corner of Heatley
and E. Hastings
The neighbourhood today known as Strathcona was home to Vancouver’s first ethnic communities. Whether it was Little Italy, blacks in Hogan’s Alley, Japantown, a Jewish synagogue, or even a “Newfie” enclave, they all started here. Strathcona-based house history researcher and heritage activist James Johnstone has spent the last decade researching the history of over 700 Vancouver houses, 250 of which are in his East End neighbourhood. Join this stroll through the streets and alleys of Vancouver’s first neighbourhood as James shares some of the fascinating stories he has uncovered concerning the people who built and lived in the houses in the area. For more on his work, visit: www.homehistoryresearch.com and www.househistorian.blogspot.com. $10 for non-residents, pay what you can for local residents

Community
THEATRESPORTS
Saturday October 31, 2pm
Carnegie Community Centre Theatre
401 Main
For the past six weeks, actors of the Carnegie Theatre Workshop have worked with Bill Pozzobon, a regular player and instructor with the Vancouver TheatreSports League, to hone their theatre improvisation skills. Join the final class as the teams take to the stage and show us what they’ve got – and we know it will be “far from proper”! Free

Film/Video
AFTERNOON OF DOCUMENTARIES
Saturday October 31, 3:30pm-6pm
Carnegie Community Centre Theatre
401 Main
Free

3:30pm-4:25pm Flying High (2009)
Austrian artist and filmmaker Marina Leblhuber was in the Downtown Eastside last year and spent time visiting the community and talking with local artists and residents about their home and their work, resulting in a powerful documentary showing the DTES through the residents’ eyes rather than from the outside looking in. The images and words show the human faces without dwelling on the lived experiences as special hardships. The Festival is showing a rough-cut as Marina continues to work on the final version. (51”)

4:25pm-4:55pm Out of the Rain (2009)
Man-about-town Tom Quirk spent time this spring videotaping artists who participated in the Out of the Rain program. The intimate footage reveals conversations with a few participants and watches them create their art. Tom is a generous interviewer and we are privileged to eavesdrop. (23”)

4:55pm-5:15pm Leon Kaplan: About Dying (2009)
Author and filmmaker Leon Kaplan collaborates with local artist Quin Martins on this unflinching documentary. It was Leon’s desire to document his last days. We are left with a touching, insightful film about a subject matter that isn’t easy to talk about. (15”)

5:15pm-5:30pm Dear Vancouver (2009)
After writing scorned woman letters to Vancouver for years, Sharon Kravitz decided to put her rage to a more productive use – she enrolled in the Documentary Program at Capilano University. Intending to create a scathing portrayal of the city that had done her wrong, she left with a sort of love letter. Director Sharon Kravitz takes us on a moving personal journey as she struggles to define her relationship to the city
of Vancouver. Dear Vancouver is a story of love, destruction, forgiveness and hope, and shows us how our imagination can sustain us through the darkest of times and help point us forward. (14”)

Film/Video
EVENING OF DOCUMENTARIES
Saturday October 31, 6pm-10pm
Carnegie Community Centre Theatre
401 Main
Three years ago, in association with Humanities 101 and with help from the Neighbourhood Small Grants program, Colleen Carroll established a film series especially tailored for the Downtown Eastside. Documentaries for Thinkers has become a regular Saturday evening program at Carnegie. The festival is pleased to collaborate on this evening of memorable, exciting and thought-provoking films and videos.
Free

6pm-6:55pm Right to Fight (1982)
Filmmaker Nettie Wild’s rarely seen first film: a ‘video extravaganza’ on organizing for affordable housing. In 1981 Nettie Wild was performing in Buy, Buy Vancouver, Headlines Theatre’s very first production and agit-prop musical about the housing crisis in the city (sound familiar?) This led Nettie to direct Right to Fight, about the struggle for affordable housing in a Vancouver neighbourhood. The video was the beginning of Headlines’ involvement with television, a connection that grew into an innovative marriage of live theatre and the electronic medium. (50”)

6:55pm-7:10pm Escapades of the One Particular Mr. Noodle (1990)
Long before MuchMusic or CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera, director Sook-Yin Lee was an emerging artist in Vancouver, associating with Public Dreams and fronting the art-rock band Bob’s Your Uncle. This short comic film is Sook-Yin’s first directorial effort and takes a humourous and personal look at the question of assimilation. It concerns a second-generation Chinese-Canadian who recalls her childhood in a white middle class suburb and as an adult, her job walking the streets of Vancouver as the ten-foot Mr. Noodle, hawking the wonders of a pasta bar. (11”)

7:10pm-8:05pm Down Here (1997)
Director Veronica Mannix’s first documentary about the Downtown Eastside follows poet, ex-addict and political activist Bud Osborn as he “walks the talk” on the streets of the DTES. This film led to Mannix’s further film Through the Blue Lens. (50”)

8:05pm-8:55pm Canadian Steel, Chinese Grit (1998)
Directed by Karin Lee, Jan Walls, David Choi and Julia Ningyu Li, this documentary delves into the history of the Chinese workers without whom Canada’s national railway could never have been built. Hundreds of Chinese labourers lost their lives as construction pushed through the mountains of British Columbia. For those who survived, prospects did not improve after the railroad’s completion in 1885 due to poverty and the introduction of the head tax, which kept families apart. The film includes interviews with Chinese-Canadians whose parents and grandparents built the railroad. (48”)

8:55pm-9:30pm The Graffiti (2008)
Dine’ filmmaker, Arlene Bowman presents an experimental drama about an Anishinabe First Nations woman who tries unsuccessfully to change the views of two white men who scribble racist graffiti aimed at Indian people around Vancouver. She rebounds from the injustice by writing about it. Produced in cooperation with the Canada Council and the Union of BC Performers. (30”)

9:30pm-9:55pm Haru wa Akebono (2009)
Director Linda Ohama produced this documentary about Saving the Legacy Sakura of Oppenheimer Park and the role of the community coalition that came together to save the trees and preserve the story of the Issei (first generation Japanese-Canadian pioneers) who planted the trees. In February of this year, a healthy and full-grown Akebono Legacy Sakura tree was transplanted within the park to accommodate space for redevelopment plans. The Akebono was one of the original twenty-one sakura planted by Issei pioneers in 1977 to celebrate the Centennial of Japanese Canadians in Canada and signified wishes for better lives to future generations. (23”)