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Film festival selections aim to connect

Controversial pipeline proposal subject of afternoon showing
Film festival selections aim to connect

Daytime showings on Friday, February 17, at Powell River Film Festival will provoke debate, inspire creativity and leave audiences touched by nature’s presence.

Restructuring of the land will be radical, the economic benefits highly concentrated for a few and the danger and likely outcome of spills truly fearsome, warn the makers of On the Line, a film presented at 3 pm in Evergreen Theatre.

Hearings for the Northern Gateway pipeline project, a proposal by Enbridge Inc. to build a pipeline to move tons of extracted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands across two provinces for shipment to Asian markets, began this month.

Last year, On the Line director Frank Wolf, together with his compatriot Todd McGowan, undertook a low-tech trip through the proposed route, making investigative pit stops along the way.

Wolf gives voice to the citizens whose lives will be directly upended by the project; some are ambivalent, most opposed, all are fearful. Local fishing guides, first nations bands who depend on salmon for their livelihood and culture, farmers whose land will be compromised by construction and pollution—these people and their lives are a definitive rebuke to environmental heedlessness and corporate greed.

Wolf’s trip, through the relatively unspoiled land of two provinces, is a slowly cumulative demonstration of what exists now. It documents the beauty of both agricultural and untouched lands, with their biodiversity of life and the cultures of its people, all of which could be ruined tomorrow if economic and energy growth is allowed to expand unchecked.

This film serves as witness to what the corporate media tries to marginalize: here will be the natural and human costs of both the tar sands and our refusal to reduce our energy consumption. We are all on the line, warn Wolf and McGowan. Wolf will be in attendance at the showing.

Friday morning opens at 9:30 am with Louder than a Bomb, directed by Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel. Every year, more than 600 teenagers from over 60 Chicago schools gather for the world’s largest youth poetry slam. Founded in 2001, this competition is the only event of its kind in the United States: a youth poetry slam built with teams.

This film is about passion, competition, teamwork and trust. By turns hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the tempestuous lives of unforgettable youth, exploring the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa. This is not “high school poetry,” this is the language of a joyful release by irrepressibly talented teenagers obsessed with making words dance and sing. How and why they do it, and the community they create along the way, is at the heart of this inspiring film.

The Whale, with directors Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit, documents the life of Luna, a young orca separated from his family in Nootka Sound. Craving connection, Luna forged relationships with humans he encountered, endearing himself to most, but annoying some. It was as if we were not ready to make the leap of faith into his world in the way he did into ours. The Whale, showing at 12:30 pm on Friday, celebrates the life of this smart, friendly and determined young being, who reached out to us, challenging our understanding of other intelligence.

For more information about these films and others, interested readers can contact the festival online. Tickets are on sale at Breakwater Books and Coffee, Armitage Mens Wear and online.