CANNABIS CULTURE LIGHTS UP THE FESTIVAL

Films About Marijuana Are Challenging Viewers' Thoughts About the
Politics Behind the Drug

VANCOUVER -- Nick Wilson was 26, developing a documentary - his first
- - about online infidelity, when he had a conversation with his
68-year-old aunt that sent him in a new direction. Aunt Wendy had
seen a news story on TV about the Vancouver marijuana activist Marc
Emery and she was incensed. Why were U.S. authorities after him? And
why would Canada even consider extraditing a Canadian to face up to
life in prison, simply for selling marijuana seeds?

"She hates potheads, hates drugs, has no patience for any of it,
calls them layabouts and bums," Wilson said at a Vancouver coffee
shop this week, "but she saw that story ... and she was on Mark's side."

Wilson switched gears; this was a story he wanted to tell.

The result, The Prince of Pot: The US vs. Marc Emery, is one of three
Canadian films at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival
focusing on marijuana and asking audiences to rethink its illegality.

If it feels like a cliche to have films about pot at a film festival
in Vancouver, so be it. Wilson, now 27, wanted his film to have its
world premiere in Vancouver, because of what he calls the city's
cannabis culture. "It's very visible," he says. "It's like being gay
in San Francisco."

Besides, he says, "Vancouver is the town [Emery] picked to do battle
in. It's kind of the front line."

Emery, 49, has been lobbying for the decriminalization of marijuana
for years. He heads the B.C. Marijuana Party, runs a magazine called
Cannabis Culture, has a website called pot-tv.net and operates a
mail-order marijuana-seed distribution business.

In 2005, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration asked Canada to
extradite Emery and two of his employees to face drug-trafficking
charges for sending seeds south of the border. Vancouver Police moved
in and arrested him.

And it was that fact - the co-operation of a Canadian police force
with American anti-drug forces - that drew Wilson in. "Emery is a
symptom of a much bigger issue, which is Canadian sovereignty,"
Wilson says. "Who's setting our priorities? Is it us or is it the Americans?"

Wilson was in no way motivated to make this film by a personal desire
to decriminalize marijuana. He is a very occasional pot smoker, who,
after following Emery's fight, now believes it should be
decriminalized, but who gave the matter very little thought before
making the film.

Burnaby, B.C., director Brett Harvey doesn't smoke much pot either.
But audiences might be led to think otherwise after watching his
first film The Union: The Business Behind Getting High. The
feature-length documentary offers argument after argument in favour
of decriminalizing marijuana. At its heart is the thesis that there
are big business forces at work - ranging from pharmaceutical giants
to prison-guard unions - fighting to keep pot illegal. The people who
run grow-ops and sell pot in the vast underground market don't want
it legalized either. Drug traffickers and Drug Enforcement
Administration agents may make strange bedfellows, but this is the
world, the film argues, that criminalizing pot creates.

The idea for the film started with its executive producer, Adam
Scorgie. Three years ago, he returned to British Columbia from New
York, where he had tried to make a go of it as an actor. Friends in
Kelowna, B.C., suggested he could make some easy money by starting a
grow operation. Rather than join the underground pot industry,
though, Scorgie (who doesn't smoke pot at all) decided to make a film about it.

But when he and Harvey began their research, they discovered a much
more compelling angle: that the enormous profitability of the
industry is what's driving the continued criminalization of
marijuana. "The point of the film is to wake people up," says Harvey.
"The number-one reason that grow-ops are in communities is that [the
laws] have created a situation that puts them there."

There are overlapping themes for sure, in The Prince of Pot and The
Union, and you'll see some recurring characters. Emery, the Prince of
Pot himself, appears in The Union. Senator Larry Campbell,
Vancouver's former mayor, is also in both films, decrying the mess
caused by pot's criminalization and ultimately predicting its
legalization - although not, he believes, in his lifetime.

For a completely different pot-on-the-big-screen experience, there's
Weirdsville. Unlike the two documentaries, this is a feature with a
much subtler pro-pot message (in fact, you might mistake it for an
anti-drug message). And unlike first-time directors Wilson and
Harvey, veteran filmmaker Allan Moyle, 60, has a personal interest in
the subject. He is very much a proud pothead. "The people who made
the movie think pot is a sweet food," he says. "Pot ... makes you
conscious and is inclusive and makes you more sensitive to the people
around you."

The film stars Scott Speedman (Felicity) and Wes Bentley (American
Beauty) as a couple of stoners in Hamilton, Ont., who have a run-in
with a satanic cult. Zaniness ensues, but there is a serious message
here: Hard drugs are bad, but pot has the power to bring people
together and make them happy. Its illegality is what creates
opportunities for shady characters to break legs and make fortunes.

Like Wilson, Moyle believes Vancouver's drug culture makes it a good
spot to show his film. And the city has personal meaning for him. "I
smoked my first pot in Vancouver," he says on the phone from London.
In between screenings of Weirdsville, he plans to return to the spot
in Stanley Park "where my mind was opened." He figures scoring pot in
Vancouver won't be a problem. "I just know that it'll be coming out
of the woodwork."

If there's a reason these films have all found their way onto the big
screen at this time, it's as much about politics as it is pot. With
the current U.S. administration and its war in Iraq, the distinctions
between Canada and the United States have never been so obvious.
These Canadian filmmakers would like to see Canada distance itself
from America's war on drugs, too.

The Prince of Pot screens this Monday, Friday and Oct. 8 at VIFF and
airs on CBC Newsworld on Oct. 23. The Union screens at VIFF on Oct.
10 and 11. Weirdsville screens at VIFF tomorrow and Tuesday and opens
in four Canadian cities on Oct. 12.