DOXA 2017 review: Vancouver: No Fixed Address
Canada
David Suzuki, Bob Rennie, and your handsome, well-dressed mayor face the camera in this fascinating doc, which dissects Vancouver’s housing crisis from all angles, including the one that wants to conflate the heartless vicissitudes of global economics with racism.
We also hear from a 71-year-old man forced to live in his van on Kits Beach, along with new immigrants in West Van, and resourceful East Side millennials who sound more pissed off about their vanishing future than they probably realize. Musqueam playwright Quelemia Sparrow almost gets the last word with, by far, the film’s most powerful and context-rich statement.
It cries out for some archival footage here and there, but the images supplied by filmmaker Charles Wilkinson are typically breathtaking, making for one of the more ravishing acts of shit disturbance you’re likely to see. Heroes and villains will vary depending on your POV, but a postscreening town hall on Saturday (May 6) including Sandy Garossino and journalist Sam Cooper, two of the film’s more rational talking heads, might trigger the city’s next riot.
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