Torch the Olympics
BY Krisztina Kun
The 2010 Olympics may still be three years away, but that hasn’t stopped Vancouver activist Conrad Schmidt from making a documentary film about its consequences for the city. He sold his home to finance the project, saying he “wanted to make a movie that still had the potential to make change.”
The result is Five Ring Circus, which, despite its amateur-looking promotional materials, is well researched and well produced. In it, Schmidt reviews the impact of the games in terms of environmental destruction, the housing crisis and the overwhelming debt taxpayers will end up saddled with. The most impressive elements are the interviews Schmidt manages to capture, which include Sara MacIntyre of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation candidly explaining the hidden cost of the Olympics; three regional mayors discussing their concerns about the games; and now-deceased 71-year-old indigenous activist Harriet Nahanee, just before she was sentenced for blockading a highway expansion.
Five Ring Circus will be screened across British Columbia this summer; DVDs are available from www.FiveRingCircus.org.
