Am I the only film buff at Vancouver Metroblogging? No one else has made one single pipsqueak about the Vancouver International Film Festival, so I may as well step up to the plate. I volunteer for the Pacific Cinematheque and, during VIFFs past, usually manage to see about 10 films or so. This year, with a tighter work schedule, I have only squeezed in three films.

Two of the films I caught during my first volunteer yesterday: End of an Elephant (or Ende Eines Elefanten), a 47-minute experimental documentary on Coney Island, and Blockade (or Blokada), on the 900-day Siege of Leningrad September 8, 1941 to January 8, 1944. The third film, Un dimanche à Kigali, I saw during my own time.

Director Stefanie Gaus’ End of an Elephant takes her own footage and intersperses it among the vintage stuff, of a long-ago Coney Island, where Steeplechase Park and Luna Park come alive again with an assortment of rides and funhouses that kick the asses of our modern-day ones. Who needs seat belts? The 31-room Elephant Hotel, unfortunately, was destroyed by fire in 1896, just missing the heyday of the motion picture and inclusion in this film.

The evident happiness in the turn of the century faces constrasts with the drab latter-day loneliness of Coney Island, giving the film a depressing note, that we missed some golden age that will never come again. As one of the interviewees in the films says, who will come to Coney Island today just to see electricity? Indeed, one of the last images is of Topsy the elephant being executed by electrocution in 1903. Thomas Edison, to discredit rival George Westinghouse, offered his services and Luna Park sold tickets at ten cents each. A fog engulfs the elephant and she drops to her side.

Blockade, despite its sombre subject matter, proved amazing because humans could manage to continue living in harsh conditions. Director Sergei Loznitsa discovered this newsreel footage in a Moscow archive and put together a film of clusters of activities: clearing out the rubble, escaping, procuring drinking water from sewers, freezing to death and watching Nazi executions. VIFF copy points out that the film is comprised of silent images, yet there is very clear sound - no human voices - just boots squeaking on deep snow, bombs, explosions, water gurgles. The credits were in Russian, but I still suspect that the sound was added recently.

It was Un dimanche à Kigali that brought one of the chief delights of attending a film festival: meeting some senior member of the crew. In this case it was director Robert Favreau who also adapted the screenplay from the novel Un dimanche à la piscine de Kigali by Gil Courtemanche. The piscine refers to the pool at the Hôtel de Mille Collines (you Rwanda genocide students out there will know I am talking about the same hotel as in Hotel Rwanda, that of the “Rwandan Schindler” Paul Rusesabagina) - the pool being a symbol of the white man. Favreau got rid of the pool in the title but kept it as a symbol throughout the film.

Many tears were shed by my fellow film watchers as we watched Gentille (played by the most beautiful woman in the world, Senegalese actress Fatou N’Diaye) undergo the nightmare of millions of women in this fictionalised account. Most tears were duly wiped away for the question-and-answer period after the credits ended, even better was a long chat a small group of us had with the director in the lobby of Granville 7 Cinemas.

We got opinions on Rwandan president Paul Kagame, the former leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (the Ugandan Tutsi refugee army): “he’s done good and bad - it’s not black and white with him, there’s a lot of grey.” In Kigali, there are now people dancing on the streets, they are happy and they have a better life - if the genocide happened in Vancouver, if three millions Vancouverites killed one million Vancouverites, how would Vancouver be twelve years later? Would they be enjoying life again? But then if you look at what he’s done in Zaire (the Congo), yes, he’s chasing the extremists, because partly he fears that they will return, but the Congo is also rich in resources which Kagame is using to rebuild his own country.

When asked if he would show the film in Rwanda, Favreau said he would like to but finances prevent that from happening right now: as there are no theatres in Kigali, the only place for a screening would be at the stadium. The equipment to project a film there would cost some $80,000.

Then, when asked about Hotel Rwanda, the 2004 film about Paul Rusesabagina, the very kindly Favreau showed some disgust. First off, the film was mostly filmed in South Africa, with only about eight hours shot in Kigali by a small crew. The film’s credits listed Rwanda first, followed by South Africa, a clear manipultion of the audience’s excpectations. By filming outside Rwanda and not using any Rwandan cast or crew, none of the film’s money went toward helping Rwanda. Furthermore, as a another film goer suggested to Favreau, Paul Rusesabagina leads the Rwandan opposition party - an opponent to Kagame. Are we ignorant whites yet again being led by the nose? Finally Favreau complained that Hotel Rwanda, despite the genocide, managed to squeeze a happy ending out of its subject matter - leaving the intended audience, us the guilty who sat back while all this was happening in 1994, to walk out of the theatre feeling that all is ok in the world and we didn’t have to lift a finger.

Favreau signed one of his posters for a young film music worker who helped rebuild Sierra Leone’s legal system and traded information with the Montreal organizer of India’s Canadian Film Festival. We all shook hands with him.

So there you go. The moderator during the question-and-answer period mentioned that Un dimanche à Kigali is going next to Pusan, Cape Town, then Marrakesh. She wondered aloud what the audiences there would ask. “Let’s hope some blogger there writes about it,” she said with a smile.

Note: End of an Elephant and Blockade play again at the Pacific Cinematheque as a double bill on Thursday. Un dimanche à Kigali is opening in theatres on Friday.