The Ghosts of Oakalla

Documentary film students from Langara College have just finished shooting individual graduate films in HD Video, with the added experience of working as crew on other projects. Now begins the truly daunting final leg of their journey of creative discovery - two long weeks of cutting and polishing their stories in the Mac Lab.

My own project is Oakalla, a ten minute rendering of a painful story which has diminished with the passage of time. Oakalla was an experiment in prison reform which degenerated into a hated warehouse of society's mistakes and failures. The entire complex fell to the wrecker's ball years ago, and now only exists as artifacts in museum storage and as bitter or ironic memories held by thousands of people in our province. Oakalla was notorious for what occured inside its decaying walls, but also for a decades-long drama performed by politicians determined to eject the crumbling facility from a beautiful and much coveted urban landscape. Many have a story to tell, and fortunately for me, they often speak well.

Following completion of the Doc Course I plan to begin production of a longer version of Ghosts, in which I will develop some of the themes which continue to fascinate me, as well as give voice unresolved issues from Oakalla's past which several marginalized groups are eager to have return to the public's consciousness. Oakalla history is very deep and incredibly complex. You can dive into it as deeply as your lungs and imagination will bear. As a busy crossroad for the risen and the fallen, Oakalla hosted a more representative sampling of our people than any other public instiution - the desperate poor, the career criminals, political activists, illegal migrants, the sexual transgressors, misguided youth, religious zealots, outlaw financiers, and so many more. The film seeks to uncover compelling stories which have contemporary currency, and which need to be valued.
Crew photo for Oakalla, filmed in Burnaby, B.C. from July 14-16. The crew, L. to R. was: Alejandro Zuluago (Camera B), Andres Salas (Sound & Prod. Stills), Ron Jack (Writer/Director), Greg Masuda (Camera A), Sameer Khan (Lighting & Grip).

Oakalla lands harbour many ghosts, and some refuse to remain buried. We witnessed the most recent example in the run-up to the recent B.C. Provincial election when there was was a spirited tussle over the issue of the government plan to site a remand centre in the now decommissioned Youth Detention facility across the street from the B.C.I.T. campus on Willingdon. One Vancouver Blog, CityCaucus.com ran a focus piece on February 10 entitled "Remember Oakalla?" which attempted to skewer Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan. The mayor's wife was on the ballot, offering to represent the newly drawn provincial riding which includes the massive condo complex built on the old Oakala Prison property. The NDP succeeded in turning out the vote in Deer Lake and Mrs. Corrigan crushed the sitting Liberal, who was never truly comfortable speaking to an ill defined Law and Order issue.

Derek Corrigan worked as a guard at Oakalla in the 1970s, and as an experienced lawyer and probation officer, he was positioned to become a guiding voice on City Council at the time of the New Year's Day mass escape at Oakalla (1988), which offered a golden opportunity for an effective campaign to have it closed down. In an interview conducted for the film the savvy political warrior offered insightful remarks and a few salty memories about Oakalla and its necessary fate. His voice and others will add authority to the principle themes of my film.

Over the years, thousands of weapons were improvised by the inmates in Oakalla Prison, and the Burnaby Village Museum has a representative sampling. Here L. to R. are four of the most common types: 1. a shank made by patiently wearing an edge onto a piece of scrap steel 2. a shiv made by melting a metal point into a plastic toothbrush handle 3. a fork stolen from the mess hall and modified 4. a crude variation on brass knuckles - using steel nails, wood scrap and twine.

Documenting memories of Oakalla prison 1912-1991

It is the common verdict that all prisons and jails are dangerous, frightening places and most of our communities simply will not consider hosting one. Yet there have been fewer than a half dozen prisons in all of Canadian history which truly deserve to be labeled "infamous". American penal history has its Alcatraz, its Leavenworth, Sing Sing, Folsom, San Quentin and many more. In Canada the most feared prison was the "super-maximum" called Millhaven, built outside of Kingston, Ontario. Here on the Pacific Coast no prison was more "infamous" than Oakalla, in Burnaby.

The statistics for Oakalla hint at the horror and decades of unrelenting pain. There were 44 official executions (hangings) ... 890 escapes between 1940-1990 and a score of full scale riots. There were also dozens of suicides and a few thousand suicide attempts, during the prison's last decades of operation.
A 1987 aerial photo of the main hall of the Oakalla prison complex in Burnaby, B.C., near Vancouver. Oakalla was completely demolished in 1992 at the insistence of the municipal government, and replaced by 531 "luxury" condo townhouses and rental apartments. It has been suggested that the ghosts of the men executed at Oakalla still haunt the hillside property. Research for THE GHOSTS OF OAKALLA has uncovered many extraordinary and compelling stories of its desperate inmates.

There have been just a handful of books published about Oakalla Prison and Earl Andersen's HARD PLACE TO DO TIME (1993) is probably the best of the bunch. Ironically, given the fact that Oakalla was always in the news, there have been no documentary films produced on its history or its incredible inmate population. Well we are now addressing that lack of foresight because time is running out. The survivors are dying off and living memory has become dull. Pre-production is underway and we will have an HD video short ready for viewing by mid-August. Any person or group with an interest in viewing THE GHOSTS OF OAKALLA should send me their contact information.

The isolation unit of the infamous Oakalla Prison in Burnaby, B.C. The institution had a fascinating and deeply troubled history. It housed a Who's Who of British Columbia criminals and political prisoners.

DISTRICT 9 - what is Neill Blomkamp up to?

I'm old enough now that I can draw circles around genres which once excited publishers and Hollywood agents, but which were just as quickly discarded. Can you recall for instance, the sinister South African gangsters and rogue Apartheid agents who once populated movies like Lethal Weapon 2 and books like VORTEX, the Larry Bond thriller? The genre exploded in the late 1980s when the Soviet Union collapsed and fiction producers were suddenly desperate to find a viable alternative to the KGB. The nemesis for the 90s had to be a viable stereotype, and one which was hated by a broad demographic. Apartheid-era South Africans were perceived as vile villains who fit the Bill. They were after all sophisticated, cunning, privileged and desperate to survive.

Well sir, our world changed too quickly. In Russia the mafia emerged as the new strongmen and Muslim terrorists were a gift to our pop culture, scarier than the KGB ever was. As for the Republic of South Africa, the A.N.C. regime is already into its third president and a couple of million black kids were born under A.N.C. slogans and promises. Those who didn't like the "new South Africa" simply left, and they now constitute a very tame diaspora in their adoptive countries. That said, a South African born Canadian has just crafted his first feature film, and his unique vision might trigger something akin to a new genre. That would be fun ! Where CHARLIE JADE , the Canadian-funded South African television series failed, perhaps DISTRICT 9 the riskier Science Fiction - allegory may just succeed in stirring imaginations.

In 2005 Neill Blomkamp and friends crafted a six minute short called ALIVE IN JOBURG. The server couldn't keep up with the demand and the film became an Internet phenomenon. Peter Jackson was impressed and invited Blomkamp to try the creative atmosphere in New Zealand.

PART ONE: Original Sin

Neill Blomkamp arrived in Vancouver, B.C. with a South African high school diploma in his hand and a burgeoning talent for computer graphics. It seems he was not born with "original sin" as his family had avoided the taint of active participation in the organs of "White Rule". Neill never could wash the R.S.A. out of his hair, and so after some training here in computer VFX , he secured steady employment and made it a personal priority to return to his native land each summer and discuss creative collaboration with young filmmakers who had stayed behind.

My research into Blomkamp's life shows that he has surprising depth, and that he will not shy from social issues that would crucify less sure men. With his movie DISTRICT 9, Blomkamp is engaging in political allegory every bit as clever and biting as George Orwell pulled off with ANIMAL FARM several decades ago. We are witnessing a creative concept which is unique and possibly significant.

A production still from DISTRICT 9, a low budget Science Fiction - Allegory produced by Director Peter Jackson. The movie goes into general release on August 14. The INDEPENDENCE DAY type Alien spacecraft of Blomkamp's 2005 short, has been replaced by vessels equally sinister looking.

When SONY announced this project back in November of 2007, I was impressed by Blomkamp's tenacity and skill at getting the "Big Boys" to trust his creative judgement. The Fan Blogs are currently busy scraping up every studio dangle or minute clue needed to assemble a prediction of what this movie will look like. Leaked photos show a small outdoor set standing in for the entrance to DISTRICT 9, and confirm that the money was very tight. The Casting was also very low budget.

We were told that Blomkamp co-wrote the DISTRICT 9 script with "his partner" Terri Tatchell. Now that's rather extraordinary. Blomkamp is certainly a wunderkind, but Ms. Tatchell has no S.F. track record whatsoever, except in her relations with Blomkamp. Tatchell attended the Vancouver Film School and in 2001 earned her diploma in Writing for Film, Television & New Media. She got a job at Rainmaker Studio under the late Bob Scarabelli, and was designated Rainmaker's "Industry Relations Co-ordinator". At the same time she joined the Board of the Vancouver chapter of Women in Film and Television. (She served one term as its President but is no longer a member.) This thumbnail photo, which dates to 2003, is still archived on the WIFTV web page: It was at Rainmaker that Terri met Neill, who was then employed in VFX. She has no track record in Science Fiction and probably no cultural knowledge of South Africa beyond what she has picked up through Neill. Terri Tatchell best known creative effort is actually a stage play written for high school students and which is added to the curriculum of some schools because it teaches kids about the legal fight to gain Canadian women the vote. It's called "Woman Idiot Lunatic Criminal" and tells the story of a girl transported back to 1910 to meet her Suffragette great-grandmother.(Her story takes its name from the awkward wording of the Canada Elections Act of 1918.) I'm not trying to pick on the lady but the truth is that while Neill was sequestered for most of last year directing the movie, Tatchell was here in B.C. involved in her own work. I can't believe she added much to the project, but who knows?

In PART TWO of this article I plan to comment on some of the creative aspects of DISTRICT 9.

The Tom Thomson mystery endures

"But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper...
There is something down there and you want it told."
Gwendolyn MacEwen (1972)

In my student days I sampled CANLIT sparingly but I did read widely in Canadian non-fiction. One book which flourishes in my memory is The Tom Thomson Mystery [1970], which was written by retired Toronto judge William T. Little. Eventually I learned to appreciate the genre known as "True Crime", and I guess I have developed a permanent taste for it. Little's book is open on my desk because I just enjoyed watching a 48 minute documentary film entitled DARK PINES. The film, produced in 2005 by B.C. filmmakers, employs actors to stand in for the principles who were Thomson's neighbors and friends in Northern Ontario. Their skills add much to our understanding of the botched 1917 investigation, and render the mystery more accessible to a modern audience.

The skull of Tom Thomson photographed on a spade, with adhering soil and plant roots. Thomson was exhumed in a remote Ontario cemetery in 1956. Note the small hole in his left temple. [Algonquin Park Archives photo]

The film, which finds it metaphor in a Gwendolyn MacEwen poem, is quick to remind us that Tom Thomson was the single most influential Canadian artist in landscape painting. Thomson's stay at Mowat Lodge on Canoe Lake lasted five years, from 1912-1917. It was time enough for him to prepare for the fifty canvases which remain his legacy for the people of Canada. The documentary does not accept the official verdict of "death by drowning". It posits and recreates two plausible scenarios for the artists' death, both of which would be categorized as manslaughter, rather than premeditated murder.

The iconic NORTHERN LIGHTS painted by Tom Thomson. In one sequence the film uses animation - breaking up the elements of two of Thomson's paintings and desaturating the colours. It works very well in helping explain that Thomson was onto something really novel in Canadian art.

DARK PINES is a speculative investigation which employs dramatic recreations. The cast includes William B. Davis, the "Smoking Man" of the old X-FILES series. The DVD is not available in retail stores but can be ordered online.

DARK PINES has an excellent cast, and the studio interviews of historical figures in costume, combine with re-enactments to weave together threads of sometimes conflicting testimony. I have spoken to writer-producer Ric Beairsto (Laughing Mountain Communications) and learned that the approach borrowed from an effective idea used in a BBC series on Charles Dickens, programs which I also enjoyed. Judge Little, whose 1970 book provided source material for DARK PINES, is represented by an actor playing the role of "William T. Little - Investigator". For those with sufficient interest, it is possible to watch a segment of FRONT PAGE CHALLENGE originally broadcast in 1970, in which the expert panel get to discuss Little's findings and his book. The show is in the CBC DIGITAL ARCHIVES - here. ...It's interesting to note that the CBC spent a couple of bucks in 1970 on some actors who made a crude simulation of Thomson taking his fateful canoe trip.

MR. DEATH - Errol Morris and conflicting narratives

You might imagine that students enrolled in a documentary film program sit around all day watching Docs. Well that's not the case at Langara College. Rarely do we view more than ten minute clips of a film. On Thursday for example, we were teased with an extract from MR. DEATH: The Rise And Fall of Fred Leuchter, Jr. , which debuted ten years ago. After a round of pleading the instructor agreed to lend out his pirate copy of the film so that I could stroke one more important film off my "Must See" list. I heartily agree with the classroom endorsement of Director Errol Morris: "He's the best documentarian working today."

DVD cover of the Errol Morris documentary Mr. Death (1999)
It will not shock anyone I think, to learn that illegal copies of movies circulate at film schools. Langara College shelves only legal and licenced copies in its library but instructors, like students, sometimes "share". I own a burned copy of a documentary on Akira Kurosawa, but purchased his films retail. What did amaze me was to discover that MR. DEATH is available for free viewing on the Internet. It's here - GOOGLE VIDEO .

The story is recreation of the life and work of a manufacturer of execution machines, and self-described expert on capital punishment. In the 1980s Fred Leuchter blundered into the treacherous No Man's Land which existed between the Holocaust denial crowd and a militant fringe of the Anti-war Movement. Vanity lead him to except a research assignment offered in 1988 by notorious Torontonian - Ernst Zundel. Leuchter was to go to Poland and find evidence to refute the fact that the Nazi concentration camps were ever used to exterminate inmates. Leuchter had professed to being a licenced engineer in Massachusetts, but in fact his degree was in History. Leuchter filmed his sample collecting expedition and produced a very flawed "Report". The result? Lawyers squashed him like a bug, but this film lets him tell his own story.

I had heard of the infamous "Leuchter Report", but never found it of interest because I have my own research collection... bound transcripts of Nazi war crimes trials, copies of Nazi blueprints for death camps, etc, etc.

This film simply could not have been produced by ANY Canadian film director. I think we owe Errol Morris our praise for clarifying one aspect of a legal-political controversy which unfolded in Toronto, but which resonated from Moncton to Victoria, and which few Canadians ever truly understood. Certainly books exist which pretend to "reveal" the truth of what was was going on here at the time. (Warren Kinsella's WEB OF HATE comes to mind.) But Kinsella's writing is all political puke and clumsy selective evidence. Errol Morris shows us another way... with passion, art and honesty MR. DEATH shows us some of what happened and he makes no attempt to editorialize.
I recently read Professor Bill Nichols' book REPRESENTING REALITY : Issues and Concepts in Documentary, which was published in 1991 and thus predates the production of MR. DEATH. We are told that Errol Morris, in his work, "emerges less as stalwart defender of the innocent than as ironic observer of how facts become woven into disparate and conflicting narratives." That assessment continues to ring true. See this film and wonder at his craft.

2009 - S.F.U. Graduation Screening

Simon Fraser University has one of the more frenetic film schools in B.C., and in January 2010 a legion of very lucky novice filmmakers will move into the new SFU production facility in downtown Vancouver. On Thursday (May 30th) I had the pleasure of attending the "31st Annual" SFU Grad screening, which showcased the creative talent of the last crop of students to use the old gear on the SFU Burnaby Mountain campus. The evening offered an entertaining melody of 19 mini-movies which in turn charmed, dazzled and sometimes bemused. SFU Film Instructor Colin Browne admitted up front that they're not exactly sure this was the "31st annual screening" (the department flew by the seat of its pants in the late '70s), but they're pretty sure.

My ticket came courtesy of my son, a third year film student who worked on four of the films - as sound designer, grip/dolly grip, a cast member or as sound recordist. I enjoyed every film, but I wouldn't be human if I didn't compare and sort my viewing into mental folders. That's part of the fun.

CATECHISM, by Jessica Moorhouse, was an obvious crowd-pleaser. It is the story of a young lass who struggles to reconcile her carnal urges with the dictates her "Catholic" upbringing. (The Ten Commandants are reduced to four ... it's a West Coast thing.) While I was a tad bemused by the mixing of the Catholic confessional with frequent dissolves into a Baptist-style angst over "what the Bible sez", I found CATECHISM a genuine laugh fest. The entire audience loved Jessica's casting of a Bobble-Head Jesus.

SQUADRON 5 was a brave attempt at a Science Fiction epic, and the hard work of Director Barry Liu shows throughout. Squadron 5 was also the only story film not produced in English. It was my first exposure to a Cantonese S.F. movie (with English subtitles) and it is evidence of the multicultural flavour of the Simon Fraser campus, although not enough Chinese youths choose film making. Mr. Google tells me that Al Leung, one of the actors featured in SQUADRON 5, has a webpage.
BOXED IN could have been produced by American International Pictures in the 1970's. Instead the splatter-comedy script had to wait for Kial Natale to be born and to choose film school. The movie a real hoot and the audience loved it. I don't know if the old guy who played Santa Claus was a professional actor or a talented rubby-dub the Director found on Hastings Street, but he was sure fun to watch.
A perky one minute trailer for the 2009 SFU Graduate Film was posted, and I noticed it has been re-cut. It's here : http://www.sfufilm.ca/4thyear/ There can be no doubt that some of these wonderful films will be entered in festivals later this year, and I hope they attract a wider audience.

Coming Attractions

You've found the place where I will soon post musings on documentary film and cinema - past, present and future. I am now transitioning from "student" of film to the creative sector where money and personal passions are placed at risk, and the learning curve is steep.

There are personal projects I will enjoy sharing here soon enough. I'm not quite there yet - but with the help of creative friends I soon will be!
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