ANTI-WAR FEST HITS CANADA AT HOME
The press release for the Mobilization Against War and Occupation’s fourth annual Anti-War Film Festival sums up war’s greatest irony: its staying power.

“In a world that is marked all over by the scars of war and occupation, how could Vancouver’s Anti-War Film Festival do anything but grow?” notes the December 5 release. “And grow it has.”

This weekend (December 16 and 17), more than 22 films in seven different languages from 16 countries will be screened in two days at the Britannia Community Centre. Ten showings are premieres, including Kabul director Malik Shafi’i’s End of the Land, about Afghan refugees after 9/11, and the festival closer, the organization’s own documentary, Canada: Imperialist Abroad, Imperialist at Home. MAWO media spokesperson Ivan Drury admits it is a strange irony that a group espousing the end to war trumpets the growth of a festival of this nature. Wouldn’t it be better if the festival shrunk and disappeared?

“That would be the ideal, but that’s not the way it goes, or the way it’s going,” Drury told the Straight. “Maybe it’s the kind of thing that has to become a lot stronger before it becomes a lot smaller.”

Drury adds that more than 50 local businesses, community groups, service organizations, and labour and student unions have endorsed the festival. He points out that there is a constant theme of us versus them, or oppressed versus oppressor, throughout. Everything from the 1972 documentary Malcolm X to Dr. Strangelove is on display.

“It really depends on what people are looking for,” Drury adds. “The real highlights are the films that challenge the perceptions that are pushed forward by the television media, mainstream media, and the [Canadian] government that is going to war [in Afghanistan.]”

Admission is by donation. For more information and a full schedule, visit www.mawovancouver.org/ .

> Matthew Burrows

WHAT PRICE PARADISE?
Homelessness may be a huge issue now, but for more than 30 years those seeking an alternative to the grind of modern capitalist society escaped to Sombrio Beach, a 47-kilometre haven for new agers, surfers, artists, and others on the southwestern tip of Vancouver Island between Jordan River and Port Renfrew. About 20 cabins were built, and between 30 and 40 people took up residence. In the mid ’90s, the B.C. government purchased the land and incorporated it into Juan de Fuca Park. The squatters received eviction notices, and their community—regarded as Canada’s last major hippie commune—was dispersed and destroyed.

Nanaimo-based filmmaker Paul Manly shot the community being cleared out, tracked down the residents to find out what happened to them after they moved on, and incorporated footage from other filmmakers to create the documentary Sombrio.

Manly told the Straight that the residents didn’t want him filming a documentary about them when he graduated from broadcasting school (“They weren’t interested in the publicity”), but their attitude quickly changed after the government moved in. Some of his interviewees, such as a couple with 10 kids, didn’t want to speak to media but permitted Manly to interview them because he had gotten to know them over the years. (He had visited the scenic beach numerous times since 1980).

On Friday (December 15), find out what happened to the former residents when Sombrio shows at 7:30 and 9:05 p.m. at the Pacific Cinémathèque, Manly will participate in Q&A sessions after the screenings.

> Craig Takeuchi

TEST YOUR INTELLIGENCE
Two weeks ago this column reported on the dilemma in Canadian TV drama and what Canadian audiences could do. Here’s another way that may also prove rewarding. CBC TV’s Intelligence and Eyespot.com have launched an Intelligence mash-up contest.

Visit the Intelligence Web site ( www.cbc.ca/intelligence/ ), which lists entry information and has files you can download and mash up using Eyespot’s on-line mixer.

Each week, the Intelligence creative team will highlight a favourite entry on its Web site. The contest closes January 23, 2007, and the grand-prize winner (who will win an Apple MacBook Pro with Apple’s Final Cut Studio) and two honourable mentions (each will receive a 30-gigabyte iPod) will be selected on the date of the season finale, January 30.

> Craig Takeuchi