Movie Notes

SFU Woodward's will screen new film that explores why most young people don't vote

by Charlie Smith on September 10th, 2015 at 9:53 AM
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      Filmmaker and actor Dylan Playfair has teamed up with a former B.C. NDP cabinet minister, Ian Waddell, to explore why young people are far less likely to vote than their older counterparts.

      And they've done it in ways that may draw comparisons with the work of Morgan Spurlock.

      In the The Drop: Why Young People Don't Vote, Playfair travels around North America, including a stop on Parliament Hill, to answer the central question posed in the 50-minute documentary.

      Waddell is coproducer with Playfair of The Drop: Why Young People Don't Vote, which is directed by Kyle McCatchen. They're partners in Vancouver-based Triple Threat Films, which has joined forced with coproducer Robert Lang, an award-winning filmmaker with Kensington Communications.

      In a phone interview with the Straight, Waddell said that only 38 percent of millennials cast ballots in the last federal election, compared with nearly 70 percent of those over the age of 30.

      The former politician said that if young people turn out in greater numbers in the October 19 federal election, "they could determine the next government of Canada."

      Dylan Playfair travelled far and wide to figure out why most young people don't vote.

      There's a free screening at 7 p.m. on Wednesday (September 16) at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema in SFU Woodward's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (149 West Hastings Street).

      It will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Playfair, McCachen, former teenage Toronto mayoral candidate Morgan Baskin, and Maalik Shakoor, a young political activist from Ferguson, Missouri.

      Comments

      2 Comments

      Timothy Webster

      Sep 10, 2015 at 9:58pm

      Vote!!!!

      I am voting by Mail ballot.
      http://www.elections.ca/content2.aspx?section=vote&dir=svr&document=page...

      If you need to register
      https://www.elections.ca/Welcome.aspx?lang=e

      If you don't think you will be able to vote at election day or in the advanced polls. I suggest students and others who don't know for certainty where they will be on election day apply for a Mail ballot. This is an electronic application.

      Please share, with students and others (young people) who spend very little time near their official resident address and as a result will experience difficulty voting.

      Please apply for a Mail ballot right away.

      Oligarchy

      Sep 15, 2015 at 3:20pm

      It's not that it's too much effort to go vote it's that there's nobody worth voting for. We were all the same kids who didn't vote once and it was because every party offered the status quo with only tiny variations in political ideology. None of them represent their constituents either which is why party whips go around demanding allegience to everything the party leader votes on or you get back benched. There's no horizontal power structures to voice concerns, just top down hierarchy where your concerns will never be heard. That's why they don't vote, it's pointless to them.