In 1962, there were no film actors, crews or directors in Vancouver. The scene was prehistoric, cinematically speaking. UBC theatre student Larry Kent, however, had grown up in love with the movies, so he teamed with others at the school to create, for the first time anywhere in Canada, independent films with the urgency and reality of the new auteur cinema emerging in Europe. His first feature, The Bitter Ash (1963), with bits of nudity and profanity, was banned everywhere in B.C. — except the UBC campus.

Other filmmakers from UBC have also played a crucial role in shaping Canadian cinema. Besides Kent, early UBC students-turned-directors include Allan King, Sturla Gunnarsson, Jack Darcus and Daryl Duke. Later, such directors as Bruce Sweeney, John Pozer, Mina Shum and Lynne Stopkewich would rise from the Film Production Program. Now, with the campus film program celebrating its 40th anniversary, it’s time to acknowledge the contribution and enjoy the work.

Our UBC retrospective begins with Kent’s third no-budget feature, When Tomorrow Dies (1965), a compelling look at the Vancouver of its day. The feminist storyline — a woman unfulfilled in a dreary marriage enrols at UBC as a way out — was well ahead of its time, a precursor of films such as Diary of a Mad Housewife and A Woman Under the Influence. When Tomorrow Dies is paired with Bruce Sweeney’s celebrated student film Betty and Vera Go Lawn Bowling (1990). Sweeney would go on to be one of the country’s finest filmmakers; his Last Wedding (2001) was the first Western Canadian film to open the Toronto International Film Festival.

John Pozer’s The Grocer Wife (1991) has a place in Canadian film history as secure as that of Kent’s early work. The first feature made by a UBC film student, this intriguing blending of experimental and narrative stylings would play Cannes and be named best Canadian feature at Montreal. Its crew included eight UBC students who, inspired by Pozer’s infectious determination, would go on to be feature filmmakers, including Sweeney, Lynne Stopkewich, Mina Shum and Reg Harkema. Besides being the nuclei for the Vancouver indie scene, this UBC group would play a pivotal role in the development of a Canada-wide cinema, adding a West Coast Wave to the film scene centred in Toronto. Pozer’s film is accompanied here by Karethe Linaae’s Off Key (1994), which also played Cannes, and by Dylan Akio Smith’s Man Feel Pain (2004), which was named best Canadian short at Toronto.

After working on The Grocer’s Wife, Mina Shum set out to make her debut feature, and the result was a Canadian classic. Double Happiness (1994) would win Genie Awards and find acclaim at festivals around the world. Shum and her friends studied film at UBC at a time when the heavily punk-influenced New York scene of Jim Jarmusch, Susan Seidelman and others was putting its DIY stamp on independent film everywhere. Shum put a Canadian twist on that punk sensibility like no other filmmaker. Double Happiness is pure Vancouver — an engaging story of an immigrant Asian family in the city, focusing on an artistic young woman (beautifully played by Sandra Oh) navigating two cultures. Double Happiness is paired with Gwen Haworth’s She’s a Boy I Knew (2007), which won the audience award for most popular Canadian film at the Vancouver film festival.

- DAVID SPANER

Film historian and critic David Spaner is the author of Dreaming in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North by Northwest (2004). When he was film critic for the Vancouver Province, he wrote often about Canadian film. He is currently at work on a book about the worldwide independent film movement which will be published in spring 2011.