There is hope everywhere on this planet, filmmaker Velcrow Ripper told the TV audience at last Monday's Genie Awards in Toronto. Ripper, who learned film production on the Coast in Elphinstone Secondary School's studios, was awarded his best documentary Genie for the film Scared Sacred, which he describes as a search for hope in the ground zeros of all nations. In the film, Ripper travels to such places as the toxic chemical wasteland of Bhopal, bloody Afghanistan, war-torn Bosnia and Hiroshima to find out if, in the darkest chasms of fear and violence, hope and inspiration can survive.
When contacted in Toronto the day after the awards, Ripper was already talking about his next film - the second in the Sacred series, Fierce Light, that includes stories about spirit in action along the lines of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. And this summer, Ripper will be filming in Nelson on a documentary called Our Way Home. The theme is reconciliation between the many draft resisters who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War and the war veterans. The film makes a connection between that time and the current war in Afghanistan.
Ripper has been making films for 26 years, after his high school start with Coast Cable's Marta MacKown in the days when Elphi students founded the program. He describes himself as bi-coastal, living part time on Toronto Island and summering in Vancouver or on Galiano. His parents still live in Gibsons.
This is not the first award that Scared Sacred has earned. Among others, it was voted one of Canada's top 10 at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Just recently, it was given an unusual award that speaks to the heart of what Ripper hopes to achieve. The Wilbur Award is presented by a religious communications society in Texas that regularly gives an award to the "best film promoting religious values in the secular media." The last Wilbur recipient was a Disney film. Ripper is as proud of this type of award as he is of the Genie. He stresses that the sacred is accessible to everyone, a concept he grasped in early years growing up as a Bahai, a faith that believes in the unity of humanity.Ripper will be on the Coast at The Club in Gibsons on Friday, March 24, for an evening fundraising event for the Coalition for the Promotion of Environmental Concerns (CPEC) and a newly formed organization, Living Intact Forests of Elphinstone (LIFE). He will be showing another Genie award-winning documentary, Bones of the Forest, a film about the forest industry that he co-directed with Heather Frise.
Earlier that same day, he will offer a workshop in Tonglen meditation called Transforming Crisis.
"This type of meditation became the core of Scared Sacred," he says. "I practised it everywhere I went."
The meditation workshop is open to the public and starts at 6 p.m. on March 24 at Chaster House in Gibsons. Fee is a sliding scale; phone 604-885-1626 to register.The fundraiser on Friday evening at The Club includes a visit from activist Betty Krawczyk, the grandmother turned ecological warrior in the 1990s who was imprisoned for her efforts. While in jail and during subsequent legal battles, she wrote the book Lock Me Up or Let Me Go. Two film shorts from Krawczyk will be followed by Bones of the Forest and discussion time. The benefit will also hear from local youth activist Olivia Kingsbury.
The evening includes a silent auction, and at 10 p.m. the marimba band, the Knotty Dotters, will play, followed by DJs and dancing until the wee hours. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are on a sliding scale from $7 to 18.
