Reel Justice film guide
Please click on film title for more information.
Bevel Up (5:30 p.m. in Theatre 2 shows before Insite)
Broken Down (2 p.m. in Theatre 2 shows before Homelessness and the Human Predicament)
Carts of Darkness (5:30 p.m. in Theatre 1 shows before We Are All The Key)
The Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey (12 noon in Theatre 2)
Down Here (12 noon in Theatre 1 shows before Something to Eat, a Place to Sleep, and Someone Who Gives a Damn)
Finding Dawn (7:10 p.m. in Theatre 1)
Homelessness and the Human Predicament (2 p.m. in Theatre 2 shows after Broken Down)
Insite: Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (5:30 p.m. in Theatre 2 shows after Bevel Up)
It Was A Wonderful Life (2 p.m. in Theatre 3)
Metamorphosis: An In-Depth Look at the Life of Former Street Kids (7:10 p.m. in Theatre 4 shows after No Way Home: Canada's Street Kids)
No Way Home: Canada’s Street Kids (7:10 p.m. in Theatre 4 shows before Metamorphosis)
The Purpose of Life is Rice…Wink (2 p.m. in Theatre 1 shows after Devil Plays Hardball)
A Safer Sex Trade (5:30 p.m. in Theatre 4)
Something to Eat, A Place to Sleep and Someone Who Gives a Damn (12 noon in Theatre 1 shows after Down Here)
Stories of Strength (7:10 p.m. in Theatre 2) shows after This Dust of Words
The Way Home (rough cut, work-in-progress screening)(12 noon in Theatre 3)
This Dust of Words (7:10 p.m. in Theatre 2 shows before Stories of Strength
We Are All The Key (5:30 p.m. in Theatre 1 shows after Carts of Darkness)
Bevel Up
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 2 at: 5:30pm (45 min) Screened alongside InSite.
Year: 2007
Director: Nettie Wild
Bevel Up follows street nurses from the outreach street program of the BC Centre for Disease Control as they work with youth, sex workers, and street-entrenched men and women in the alleys and hotels of Vancouver's inner city.
The footage is startling in its intimacy, compassion, and real-life drama. Divided into chapters, each segment offers additional compelling on-location footage and expert interviews.
Key ethical, practical and legal issues are discussed and debated by the nurses featured in the documentary as well as a nursing ethicist and nursing practice consultant from the British Columbia College of Nurses.
Go to Bevel Up website
Laura Track, LLB, Housing Advocate, Pivot Legal Society, will be available to respond to audience questions after the film.
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Broken Down
 (Cowichan Valley and Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 2 at: 2:00pm (60 min)
Screened alongside Homelessness and the Human Predicament
Year: 2008
 Director: Harold C. Joe
Local Aboriginal filmmaker Harold C. Joe's gritty, compassionate and important film "Broken Down" is a story of homelessness in the Cowichan Valley and Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The film chronicles Harold's four-day journey spent living on the streets to find out why folks become homeless and how drugs and alcohol keep them that way. His own experiences were both tough and touching. His surprise at how hard it really is to live the exposed life of the homeless added personal truth to the gritty reality of the story. His concern for the area's homeless found a fine point following the tragic death of Paul Francis James, who had been living in a makeshift shed near downtown Duncan when it burned down.
Harold Joe graduated from the "Aboriginal Film & Television Training Program" at Capilano University. He is fascinated with film and has a passion for documentaries based on Aboriginal culture. "As an Aboriginal filmmaker, I would like to protect our future by preserving our past, capturing our elders on film as they recollect history to pass onto future generations. I feel it is important to educate not only First Nations people, but the non-Aboriginal community"
Harold Joe will be in attendance to respond to questions after the film.
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Carts of Darkness
 (North Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 1 at: 5:30pm (60 min)
Screened alongside We Are All The Key.
Year: 2008
Director: Murray Siple
In the picture-postcard community of North Vancouver, local bottle pickers have turned the act of binning into a thriving subculture of shopping cart racing. Murray Siple, a former snowboarder and sport film director injured in a serious car accident ten years ago, returns to filmmaking to capture their story in the documentary Carts of Darkness.
Shot in stunning high-definition and featuring tracks from Black Mountain, Ladyhawk, Vetiver, Bison, and Alan Boyd, of Little Sparta, Carts of Darkness borrows the cinematic language of extreme sports films to capture the risk and intensity of life lived on the very edge.
Go to Carts of Darkness website.
Producer Tracey Friesen will be available to answer questions after the screening.
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The Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey
 (Canada/International)
Screening in Theatre 2 at: 12:00pm (54 min)
Year: 2007
Director: Connie Littlefield
While they are law enforcement officers, the inherent vagueness of their oath allows room for intelligent interpretation as to what "enforcement" means. For members of L.E.A.P (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) it means not busting you for smoking weed, hell maybe not even busting you if you have a twenty up your nose.
Because for them it is no big secret that the War on Drugs is a total bust; an ideological battle getting us nowhere and in fact perpetuating a devastating cycle of misspent energy that truly, only keeps the whole mess going round. Filled with honest and totally surprising interviews from Police Officers from across North America, director Connie Littlefield’s documentary The Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey about the failure of our prohibition style war on drugs is playing as part of The No More Drug War Double Bill this weekend.
With testimonials from cops and judges from Texas and Florida to Vancouver and California this is one of those rare documentaries that is so eloquent and concise that you couldn't think of a better way to express or even explore the subject.
Go to The Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey website
Douglas King, LLB, will be available to respond to audience questions after the film.
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Devil Plays Hardball
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 1 at: 2:00pm (60 min)
Screened alongside The Purpose of Life is Rice… Wink
Year: 2006
Director: Nijole Kujmickas
“If you could get one person off the street, would you? Could you? Devil Plays Hardball is a radical interventionist documentary by Paperny Films that seeks to answer this question.
Four well-established Vancouver residents have 10-months to mentor homeless individuals from various Vancouver neighborhoods who have the desire – but not necessarily the means – to re-enter mainstream society. What ensues is a complicated journey that provides an up-close and intimate look at the people most of us choose to ignore – Canada's homeless.”
Devil Plays Hardball is directed by Nijole Kujmickas, and produced by Audrey Mehler of Paperny Films in association with CBC Newsworld.
Go to Devil Plays Hardball website
Director and filmmaker, Nijole Kuzmickas, will be available to respond to questions after the screening.
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Down Here
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 1 at: 12:00pm (30 min)
Featured alongside Something to Eat, A Place to Sleep, and Someone Who Gives a Damn
Year: 2008
Director: Charles Wilkinson
A short documentary film about life without.
Down Here is a story about a place that is growing in the heart of our city. It is a place we occasionally glimpse from our cars, a harshly surreal world inhabited by fringe people – the poor, hungry, sick, ashamed.
Alongside cinematically-filmed scenes of dark allies, refuse-strewn streets and crumbling buildings are intercut conversations with eight remarkable residents. These street dwellers tell us their tales of life without: Life without family, shelter, friendship, comfort, love; life without resistance to or protection from the addictions, the predators; life without the safety net that was once considered a fundamental human right. We begin to see them as what they once were, what they struggle to remain – sons, daughters, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, lovers. We see their daily quests – their struggles to exist in a hostile and frequently toxic environment. These intimate conversations unfold in a most unusual way.
Homeless people, when interviewed at all, are typically filmed on the street, in available light, competing for our attention with traffic, sirens, and fellow residents invariably hostile to the camera crew. In Down Here the residents are filmed in a manner usually reserved for celebrities – they are beautifully lit, the environment is quiet and safe, and the conversations are one-on-one. No film crew. The director is alone in a room with the subject and the camera. As the story progresses, we become more and more deeply immersed in this alien world. And then the film pulls back sharply outside the box and we see ourselves.
Screened in competition at: Beloit, Chicago International Film Festival; Victoria International Film Festival; the Vancouver International Film Festival, where it was voted “most popular Canadian short”; and the Cleveland International Film Festival where it won Best Documentary Short Film.
Go to Down Here website
Filmmaker Charles Wilkinson will be available to answer questions after the screening.
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Finding Dawn
 (Canada)
Screening in Theatre 1 at: 7:10pm (73 min)
Year: 2006
Director: Christine Welsh
Dawn Crey. Ramona Wilson. Daleen Kay Bosse. These are just three of the estimated 500 Aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in Canada over the past thirty years.
Directed by acclaimed Métis filmmaker Christine Welsh, Finding Dawn is a compelling documentary that puts a human face to this national tragedy. This is an epic journey into the dark heart of Native women’s experience in Canada. From Vancouver’s skid row, where more than 60 women are missing, we travel to the “Highway of Tears” in northern British Columbia, and onward to Saskatoon, where the murders and disappearances of Native women remain unresolved.
Along the road to honour those who have passed, we uncover reason for hope. It lives in Native rights activists Professor Janice Acoose and Fay Blaney. It drives events such as the annual Women’s Memorial March in Vancouver and inspires communities all along the length of Highway 16 to come together to demand change.
Finding Dawn illustrates the deep historical, social and economic factors that contribute to the epidemic of violence against Native women in this country. It goes further to present the ultimate message that stopping the violence is everyone’s responsibility.
Go to Finding Dawn website
Tracey Friesen, NFB representative, will introduce the film. Speaker(s) at Q/A after the screening to be announced
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Homelessness and the Human Predicament
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 2 at: 2 p.m. (22 min)
Screened alongside Broken Down.
Year: 2009
Director: Kirsty Matthews
The documentary follows the progression of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s initiative to provide emergency shelters for the homeless over the winter. His appeal is urgent: “I don’t want to see anyone die on the streets this winter!”
Tragically Robertson’s appeal is in vain, somebody does die on the streets: A 47-year-old woman known as Tracey, burns to death whilst trying to stay warm. Public response to her death is varied and sometimes vicious. One woman comments, “This woman contributed nothing to society and she would continue to be mooching off society were she still alive... this woman deserves no obituary, no grief.”
Tracey’s death and public response to it compels the film to ask some serious questions: How does our response to homelessness reflect our sense of humanity? Has Vancouver developed an ‘us-them’ culture, with ‘haves’ on the ones side and ‘have-nots’ on the other? Is homelessness a symptom of a bigger problem affecting our society?
Filmmaker Kirsty Matthews and Reverend Ric Matthews of First United Church will be available to answer questions after the screening.
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Insite: Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 2 at: 5:30pm (11 min)
Screened alongside Bevel Up
Year: 2009
Director: Laurie Kindiak
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. One of the poorest neighborhood’s in Canada with one of the largest drug scenes in the country. In a neighborhood of over 16,000 people, 5000 injection drug users live and try to maintain their life. In 2003, due to an epidemic HIV rate of 30%and Hepatitis rate of 91%, Insite was opened; North America’s first safe injection site.
Five years later, the clinic’s impact on people in that area is undeniable. Insite has forged a strong relationship in the community and has become a working part of the neighborhood itself. The people living in that area, have laid a claim of ownership to the clinic. It is their place of refuge. Not only a safe injection site, but also a place to go when they’re injured, or cold, or just need someone to talk to, judgment free.
Filmmaker Laurie Kindiak will be available to answer questions after the screening.
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It Was a Wonderful Life
(USA)
Year: 1993
Screening in Theatre 3 at: 2 p.m. (82 min)
Director: Michèle Ohayon
In this award-winning festival standout, Academy Award nominee Michèle Ohayon presents a riveting and powerful account of six women who are members of America's growing hidden homeless population.
Narrated by Jodie Foster and with an original musical score by Melissa Etheridge, this heart-wrenching film expertly captures the hardships and triumphs these courageous women experience in their daily struggle for survival.
Meet Josephine, Reena, Marie, Jeanette, Lou and Terry. They are intelligent, articulate women who had secure, active, and fulfilling lives until one day everything unravelled. Now homeless after an ugly divorce or loss of a job, these women do not show up in shelters or receive public assistance; they do not sleep in doorways or ask for handouts.
Too proud to be counted, they prefer to exist under the radar, sleeping out of their cars or in cheap motels. Both compelling and consciousness-raising, It Was a Wonderful Life cuts through the stereotypes and clichés to give a human face to this undeniable tragedy.
With fresh insight into the plight of the homeless, Ohayon shows how these women have managed to make a life for themselves, using only their ingenuity and perseverance to get by.
According to Judy Graves, Outreach Coordinator for Vancouver’s Housing Department, this film could have been made here – the issue is as pressing and relevant today in Vancouver as it was in California 16 years ago. It Was a Wonderful is an outstanding and important film.
Go to It Was a Wonderful Life website
Judy Graves, Outreach Coordinator, Housing Department, City of Vancouver, and Leslie Stern, Project Coordinator of the Women In Search of Housing Society (WISHS), will be available to respond to questions after the film.
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Metamorphosis: An In-Depth Look at the Life of Former Street Kids
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 4 at: 7:10pm (34 min)
Screened alongside No Way Home.
Year: 2005
Director: Jennifer Mervyn
This documentary features four BC youth, two of whom are aboriginal, who tell their stories about life on the streets and what they had to do to leave that life behind them.
Politicians, police, and front-line workers are interviewed for their input in what helps facilitate exits to homelessness for young people. Concerns raised in the film include lack of available treatment for youth struggling with substance abuse, the need for treatment on demand, the deficits in the “4 Pillars Approach”, and the challenges of the Young Offenders Act.
The film takes a critical look at the resilience factors in youth leaving the street, and examines the process of transition that successful youth have made. Powerful and thought-provoking, Metamorphosis raises important questions about the changes we need to make to help future youth successfully transition off the street.
Go to Metamorphosis website
Jennifer Mervyn, filmmaker and former street youth, and Suzanne Noel, one of the youth featured in the film, will be available to answer questions after the screening.
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No Way Home: Canada’s Street Kids
 (Toronto)
Screening in Theatre 4 at: 7:10pm (42 min)
Screened alongside Metamorphosis.
Year: 2004
Directors: The Fifth Estate, CBC
While youth homelessness is not a new phenomenon, it has become more severe in Canada over the past two decades. How many youth homeless are there? No one is quite certain of the total number of homeless – both adult and youth – that exist in Canada.
The National Homelessness Initiative (NHI) was set up by the federal government in the late ‘90s as a response to the burgeoning homelessness crisis seen in major urban centers. But the five years since its inception, the NHI admits there’s no accurate number for Canada’s homeless.
The figure that is used in media accounts is that 200,000 Canadians are homeless at some point during any given year, of which about one third are youth (25 years and under) – or about 50,000 to 66,000. On any given night, this means approximately 33,000 Canadians are homeless, of which about 8,333 to 11,000 are youth. In the City of Toronto – which has the largest homeless population in Canada – one indication that youth homeless problem is getting worse can be seen in the growth of beds in the shelter system.
Today, in Toronto, there are 12 shelters for youth, offering up 522 beds. In 1979, there were only two youth shelters in the city, with a total of 95 beds. In the past 25 years there has been a 450% increase in youth shelter beds. In Toronto, a good estimate suggests there are at least 10,000 different youth who are homeless at one point on any given year – and anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 on a given night.
Go to No Way Home website
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The Purpose of Life is Rice…Wink
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 1 at: 2 p.m. (34 min)
Screened alongside Devil Plays Hardball.
Year: 2009
Directors: Sterling Pache and Danse Crowkiller
A character documentary shot in the first-person by Danse Crowkiller who lives on the street at the corner of Commercial Drive and Kitchener Street in Vancouver.
The film intimately explores Danse’s day-to-day life, his art, his ideas, his involvement in the community, his friends, his contributions and his adventures.
The documentary, shot in the first person, presents the opportunity to share Danse’s unique spirit and his identity beyond his homelessness. It’s an exciting look into the unconventional and beautiful life of an individual who gives more than he takes and is loved by his community.
Go to The Pupose of Life is Rice website
Filmmakers Sterling Pache and Danse Crowkiller will be available to answer questions after the screening.
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A Safer Sex Trade
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 4 at: 5:30pm (50 min)
Year: 2006
Director: Carolyn Allain
Scarlett is a highly successful madam with 30 years experience in the sex trade business; Simone is a high-class sex worker who services wealthy clients in five Western Canadian cities; and Jennifer is a former drug addicted prostitute who now works tirelessly to offer support to sex trade workers on the streets. These women have had different experiences in the sex trade business, but they're united by one concern-the safety of women in their stigmatized industry.
Jennifer exposes the ugly side of Vancouver's streets, where Canada's current laws have led to the increasing marginalization of street walkers and have made the women at the front lines of the notorious Downtown Eastside particularly vulnerable. It's a danger that has made international headlines with the arrest and recent conviction of Robert Willie Pickton. Charged with the murder of 26 women, in December 2007 he was found guilty of second degree murder of 6 Vancouver sex trade workers. Pickton still faces a further 20 murder charges.
On the other side are high-priced sex workers like Simone, who are not at such risk. Their expensive services are advertised in the yellow pages as escort agencies, and are taxed and operated under tacit approval of the police.
“The sex trade is a valid career option today if managed properly," says Scarlett, who now speaks publicly about her work as a madam and her belief that prostitution should be legalized.
A Safer Sex Trade explores this double standard at work by putting faces to the women who represent both perspectives: life in the high rise and on the street.
A Safer Sex Trade was produced and directed by Carolyn Allain and co-written with David Ray. The documentary is produced by Cheap and Dirty Productions Inc., in association with CBC Newsworld.
Go to A Safer Sex Trade website
Director Carolyn Allain and Madam Scarlett Lake will be in attendance.
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Something to Eat, A Place to Sleep and Someone Who Gives a Damn
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 1 at: 12:00pm (35 min)
Screened alongside Down Here.
Year: 2008
Directors: Les Merson and Ken Villeneuve
This persuasive and honest documentary explores the homeless epidemic in metro Vancouver by putting a face to homelessness and giving a voice to the homeless and those who work with them. It is a film filled with hope. Find out how you can make a difference.
Director Les Merson will be available to answer questions after the screening.
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Stories of Strength
(Vancouver)
Year: 2007
Screening in Theatre 2 at: 7:10 p.m. (12 min)
Screened alongside This Dust of Words
Produced by: Vancouver Coastal Health
This film is a moving piece about the value of secure housing in people’s lives. From Vancouver Coastal Health, the video features the personal stories of three individuals dealing with the challenges of a mental illness and/or an addiction and the support they receive from friends and family.
It brings a human face to mental illness and addiction and reminds us that by focusing on strengths and abilities, people can live full and happy lives in a place that is understanding and welcoming.
Stories of Strength was produced and is owned by Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (“VCHA”). VCHA owns all world-wide copyright and other intellectual property rights in this production and any reproduction in whole or in part by any means is expressly prohibited without the express written authorization of VCHA.
Go to website about film
Gerry Bradley, Team Director of Strathcona Mental Health for Vancouver Coastal Health, will be available to respond to questions after the screening.
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This Dust of Words
 (USA)
Screening in Theatre 2 at: 7:10pm (62 min)
Screened alongside Stories of Strength
Year: 2007
Director: Bill Rose
A haunting documentary elegy to thwarted promise, This Dust of Words traces the life of Elizabeth Wiltsee, a young writer of uncompromising talent who ultimately died a lonely death at age 50, homeless and beset by paranoid schizophrenia.
Elizabeth had an IQ of 200, taught herself to read at the age of four, and was translating classical Greek at ten. She attended Stanford, where she was lauded as a student of unlimited potential. After graduation, she chose to live on the fringes, working as an au pair in Europe, in university libraries, and as a proofreader.
All the while, she kept writing and reading prodigiously — sending off numerous plays and novels to publishers (all of which were rejected) — as her mental illness progressed. In 1994, not coping well and unable to work, she moved to the town of Watsonville, California, where she wound up living on the streets and sleeping on the steps of a local church. She disappeared after leaving town in 1999; her skeletal remains were found months later in a wilderness area 60 miles away.
The film traces the mystery of her life, interweaving Wiltsee’s writings with archival footage of her at Stanford and interviews with her professors, her brother, and Watsonville citizens who had tried to reach out to her.
Go to This Dust of Words website
Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, UBC, will be available to respond to questions after the screening.
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We Are All The Key
 (Vancouver)
Screening in Theatre 1 at: 5:30pm (10 min)
Screened alongside Carts of Darkness
Year: 2009
Directors: Streetohome
We believe there are two sides to the homeless story. On one side of the homeless issue is the story of people and common decency. This side of the story focuses on the human right of people to have access to safe and decent housing in a civil society.
The other side of the story is about common sense. It is about numbers. Studies from various cities show that taxpayers pay anywhere from $55,000 to $135,000 a year for someone who is experiencing homelessness.
No matter how it's measured, it cost less to provide these people with decent and safe housing. This short film is produced by Streetohome, a community-based foundation working to ensure that all Vancouver citizens have access to safe, decent and affordable housing by 2015.
Go to Streetohome website
Jae Kim, President of Streettohome will be available to answer questions after the screening.
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