Photo courtesy of Tom Radenz

Born and raised in Vancouver, filmmaker Mark Sawers loves laughter. Sawers, 46, is an award-winning director of numerous short films and TV series with 20 years in the industry. His first feature-length production, Camera Shy, is one of the 63 films in the Vancouver International Film Festival’s (VIFF) Canadian Images program this year.

“I can’t take anything really seriously,” says Sawers. “When I start doing things seriously, I start mocking them right away.”

Sawers’ film, about an unfortunate Vancouver city councillor who finds himself the not-so-unsuspecting subject of ongoing scrutiny by a cameraman that follows him day and night throughout his public and private intrigues, is classified as a black comedy.

“It’s a sort of comedic descent into madness,” says Sawers. “We’re taking apart this man that is so full of himself. Politicians in public service are supposed to be in a selfless job, but it takes someone with a really huge ego to want to go out and be voted a leader.”

Pushing the boundaries of the genre to “almost not funny”, Sawers explores the dangers of narcissism through his character’s antics including the adoption of a couple of Vietnamese orphans in an effort to boost his social image.

“I marvel at people who do serious drama,” says Sawers. “But I prefer to get a laugh than tears.”

However, to fellow award-winning Vancouver director, Julia Ivanova, international adoption is no laughing matter.

“Adoptive parents are superhuman beings,” says Ivanova, who grew up in Moscow with her brother, Boris, the other half of the siblings’ production company, Interfilm. The duo immigrated to Canada in 1995 with their parents.

Ivanova’s 2012 VIFF submission, High Five: An Adoption Saga, is an emotional documentary about an “ordinary extraordinary” couple from Surrey, BC who adopt five Ukrainian children and their challenges and experiences as they adapt to cultural differences and each other.

“I respect adoptive parents a lot. For me, they have bigger hearts than other people,” says Ivanova, referring to the adoptive parents’ willingness to take in and love children that are not biologically their own.

It is especially important to Ivanova that her audience recognize the local origins of her documentary’s story. “To me, Cathy and Martin Ward [the adoptive parents featured in the documentary] represent what we think of as Canadians because they are of British descent. They are really British Columbian.”

However, Ivanova concedes that this perspective is shifting. Through immigration, international adoption and other factors, multiculturalism is changing the face or faces of what it means to be Canadian.

“I think it is the best thing ever that [adopted children] are brought to a multicultural place where everyone is from somewhere. It opens up for them a completely different way of seeing people.”

Julia Ivanova
Photo courtesy of Geno DellaMattia

According to Ivanova, most international orphans come from relatively mono-cultural countries– the Ukraine, China, etc. – and one of the biggest challenges for their assimilation is Canada’s culture of politeness.

“[Adoptive] parents actually suffer because they are trying to be nice,” she says. “The children are used to more direct communication or orders at the orphanages so they get confused when the message is more subtle.”

Unlike Sawers, Ivanova is not afraid of provoking tears. “My films are always emotional.”

Despite their different styles in filmmaking, both Ivanova and Sawers agree that the complexities of human interaction –
funny or sad – make for great storytelling.

The diversity of Canadian filmmaking is showcased strongly in this year’s festival.

“There’s something for everyone,” says Terry McEvoy, Canadian Images programmer for VIFF. In particular, he notes that the 2012 program includes more films about other parts of the world that reflect a farther view.

In Occupy Love, B.C.-born Velcrow Ripper, 48, who also resides in Brooklyn and the Toronto Islands, details the Occupy Movement that had its official start in New York on September 17th, 2012.

The third film in Ripper’s Fierce Light trilogy, which explores the ideas of activism and hope, Occupy Love documents a movement that “was waiting to be born.”

Poised to protest social and economic inequality, Occupy’s rallying cry began locally with Adbusters, an activist group based in Vancouver, very close to Ripper’s hometown of Gibsons.

For him, the actions of Occupy are the result of the economic and ecological crises of today which directly correlate to the Arab Spring and European Summer protests that have occurred abroad.

Unfortunately, Ripper says one of the worst ground zeroes on the planet is in our own backyard, the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, and with environmental regulations being stripped away, our country “is in the hot seat.”

A scene from Camera Shy, one of many films playing at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Mark Sawers Productions

While Ripper believes in the need for a global shift in consciousness and that it is “Canadians who can create social change”, Amy Miller of The Carbon Rush thinks that “the system needs to change fundamentally.”

Miller, born in 1980 in Sudbury, Ontario, has always been “extremely critical” of Canadian policies and the impact they have on the rest of the world.

“[Canadian policies] are no longer anything that surprises,” says Miller, who explored this subject in 2009’s film Myths for Profit: Canada’s Role in Industries of War and Peace.

Taking her to locations in Honduras, Panama, Brazil, and India, her second feature film, The Carbon Rush, exposes the offset projects that are impacting developing countries and their communities so that other nations can continue their industries relatively unchecked.

While the film was intended to be a deeper exploration of her country’s policies, “a Myths for Profit 2”, Miller found that offsetting was “an issue people were not very aware of”, and it’s important for Canada to have “the proper educational tools.”

Despite the struggles that come with limited resources and people trying to alter the message of the film, it is the first full-length documentary of its kind. For Miller, it is a starting point so that “new ideas can be brought forward.”

Recently, she went back to Honduras and Panama to share the film with communities that have been affected by this issue, and they were “really excited that their stories are being told.” She hopes that the film will make people aware so that we can “concretely look at solutions that could be put in place.”

According to McEvoy, films like Velcrow’s and Miller’s show that Canadians are engaged and socially conscious.

From local stories to global issues, McEvoy is confident that this year’s Canadian program will not disappoint Vancouver audiences. “The good thing about a good film is that people will find resonance if it is an interesting story well told.”

VIFF will take place September 27–October 12, 2012. For more information, visit www.viff.org