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TEARS FOR APRIL IN THE NEWS
Life and death: the camera caught it allYoung woman's descent into tragedy makes a riveting filmMark Tonner, The ProvincePublished: Sunday, December 02, 2007 Some tales of woe do more than overwhelm. Downtown Eastside resident April Reoch added compassion to self-destruction by allowing Odd Squad police officers to film her decline into drug addiction and death. The resulting film project Tears for April puts a young woman's heart on display in a way movie viewers will not be accustomed to. It's unscripted, meaning April's course through life in the skids was unwritten at the start, when VPD officers met her in 1993. Then an upbeat 17-year-old, she was warned in the resigned and friendly tones typical of VPD patrol people. You wouldn't have had to be sentimental to see the sparkle of humanity in her -- it can be seen shining back from the eyes of the officers involved. You can see for yourself, if you're up for an unflinching look into some nasty truths. Tears for April is showing at Tinseltown until Dec. 6. Odd Squad members can be seen speaking with April on Day 1, explaining how quickly she'll get sick and lose her looks, how quickly she'll be dating anyone with $10 to spare. That the Odd Squad people made a personal investment is very clear. It's not the first time they've become directly involved, but the effort these constables and their sergeant put into trying to rescue April is remarkable. We see them buying dinner for her at a local police hangout. Pictures of April's son as an infant become interview segments, with her son in his early teens. He tells of meeting his mom for the first time and weeping, then trying to spend time with her and being deeply disappointed. April's sometime boyfriend "Dan D" speaks of meeting her in a pool hall, trying to help and falling into a pit of addiction with her. At one point, Odd Squad members find a bed for April in a recovery house, get her loaded into a taxi, then actually on scene and registered. Days later, she smashes her room up and runs off, unable to think of anything but getting high. She's found in any number of increasingly foul settings: shivering in an unoccupied garage, lying in laneway trash, dancing stoned on the street in pseudo-epileptic exultation. It's a bona fide horror. The viewer forgets that April was ever good-looking, that she ever had teeth or that the 25-year-old ever looked less than 50. The Odd Squad members don't forget. They keep trying, meeting with April over and over, offering help endlessly. April isn't their only concern. Carlee, whose addiction and abscessed limbs were featured in Odd Squad 1: Through a Blue Lens, is encountered in states varying from hopeful to helpless. She loses the use of an arm, picked apart to the point of disintegration as she chases imaginary insects -- the fabled under-the-skin "cocaine bugs." April doesn't make it. She was found dead next to a dumpster, not long ago. Carlee was found dead soon after, overdosed in a hotel room. There is no nice way to share such an end. We see a VPD officer in the morgue, making final identification for April. Her family is as torn apart as you'd expect. There are successes. Randy Miller, a formerly incorrigible skid-row addict, accepted help. He's featured in the film, doing well in recovery, helping those still trapped. Odd Squad members carry on, doing everything they can to make the losses worth something. The message will be shared with groups of young people across the country as Tears for April moves from screen debut to presentation form. Their work has an effect rarely seen among people receiving anti-drug messages. It's hard to know how many are persuaded never to get high, but the looks of belief are plain to see. Odd Squad productions carry an authenticity that simply can't be scripted. How these Downtown Eastside patrol officers maintain such a balanced and helpful perspective is a mystery. Check out Tinseltown this week if you'd like to see them at their best. Sgt. Mark Tonner is a Vancouver police officer, whose column appears bi-weekly on Sundays in Unwind. His opinions aren't necessarily those of the city's police department or board. Mark may be contacted at marcuspt@shaw.ca ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cops fight drug battle with cameraDocumentary depicts Downtown Eastside despair and its victimsGlen Schaefer, The ProvincePublished: Sunday, November 25, 2007 A l Arsenault, now retired after 27 years as a Downtown Eastside beat cop, first met a teenaged girl named April in 1993 as she found herself on the periphery of that neighbourhood's notorious drug scene. Arsenault had developed the habit of taking pictures of the regulars after he got to know them. Something made him take a snapshot of the teen he'd just met. "I took a 'before' picture, which I'd never done before, and I told her: 'Don't let me take an 'after' picture,'" Arsenault recalls. He gave April a blunt summary of how life would go if she stuck around: increasing drug use, the wrong friends, dealing and finally prostitution. Six months later, he saw her again, by now heavily into drugs, bruised and working in the area's juvenile prostitute stroll. By 1998, Arsenault and six other colleagues had come up with the idea of documenting the street life on video, as a way of dissuading others like April. The cops called themselves the Odd Squad and in 1999 produced the 52-minute documentary Through a Blue Lens. Their work amounted to a unique partnership, and friendships, between the policemen and the street people. The documentary was shown in schools across Canada and covered by news organizations around the world. They kept filming the people who had agreed to have their stories told. This Friday the feature-length sequel Tears For April: Beyond the Blue Lens, gets a week-long theatrical run at the Tinseltown Theatre, just steps from where the street-level misery continues. April is now long dead -- she was in her 20s and looked twice that age when she was murdered. "I still get choked up when I watch the footage about April. We were friends," says Arsenault, who co-directed the new movie with veteran TV director Ken Jubenvill. The two of them and Province writer Steve Berry spent five months of long days culling some 200 hours of footage covering 10 years of street life. Of the six people depicted in the film, just one, Randy Miller, has escaped addiction. He now works as a longshoreman. Another woman died of an overdose, while three others continue their back-and-forth battle. "I phone and continue to share their triumphs and setbacks. It's not a matter of filming them and then just leaving them. I still have some obligation to see that they get the breaks that they can get." April also had a son, raised by relatives, who speaks in the movie about his mother. "I just showed the movie to her son. He's looking at his mom talking about him, never seen it before," says Arsenault. "In some ways I feel like I'm his uncle." Because the movie documents years in these lives, they emerge as personalities, not statistics. As well, it's a harrowing look at how quickly IV drug use takes a physical toll. "April's spirit lives on cinematically, she will continue to reach people," says Arsenault, who also plans to write a book. "I explained to her son that although his mom wasn't around for him, he has to be extremely proud of her. She signed off a waiver that would allow us to film her in all states. It's rare footage, a huge amount of trust for us." Arsenault has no time for the argument of harm reduction. "It's gotten to the point where a person can have one foot in the ditch and another in the grave and they go, 'Oh, I don't want to be judgmental, here's your box of needles.' They need treatment. "These people are not throwaway people. The way to the skids is a lot shorter than most people realize, and the way back up is farther than anybody can imagine." gschaefer@png.canwest.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tears for April: Beyond the Blue LensMovie Reviews By Ken Eisner Publish Date: November 29, 2007 A documentary by Al Arsenault and Ken Jubenvill. Unrated. Opens Friday, November 30, at the Cinemark Tinseltown Followers of reality TV may get more than they bargained for in Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens, an utterly unsparing look at life if you can call it that in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The documentary is a follow-up, almost a decade later, to Through a Blue Lens, a National Film Board project that looked at the efforts of some Vancouver cops who called themselves the Odd Squad. They are led by former constable Al Arsenault (now retired), who describes himself as "an expert on the pain drugs can cause people". Arsenault, it turns out, has a lot in common with documentary makers through history, as he declares here that when it comes to photographing sensitive areas of life "It's easier to apologize later than to beg before." In this case, the images are of people who undergo shocking deteriorations, losing teeth, hair, muscles, and skin, sometimes in just a few years. Central to this process is one April Reoch, a part-Native woman who was hooked and hooking by the age of 16. You can tell from the title that this won't end well, but Arsenault, codirecting with Ken Jubenvill, mixes April's story with those of several other addicts who go through various stages of denial, hope, and humiliating collapse. There is some disturbing stuff along the way as no-hopers disappoint yet again. (One scrawny user, taken in by her family, immediately starts complaining about cat dander.) But human beings are unpredictable. The worst case, who resembles a shell-shocked war veteran when first seen at Main and Hastings streets, makes the best recovery, eventually joining the police to lecture students about drug abuse. "This time," he declares poignantly, "I get to ride in the front seat with my hands free." The film, which can't by nature resist being somewhat repetitive, doesn't address the persistent criminalization of drug culture, which turns cops into social workers. Clearly, the best ones do work that has to be done. But do we really want a society in which police are the most caring speakers at a funeral service? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Must-see for anyone who lives here Glen Schaefer, The Province Published: Friday, November 30, 2007 As raw and blunt as the Downtown Eastside Vancouver drug life it depicts, the tell-it-like-it-is documentary Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens isn't much for contrived dramatic flourish. But a moment of horrifying intimacy in the movie's chronicle of six addicts' lives could stand as a visual metaphor for this neighbourhood and what it represents for this city. We're in the squalid home of Carlee, a longtime addict in her mid-20s, who's left single after her boyfriend had fatally shot himself. In the throes of her own intravenous drug habit, Carlee displays a gaping wound on her forearm, where she can't stop tearing at the flesh to free the imagined insects under her skin. The Downtown Eastside streets, and the bleeding social wounds depicted there, are similarly resistant to healing. The plagues include heroin, cocaine and the various synthetic cocktails -- the specific drug varies, as desperation and availability means anything that can be injected will be. A group of Vancouver policemen have been taking video cameras to their streets for the past 10 years, and formed the non-profit Odd Squad to take their anti-drug message to schoolchildren. This feature stands as an expansion and sequel to their earlier documentary Through a Blue Lens. Co-directed by now-retired Vancouver Const. Al Arsenault and veteran TV director Ken Jubenvill, and written by The Province's Steve Berry, the new movie was crafted from 200 hours of footage covering a decade of street life and death. The night-time beat-cop scenes of people howling and writhing on the streets are interspersed with the sunny skyline views of downtown Vancouver that are usually seen in tourist brochures. The cop filmmakers force us to ask what is going wrong in this one tortured part of an otherwise pampered city. It's clear that Arsenault and his colleagues formed genuine friendships with the people they were trying to help. The four women and two men emerge with humour, dreams, delusions and flaws. There's Carlee, who wanted to work with marine animals, but evenutally died of her addictions. There's April, whom Arsenault first met as a teen in the mid-1990s and tried to warn away from the street life. She fought to overcome her addictions so that she could reconnect with the son she couldn't raise, but was murdered by a boyfriend. Smart, articulate Nicola goes through five years of being clean, even joining the Odd Squad's school lecture circuit, before succumbing again to the chemical pull. The Squad's one success story so far is Randy Miller. At last report he was still drug-free and working on the docks, fit and unrecognizable from his haggard street days. We have 10 years of these lives, recorded by people who cared about and liked them, which makes it impossible to turn away. It's must-see viewing for anyone who lives in this city. MOVIE REVIEW Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens Warning: 14A: Coarse language drug use. 92 minutes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beyond the Blue Lens ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Through a Blue Lens sequel gets theatrical run The ProvincePublished: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 A documentary that was 10 years in the making by a group of Vancouver police officers is getting a week-long theatrical run in Vancouver later this month. Tears For April: Beyond the Blue Lens, opening Nov. 30 at the Tinseltown Cinemas, was shot on the Downtown Eastside by officers who worked that beat and called themselves the Odd Squad. The movie is a sequel to 1999's Through a Blue Lens, which told the stories of six area residents. Independently financed and produced, and co-directed by retired Const. Al Arsenault and movie veteran Ken Jubenvill from a script by Province writer-editor Steve Berry, the new movie updates the stories of those profiled in the first movie. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Movie Review from Georgia Straight (Nov. 29 - Dec. 5 edition) - Written by Ken Eisner Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens A documentary by Al Arsenault and Ken Jubenvill. Unrated. Opens Friday, November 30, at the Cinemark Tinseltown Followers of reality TV may get more than they bargained for in Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens, an utterly unsparing look at life if you can call it that in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The documentary is a follow-up, almost a decade later, to Through a Blue Lens, a National Film Board project that looked at the efforts of some Vancouver cops who called themselves the Odd Squad. They are led by former constable Al Arsenault (now retired), who describes himself as "an expert on the pain drugs can cause people". Arsenault, it turns out, has a lot in common with documentary makers through history, as he declares here that when it comes to photographing sensitive areas of life "It's easier to apologize later than to beg before." In this case, the images are of people who undergo shocking deteriorations, losing teeth, hair, muscles, and skin, sometimes in just a few years. Central to this process is one April Reoch, a part-Native woman who was hooked and hooking by the age of 16. You can tell from the title that this won't end well, but Arsenault, codirecting with Ken Jubenvill, mixes April's story with those of several other addicts who go through various stages of denial, hope, and humiliating collapse. There is some disturbing stuff along the way as no-hopers disappoint yet again. (One scrawny user, taken in by her family, immediately starts complaining about cat dander.) But human beings are unpredictable. The worst case, who resembles a shell-shocked war veteran when first seen at Main and Hastings streets, makes the best recovery, eventually joining the police to lecture students about drug abuse. "This time," he declares poignantly, "I get to ride in the front seat with my hands free." The film, which can't by nature resist being somewhat repetitive, doesn't address the persistent criminalization of drug culture, which turns cops into social workers. Clearly, the best ones do work that has to be done. But do we really want a society in which police are the most caring speakers at a funeral service? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Odd Squad films hope in despair Addicts do make it clean in tragic follow- up to Through a Blue Lens
CanWest News Service REVIEW The story of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and its drug-addicted denizens is certainly no scoop. But finding hope amid the endless despair is something not even Vancouver’s Odd Squad productions had been able to find until Tears for April, the latest documentary from the city’s filmmaking law enforcers. The first film showcased six individual addicts and their descent from health to a half- life mired in disease, abuse and exploitation. We see the same people in part 2, but at the heart of this exploration is the story of April ( Shannon) Reoch, a young woman from Squamish who found herself on the streets at the age of 17. W h e n we h e a r t h e p o l i c e describe April, it’s immediately clear that despite the general ambivalence among average Vancouverites, the police see and engage with the local addicts. They noticed April, to the point where they photographed her outside a nightclub in 1993 — just before she took the life- sucking plunge into heroin and cocaine addiction. April was pretty. She was bright. She was also mother to a young son named Daniel, but after the needle landed, April j o i n ed th e l e g i o n s of o t h e r women on the streets who sell their bodies to finance a habit Though most viewers will be able to predict April’s outcome before the final frames, the beauty o f t h i s ve r y e a r n e s t a n d extremely urgent film is the way it constantly reintroduces hope. It’s an element that can’t be undervalued, because stories of addiction are so mind- numbingly depressing, the biggest challenge for any viewer — and any Vancouverite — is to remain invested in the drama when so much of it seems hopeless. Making things even more problematic is the resignation most addicts show towards their disease. Listening to the subjects speak about their illness is almost akin to listening to an artist talk about his last canvas, or a musician describe a song. The sickness consumes so much of who they are, it’s now their main focus — their central raison d’etre. More disturbingly, the drugs usurp a sense of personal identity. The last image of April is that of her toothless body in the morgue, bent, bloated and broken. If this were just her story, the movie could have drowned the viewer in tragedy, but it’s not. April didn’t make it, but we’re shown others who found the strength, medical intervention and self- love to stay clean. Easily one of the most potent sources of prevention, Tears for April is a carefully delivered cautionary tale that reminds every one of us how close Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is to our daily life, regardless of where we happen to live.
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