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The Race to Save 100 Years [viff] Dir: Scott Benson Country: Canada Queen of the Coast [viff] Dir: Dr. J.S. Watson Country: Canada

I ended this decidedly lacklustre fest on a good note with this presentation, focussing on the actions of a bunch of film archivists trying to maintain and restore old film. So often, we think of film as being a perminant medium- we can access film anytime. Several films from the 20's and 30's are lost forever, and as examples of stuff that could be lost, we were shown two archival films of British Columbia.

Tourism Vancouver

I call it this only because I forgot the real title as I write this review. It's a very touristy look at Vancouver and Victoria from the early part of this century. A lovely arial short of then-downtown Vancouver shows that many of the buildings are still intact... in fact, many of the attractions they mention from that time period are still tourist attractions today.

Saving the Sagas

Two researchers travel from Ottawa to record the dances, songs and stories of a town of British Columbia natives. It provides a very balanced look at what's happening there- they even touch on the fact that the "Church Army" is stripping the natives of their natural heritage of song and dance, replacing it with and artificial Christian heritage. There is a particularly good scene where the Chief has to choose one wife from his current three "...at least two more than a Christian man is allowed..." says the words on screen.

The Race to Save 100 Years

Partially funded by Ted Turner, it descended into a "we love Ted Turner" festival towards the end, but other than that, it's a well-researched and supurbly edited documentary about the loss of archival film prints. The voice-over announcer got rather annoying after a while- it sounded like he was announcing a sports event rather than a film documentary.

Good trivia and anecdotes were mixed in very well with archival footage, both restored and original. Interviews with various movie execs and directors (notably Martin Scorsese, getting very upset at some things)