‘Hilarious, bombastic’ Rankin revisited.
Documentary about polarizing politician Harry Rankin kicks off DOXA, Dana Gee writes.
Love him or hate him, former Vancouver politician and activist Harry Rankin left an indelible mark on Vancouver civic politics.
Loud and left, Rankin, who died at age 82 in 2002, was a long time city councillor and a co-founder of COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors). He was a constant challenger of pro-development proponents and a champion of social issues.
Those two things came clearly into view during the 1986 mayoral race that saw pro-business candidate Gordon Campbell defeat Rankin.
That politically polarizing race is at the centre of new documentary The Rankin File: Legacy of a Radical from Vancouver filmmaker Teresa Alfeld.
Fittingly the film about a local firebrand is opening this year’s 93 film-strong DOXA Documentary Film Festival. The opening also marks the world premiere for the film.
Having a local legend open a local film festival is a great hook, but having that film shine a light on a progressive politician that built a career on social issues, including affordable housing, makes the film a timely choice.
“I think 2018 is the year to see this film and to understand as citizens we have a choice and a responsibility to get involved and to think about the kind of city that we want to live in,” said Alfeld.
Alfeld came to make a film about Rankin in a kind of accidental fashion. Seven years ago Rankin’s son Phil contacted video content producers Working TV looking for help organizing his father’s archives.
Alfeld said she was tasked with going over to Phil’s house and wading through what he called the “basement archives.”
Alfeld says in among the usual photos, clippings and memorabilia were 33 reels of 16mm film. The footage was shot by Peter Smilsky with the intent of making a documentary in 1986.
A former SFU film student, Alfeld was thrilled to find the reels. She took them back to her alma mater and had a look.
“I carted the work prints over and strung them up on the Steenbeck machine myself and just started watching,” said Alfeld.
“It was breathtaking to see this vibrant 1986 Vancouver I had never seen before on the screen. It was shot the year before I was born so this was a city I hadn’t known but did obviously in a different capacity, and there was Harry. He was just this hilarious biting passionate bombastic character and he was campaigning for something he believed in, and which I came to believe in myself.”
Right then and there Alfeld decided she had to make a film.
“What drew me into Harry first was his humour. He was so able to take what those around him were saying and, if he was in support of it, twist it in a funny way — and if he wasn’t in support just absolutely lampoon it,” said Alfeld.
“He was so quick on his feet. His sense of humour is what got me first, but as I watched more and more I learned more about his politics and the Vancouver he was campaigning for. As a young person it absolutely resonated with me. I want to live in the Vancouver that Harry campaigned for — a place with affordable housing with emphasis on good union jobs, with better democratic representation through a ward system.
“I was totally drawn in at the thought that once upon a time there was a man who built this movement and got so close to making Vancouver, I won’t say utopian, but an inclusive and accessible city and I think things have gone very differently,” Alfeld said.
The film is a combination of new and archival footage from Smilsky’s cache and other archives. There are interviews with all the important political players and some particularly entertaining on-camera exchanges between Rankin and legendary reporter Jack Webster. It’s hard to decide who was tougher.
The film, while it outlines all Rankin’s social causes and policies, doesn’t mythologize him to the point of revisionist history. There is no shying away from Rankin’s sexist views, views that had him call fellow councillor Helen Boyce stupid.
“As a feminist filmmaker of course I am disappointed, but I am not surprised. But we work with it. We don’t shy away from it, and we don’t pretend things were different because we love Harry and we love his politics,” said Alfeld.
“We go there. We talk about it and we understand that people are complicated and, again, the era is important to consider.” (The era she is referring to is the 1950s when Rankin, a Second World War veteran, came of age politically.)
Alfeld hopes viewers glean some hope from her film. She hopes they see that there is another way of doing things; there’s another point of view on how to run a city. Heck, even how to run a society.
“I look at my friends and I look
DOXA DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL
May 3-13 Various venues From $13, doxafestival.ca
at my peers and as folks living in Vancouver right now we are feeling disheartened and we’re feeling excluded and we’re feeling like folks are getting left behind and squeezed out.
“When I watched the original Peter Smilsky footage, the 1986 footage, I thought ‘wait a second it hasn’t always been this way,’ and I truly believe that it doesn’t have to be this way. I think through getting folks involved and through proper regulation and through proper policy there is the potential to re-build Vancouver to as what I understand it once was., which was a diverse community that accepted people from all backgrounds from all financial positions. A city that celebrated diversity and resulted in a livable, workable utopia.”
“I want us to learn from history, and I want us to be inspired by history,” said Alfeld.
“I think as much as there is to learn about what does work and what we should do, there is also lessons in what to avoid.”
There’s a thing that leads journalists everywhere to scratch their heads and shrug their shoulders — why don’t people believe facts?
From climate change to crowd sizes the legitimate, verified, backed by science truths are increasingly dismissed in favour of personal agendas and opinions. Whole media outlets are dedicated to this approach.
That’s why it so important to have events like the DOXA Documentary Film Festival to help shine a light on truthful storytelling.
In 2018, the festival delivers 93 feature and short films. The program is wide and varied, with something for everyone.
A great part of the DOXA plan is the special programs section. Included in this year’s roster of seven different slates is Embedded with Extremists.
Curated by Vancouver-based journalist and author Geoff Dembicki, the three films follow journalists who put themselves inside the story and deliver eye-opening looks at some very dangerous factfree ideologues.
The author of the book Are We Screwed? How a New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change, Dembicki is also a regular contributor to VICE and The Tyee and has had work published in The New York Times and The Guardian.
The three films in this series — Golden Dawn Girls, Of Fathers and Sons and No Man’s Land — respectively look at a far-right party, radical fundamentalism and a right-wing militia movement just a six-hour drive away in Oregon.
Dembicki started out with DOXA with climate change as his topic mandate, but as he went through the DOXA films another pressing theme emerged.
“DOXA and myself, we were starting to look at the films that were coming in and we started to see a theme of these documentaries about these journalists that were embedded with extremist movements in some way,” said Dembicki over the phone from New York recently.
“What jumped out for me was all these films, in a way, were dealing with themes of truth and reality and denial, which doesn’t seem like it should fit with climate change but ever since I started reporting on environmental issues there’s been the question of why don’t people believe climate science?
“For years I’ve been trying to answer this question. How is it that things that are obviously untrue get accepted by large numbers of people? I realized these three films provided a really interesting window into that question.”
As he watched the films and studied the subjects that were at the centre of the stories, Dembicki said he realized something very important about the characters the cameras were focused on.
“I say this as someone who has no experience with Muslim extremists, right-wing militia or neo-Nazis, but what I kind of took away from watching these three films multiple times was that the people whose lives are wrapped up in these fantasies are not idiots. They’re not stupid,” he said.
“They are actually highly intelligent, highly performing people and I think that if we can pull a common thread from here it is the untruths people believe in serve some sort of purpose in their life, some extremely important purpose.”
For example of that he points to Ourania Michaloliakos, daughter of Nikolaos Michaloliakos the leader of the Golden Dawn party in Greece. In the Håvard Bustnes’ film she adamantly denies the party’s obvious neo-Nazi ways.
“There is more at stake than this obvious thing that she is a Nazi,” said Dembicki. “She doesn’t want to admit that what she is doing evil because then everything in her life becomes evil.”
While the Golden Dawn party and the radical Islamist family in the north of Syria are worlds away from us, the ranchers and militia of eastern Oregon highlighted in No Man’s land are a lot closer to home.
David Byars’ film compares the rise of these militiamen to the rise of Donald Trump and, yes, alternative facts.
These horseback riding, gun toting good old boys claim that they have been tyrannized, persecuted and that they are a minority. Yes, these landowning, new truck driving white dudes think they have been hard done by the government that was led by Barack Obama.
“The scary thing is what the militia people represent is now kind of the world view that is running the United States right now,” said Dembicki about the populist tide.
“One reason that was able to take off, as the film shows, is that there is a lot of uncritical media coverage about claims this group is making. The film shows very well that the militia is constantly creating scripted press moments and playing off the media’s need to get a story or a good image. That in the end makes the militia look more legitimate to large numbers of people.”
All three of these films are eye opening and anyone concerned about the rise and acceptance of alternative facts should make time to see them. You are not going to leave the theatre buoyed and giddy, but you will leave thinking about the importance of the truth.
“I would argue it is one of the most important questions of our time,” said Dembicki about the rise of alternative facts.
“I think these three films provide insight into why people believe things that aren’t true. As a society if we are able to see the bigger picture in a lot of these situations and understand the grievances that drive people to reject reality and to detach from institutions then maybe there’s some hope of bringing those people back.”
All three films will be run at Vancity ■ Theatre. Golden Dawn is on May 8 at 6:45 p.m., Of Fathers and Sons is on May 6 at 5:30 p.m. and May 11 at 4:45 p.m., No Man’s Land screens at 4:30 p.m. on May 5 and 4:15 p.m. May 10.