Author Archives: gus

Movie inspires without saccharine

Searching for Sugar Man
Directed by Malik Bendjelloul
Empire Theatre, 3980 Shelbourne Street

Reviewed by Lynne Van Luven

“Thank you for keeping me alive,” Sixto Diaz Rodriguez says to the ecstatic South African crowd.

The words capture a triumphal moment in the documentary Searching for Sugar Man. If you don’t manage to see it at the Empire Theatres this week, don’t mourn; it will be popping up again at Cinecenta on the University of Victoria campus.

Although the haunting snatches of Rodriguez’s song “Sugar Man” lured me to the theatre, the sharply told documentary soon captured my attention. Directed by Malik Bendjelloul, the Swedish/British film started making waves at Sundance earlier this year. It encapsulates the search by two of Rodriguez’ South African fans, Stephen “Sugar” Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, as they looked for the mysterious singer whose bootlegged album, they claimed, had provided “the soundtrack to our lives” and been such an important part of the anti-Apartheid struggle.

Everyone knows the facts now: Detroit-born Rodriguez, now 70, is a Mexican-American singer whose early promise – two albums, Cold Fact in 1970 and Coming from Reality in 1971 – never quite materialized. Apparently unbroken, he went on to live his life out of he spotlight: a BA in philosophy from Wayne State, lots of hard labour, fathering three daughters. Meanwhile, the rumours in South Africa were that he was dead by suicide or drug overdose.

Writing as Craig Bartholemew, here is how Strydom describes his search: “In 1996 I determined to find the man, dead or alive. After nine months, 72 telephone calls, 45 faxes, 142 e-mails, long nights reading through encyclopaedias, music books, dead ends, loose ends and fag ends I reached him. ‘Yes . . . it is I, Sixto [Seez- to] Rodriguez,’ said the voice on the other end of the telephone.”

As director, Bendjelloul focuses on the initial mystery and the fans’ search. In doing so, he elides much of Rodriquez’ personal story, including the singer’s career in regional politics, his local music career, his two visits to Australia, one of them touring with Midnight Oil, in order to tell the story from the South African perspective. But even though you are not getting the entire picture in Searching for Sugar Man, the movie keeps you entranced from beginning to end. And despite its title, it manages a feel-good ending without saccharine coating.

Lust for gold endangers people, Amazon habitat

The Devil’s Curve: A Journey into Power and Profit at the Amazon’s Edge
By Arno Kopecky
Douglas & McIntyre, 306 pp., $29.95

Arno Kopecky, 35, has been working as a freelancer for the past decade since graduating from the University of Victoria. He recently participated in an alumni reading sponsored by the Department of Writing as part of UVic’s 50th anniversary celebrations. In The Devil’s Curve, Kopecky has written an intelligent, witty and informative book about his year of independent research in both Peru and Colombia. In his travels, he met Indigenous leaders, visited their villages, and surveyed the rivers and forests put at risk by North America’s lust for gold. Kopecky trusted to the hospitality and decency of the local Awajun people he met, and his book illustrates both their struggle and Canada’s complicity through its free trade agreements. The Devil’s Curve is a must-read for all Canadians; throughout the book, Kopecky asks the questions we all should be considering; he presents an international problem in compelling human terms. Lynne Van Luven met Kopecky on his recent visit to Victoria and conducted this interview with him later. Sanguine in the face of his publisher’s fiscal troubles, he is now working on a new book about the Northern Gateway project and its proposed tanker routes in West Coast waters.

Can you talk a bit about what event (s)was/were the catalyst for the research that lead to Devil’s Curve?

On June 5, 2009, the Peruvian army opened fire on a crowd of 3000 Awajun Indians who had been camping on a stretch of highway known as the Devil’s Curve for 57 days; it was a scene straight out of Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas, and it made international headlines by noon of that same day because a few journalists were on hand to record the attack (not me – I got there four months later).

The tragedy grabbed my attention because I was planning a trip to that part of the world at the time, to look into the free trade agreements Canada was then signing with Peru and Colombia. Thinking about free trade can quickly become an exercise in abstraction, but suddenly here was this very concrete example of the human consequences these deals can have. The reason those Awajun had been blockading the highway was to protest the free trade agreements that were locking in the rights of foreign companies operating on their territory…and so the traveling research began.

From reading your book, I learned a huge amount, both about Canada’s part in mining the Amazon and about the feisty Awajun people; in fact, I realized how seldom national media covers these issues. Was educating the public part of your goal in writing the book?

Interesting to hear you say that, since the one review that has come out about this book so far criticizes me for not being informative enough – I’m too gonzo, spend too much time drinking with natives and slum dwellers, not enough time interviewing corporate CEOs…
At any rate, I did want to educate the public, but I didn’t want to bore the hell out of them, so I ended up writing something that kind of slips between (occasionally inebriated) travel narrative and (sober, I promise) investigative journalism. South America may not be in the news much lately – a good sign that much has improved in the last fifteen years – but I do think everyone’s heard the story about the bad corporation despoiling the good Indian’s land. It’s not a subject that tends to captivate readers who aren’t already interested in these things, and the people I most want to reach are precisely those who aren’t normally interested in these things. For that you need a lure, and mine was story.

Whether my story’s any good or not, I dunno, but at least bad writing was not among my aforementioned reviewer’s complaints.

Well, I think the writing is terrific. You traipse across a lot of territory in Peru and Colombia in your narrative, yet you manage not to overwhelm the reader with unwieldy amounts of data. Was there a key organizing principle behind that achievement?

I wish I had an organizing principle, and not just for writing. But when I look back on it, I realize that I stuck pretty close to the notes I took during my year of travels. These were basically journal entries of compelling scenes, impressions, interesting conversations…
One big structural question was how to juggle the two stories at the heart of this book, one taking place in the Peruvian Amazon and another taking place in the city of Medellín, Colombia. In the end, I decided to keep the two countries out of one another’s chapters, which made my life (and hopefully the reader’s) a lot easier.

The Awajun’s struggle against North American mining firms, including Canadian Dorato Resources, seems to me to be incredibly brave, but the book left me wondering how optimistic you are about their chance of success. Can you comment?

Dorato is a gold exploration company with some prime real estate in Awajun territory, but their stock hasn’t budged above nine cents despite several years of enthusiastic reports. They’ve had a couple devastating exposés in the media – David Suzuki executed them in a documentary called The Real Avatar – so for a number of reasons I actually am quite optimistic that the Awajun’s water source will not be drenched in mercury or arsenic any time soon.

As for the bigger question about how to reign in the resource extraction firms now having a field day in Peru and Colombia, and basically everywhere on earth – for me, this is one of the stories of our times, and no it isn’t looking good at the moment. We’re eating up our world at a terrifying rate. But Obama’s just been re-elected as I write this, and I find hope creeping unreasonably into all current outlooks.

There is so much about The Devil’s Curve that presages the current resistance on the West Coast, especially amongst First Nations leaders, to Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan. You planned that, right?

Obviously. It took all my powers of persuasion to convince Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver to wait until I’d finished writing The Devil’s Curve before they started elaborating their theory of foreign-funded radicals and obstreperous Indians blocking Canada’s foreign-funded path to prosperity. Thankfully, both gentlemen co-operated, and then repeated almost verbatim the same arguments I first heard emanating from the presidents of Peru and Colombia.

That gave me just enough time to spend the summer and fall exploring the Northern Gateway’s proposed tanker routes, on a sailboat between Kitimat and Bella Bella. I’ve just returned home from that misadventure and am writing it up now – a Canadian sequel to The Devil’s Curve, assuming I can find someone to publish it!

 

Thomas King Book Launch & Signing

The UVic Bookstore, Doubleday & the Office of Indigenous Affairs present:

Thomas King
The Inconvenient Indian: A curious account of Native Peoples in North America

 

Book Launch & Signing
Friday Nov 16 ,2012 (7pm)
Ceremonial Hall, First Peoples House

Author explores walls that divide us

 

Walls
Travels Along the Barricades
By Marcello Di Cintio
Published by Goose Lane
287 pages, $29.95

 

Reviewed by Andy Ogle

When one thinks of walls these days, one’s mind travels immediately to Israel’s ongoing attempt to wall out the Palestinians on the West Bank. Or one might recall the Berlin Wall and marvel that it has already been 23 years since it came down.

Marcello Di Cintio does go to the West Bank and he does discuss the Berlin Wall, but he begins his travel with barriers that most North American readers have likely never heard of — in the Western Sahara, at two Spanish enclaves in Morroco, and the barrier still being extended that separates India from Bangladesh. He even finds a homegrown example — l’Acadie fence that separates the well-off anglo enclave of the town of Mount Royal and the largely immigrant, lower-class community of Parc-Extension in Montreal. I confess they were all news to me.

That novelty in itself is one time-honoured feature of good travel writing — taking readers to exotic foreign places or unknown corners of one’s own country. But Di Cintio’s goal is much more ambitions than that. He wants to understand what these walls mean for the people who live against them, those for whom they were built to include or exclude.

“I wondered what it meant to live a barricaded life,” he writes. “I wanted to discover what sort of societies created the walls. More than this, I wanted to know what societies the walls themselves created.”

So, in February 2008, “because it seemed as good a place to start as any,” he flew into the Sahara Desert. Three years later, he finished his quest in Montreal, having more than succeeded in meeting his goals.

Among the lessons he learns is that walls often don’t entirely succeed in their primary purpose of keeping out those who want in — most notably the U.S. Mexican border fence and the barriers at Ceuta and Melilla, the Spanish enclaves that are essentially the southernmost reaches of the European Union.

What the walls do succeed at — and here Israel’s wall, the Indo-Bangladshi fence, the barriers dividing Catholic from Protestant neighbourhoods in Belfast and the wall that separates Greek and Turkish Cypriots serve as key examples —is to reinforce in concrete and barbed wire the sense of us and them. “With unambiguous authority,” Di Cintio says of his stay on Cyprus, “the Wall declares, You are either Turkish or Greek.” Even on this tiny island, anything Cypriots might share is rendered irrelevant.

The walls also throw up an uncomfortable truth for Di Cintio. As an outsider, it’s easy for him to flit back and forth across the barricades. But they also, as he puts it, scoff at neutrality. To play the role of objective journalist, to talk with those on both sides and refuse to take sides is, he decides, to occupy a sort of no-man’s land, his own private “Dead Zone.”

Yet, at the heart of Di Cintio’s book lies the practice of journalism, of finding people on both sides of the barriers, be they the nomadic Saharawi, African and Punjabi refugees in Ceuti or the gun-toting but surprisingly anti-fence redneck in Arizona, willing and often eager to share their experiences and lives. Walls (long-listed for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction) succeeds largely on that basis. Di Cintio’s willingness to go beyond mere reportage, to ponder his role in the story, lifts it to an even higher level.

Andy Ogle is a former reporter at the Edmonton Journal

 

 

 

Ten nonfiction books long-listed for $40,000 prize

 

Two books released by an imperiled B.C. publisher are among the 10 titles long-listed for Canada’s largest literary non-fiction prize.
A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape by Candace Savage and The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen by Stephen Bown are both published by Douglas and McIntyre, which recently announced it is going into bankruptcy protection. Both books are contending for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

The other eight contenders include:

• A Season in Hell: My 130 Days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda by Robert Fowler (published by Harper Collins) HarperCollins Canada
• A Thousand Farewells: A Reporter’s Journey from Refugee Camp to the Arab Spring by Nahlah Ayed (Doubleday); Penguin Group Canada
• here we are among the living: a memoir in emails by Samantha Bernstein (Tightrope) Tightrope Books
• Pinboy: A Memoir by George Bowering (Cormorant) Cormorant Books
• Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins (Knopf) Knopf Canada
• Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile by Taras Grescoe (Harper Collins) HarperCollins Canada
• Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy by Andrew Preston (Knopf)
• Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello di Cintio (Goose Lane) Knopf Canada

The shortlist will be announced on December 4, and the award will be presented in Vancouver in early 2013. Last year, Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill, also published by D and M, won the award, which was first awarded in 2005.
D & M Publishers Inc.
Goose Lane Editions

I confess: 000 Interest in 007

By Lynne Van Luven

I don’t get it. I never have got it. I never WILL get it.

Why all this brouhaha about Skyfall, the new James Bond movie? What’s the big deal?

Daniel Craig’s woodenly rugged face. Screeching motorcycle chases. Big Booms as things explode. Car tricks. More big Booms. Lots of gadgets, many of which cause booms. Also Kapows and Kabooms, just for variety. Sexy women. Big Bosoms too. That encapsulates the Screech-Boom plot of the new James Bond movie. Which echoes the plots of the previous 22 James Bond movies. And yet: everywhere, endless attention over so much empty action.

The fuss boggles my mind: I have perfectly sane colleagues who collect Bondabilia. And feminist friends who make special dates to see each new Bond film; they brag about having seen every one — and wait with bated breath for the next one. And I have a really smart co-worker who argues that Sean Connery was the BEST bond, even better than Roger Moore, who himself now 85, says Craig makes a “convincing killer” as the newest Bond.

Why, I ask? Why, why why? And don’t tell me that Kate and Will have made a date to see Skyfall. Means nothing: that pair will go anywhere.

Yes, okay, I guess: Escape. Entertainment. The frisson of being part of something described as “iconic,” a 50-year old “franchise.” Cinematic groupiedom.

But really: the current Bond cost $150 million to make – not including marketing and distribution. The cast went through 200,000 rounds of ammunition during weapons training for the movie. The storyline required 750 extras, 100 background vehicles and a 300-person film crew –just for the chase sequence through Whitehall in London.

Nope, not even a blond Javier Bardem and the redoubtable Dame Judy Dench will get me into the theatres for Skyfall.

I remain: neither shaken nor stirred.

 

Writing the Arts with John Threlfall

Writing the Arts
with John Threlfall
Thursday, November 29th
7:00 p.m.
University of Victoria Fine Arts Building
Room 103
FREE Admission

Writing about the arts is just like any other beat: you need to cultivate sources, know the players, keep up with the changes in the scene, and be knowledgeable in a variety of areas. But, unlike most other journalistic fields, arts writing also gives you the freedom to work in a variety of styles and formats, often affording you the opportunity to be as creative in your writing as the work you’re covering. From visual art and theatre to music, opera, film, and more, this entertaining and fast-moving talk by a 30-year arts veteran will offer tips on giving good interview, finding untold stories, developing a niche, working with different writing styles, getting creative with your coverage, and writing about art forms outside of your expertise. Guaranteed to be the most fun you’ll ever have at a writing class!

Music technology talks continue

Continuing the Alan Turing Celebration Lecture Series, part of the 50th Anniversary of UVic and the 100th Anniversary of Turing, we have two exciting experts in music and computers coming to speak this week!

David Jaffe is rare in that he is well known and respected composer as well as a very competent and successful programmer. Jaron Lanier did pioneering research in virtual reality, is an accomplished musician, a well known speaker, and author of
“You Are Not a Gadget, A Manifesto <http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307389978>,” a New York Times best book of the year for 2010.

David A. Jaffe, Universal Audio

The Library of Babel – Composing, Computing, and Creativity

Monday, Nov. 5th 6:30PM, Social Sciences and Math, A120

Tuesday, Nov. 6th, 2:30PM, MacLaurin Building, Room A168

Jaron Lanier, Microsoft Research

Turing’s Spiritual Legacy

Wednesday, Nov. 7th, 8:15pm, PT Young Recital Hall, School of Music

Check (http://www.facebook.com/UvicComputerScience) for more music & computers events on this week.

 

Celebrate the launch of two new novels by Salt Spring authors.

Thursday, November 15 – 7pm

Lions Hall
103 Bonnet Avenue
Salt Spring Island, BC
Everyone Welcome

Book sales by Salt Spring Books.

The Judge and the Lady by Marlyn Horsdal

Eleanor Wentworth arrives in Victoria, a town that falls far below her expectations of society. When she meets the fascinating judge Matthew Baillie Begbie, the first chief justice of BC, life in the colony suddenly becomes much more attractive.

Marlyn Horsdal is an editor and writer. In 1984, she co-founded Horsdal & Schubart Publishers with her husband, Michael Schubart, and ran the company until it was sold in 2002. She was educated at Queen’s University and the London School of Economics.
Her first novel Sweetness from Ashes was named one of the Best Fiction Titles of 2010 by January Magazine. The Judge and the Lady is her second novel.

~~~~

The Apple House by Gillian Campbell

Set in a small French village on the West Island of Montreal during the 1970s, this is a novel about language, family, and life in a divided community.

Gillian Campbell’s short fiction has been published in Grain Magazine, Creekstones: Words & Images, The New Quarterly, and The Antigonish Review. She has a BA from the Université de Montréal and a master’s of library science from the University of
British Columbia, and for many years she worked as a children’s librarian. Gillian grew up on the West Island of Montreal and now makes her home on the West Coast on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. The Apple House is her first novel.

Victoria bands make it to Goolden

 

Woodsmen and Leisure Suit
Alix Goolden Hall

Reviewed by Cara Spangler

The “After Halloween Show” on November 2 at Alix Goolden Hall was in many ways much better than Halloween: no “Monster Mash,” no grimacing at awkward costumes; just a celebration of some of Victoria’s finest young musicians.

Alix Goolden welcomed a mixed ages crowd into its wooden pews, creating a mindful, music-focused energy – a welcome change from standing ear-deep in stereo at Victoria’s typical club venues. The century old organ served as a dramatic backdrop for the spacious stage.

“Most Victoria bands aspire to play at Alix Goolden,” says Oliver Brooks, lead singer of Leisure Suit, already seen performing in the Hall at this year’s Rifflandia festival. But for Woodsmen, Dogwood Line, and Bonfire Blondes, the opportunity was brand new and well deserved.

Woodsmen’s burgeoning musical venture has given the six-piece band an astounding confidence that easily filled the Hall despite their usual wall of dancing fans. This time, the fans stood respectfully in the back, swaying to “Wade in the Dark,” akin to ethereal choir music in the pillowy acoustics.

Before the final song, “I Got Time,” lead singer Maryse Bernard announced the possible last performance of drummer Graeme McDonald, which sent fans dancing to the front of the stage for the second half of the song.

“That was surprising,” says McDonald of the tribute. “I looked down for two seconds and suddenly half the audience…”

“I almost started crying,” Bernard finishes.

Leisure Suit followed Woodsmen, bringing the audience into a dreamy, post-rock meditation. “The Whale Song” turned Alix Goolden into a haunted submarine as Brooks’ slid a drumstick across the strings of his guitar to produce a sonar-like echo.

The four members huddled briefly after the last song of the set, offering to play an impromptu encore of a new song, which received encouraging cheers from the audience.

“It was contentious whether or not to play the last song,” says Brooks after the show. “It’s not done yet.”

Members of Leisure Suit met and wrote their first EP while some of them were still attending St. Michael’s University School. Woodsmen, together for just over a year, are to record this week with Sam Weber of Jets Overhead. Alix Goolden Hall may provide the famous acoustics, but there is no faking the talent of these young and motivated musicians.

Cara Spangler is a writing student at UVIC