Toronto filmmaker Avi Lewis and writer Naomi Klein are often to be seen on the Coast visiting family in Roberts Creek.
Two years ago, for eight months, they forsook Canada for Argentina in order to live and breathe the making of an extraordinary film, The Take.
The Sunshine Coast Film Society will screen this film in a special presentation at the Gibsons Heritage Playhouse on Feb. 1, where director Lewis will attend to answer questions and describe the passion behind the documentary. The Take, a true story with script by Naomi Klein, turns the camera on Argentinian workers who have taken over a bankrupt company, the Forja auto plant, following the economic decline of that country in 2001. This practice of making good come out of bad - turning abandoned factories and mass unemployment into recovered companies and workers' co-operatives - became a successful national initiative still operating in Argentina today. Lewis used to host a nightly debate show on TV called Counter Spin and is abundantly familiar with all manner of social and economic comment and criticism. He says that he and Klein were both involved in this type of public debate for many years - he on the TV show, she in her Globe and Mail columns - until they both became tired of just criticizing the system. "We wanted a solution, not a critique," he says.
They saw it in the Argentina model. He was not sure he realized that by embarking on this film, his first, he would be giving up three years of his life to the endless round of fundraising, filming, production and promotion that independent film-making entails. He is passionate about the result. "It's a very dramatic story about how they reclaimed their jobs, how they reclaimed their dignity," he said.
They have shown the film, a narrative documentary that follows families and individuals as they work together, to such diverse audiences as the haute couture black beret set at the Venice Film Festival to the working folk of Port Alice, B.C. Audiences everywhere have identified with the characters, says Lewis. The Film Society will also screen another interesting film, a musical with social context, Los Zafiros: Music from the Edge of Time, on Tuesday, Jan. 25, at the Playhouse.
It's an American film about a legendary Cuban group, Los Zafiros (The Sapphires), a vocal quartet plus guitar that fused doo wop, calypso, samba, soul and bossanova with traditional Latin styles in the early 1960s. The film's director, Lorenzo DeStefano, who lives on Pender Island, has spent many years travelling in Cuba and is fascinated by the group that he says has had as powerful an impact on its generation as the Beatles. The playwright, photographer and filmmaker describes the film as a poignant reunion between two surviving members of Los Zafiros as they tour the land of their youth. It has received a number of awards, most interesting the special documentary prize earned at the Santiago Alvarez Documentary Festival held in Cuba where it first screened. DeStefano will visit the Coast on Jan. 25 to meet the audience and answer questions about the making of his film. Since both films are special presentations, they will cost $7.50 for Film Society members. Membership costs $10 per season. For more info and reservations, log on to www.scfs.ca or call 604-886-1579.
