“I wish I hadn’t worn jeans,” composer and keyboardist Cayne McKenzie confessed as Vancouver progressive rock band We Are The City’s Violent won both Best Canadian Film and Best BC Film awards at the Vancouver International Film Festival’s BC Spotlight gala last night. The title Violent is not about violence, director and band drummer Andrew Huculiak told the crowd at the film’s first VIFF screening on Tuesday night. Rather, Violent signifies a big, abrupt change like what happens to lead character Dagny (Norwegian actress Dagny Backer Johnsen chose to use her own name as her character’s), alluded to throughout the narrative.
I’m realizing how quickly I can die. How quickly this could all be over. And it’s in this realization where everything becomes clear. It feels like happiness. It feels like remembering faces and words. It feels like water. It feels like electricity. It sounds like a humming fridge.
We Are The City originally went to Bergen, Norway to shoot a music video for their new album Violent of the same name, but somehow ended up making this haunting, elegiac film. Five days later, it’s still with me.
VIFF Debut at the RIO Theatre in east Vancouver.
Catch the third VIFF screening on Friday, October 10th at 3:45 pm in SFU Woodwards.
VIFF Repeats: