South African films hit the city This weekend will feature the fourth annual Vancou- ver South African Film Festival BY LAUREN COLLINS mer freedom fighter will be at Sat- urday’s screening of Soft Ven- geance: Albie Sachs & the new S.A. for Vancouver’s 4th annual South African Flim Festival which will be held at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Film festival spokeswoman Geral- dine Eliot said the festival is focusing on Soft Vengeance most. The movie is about Sachs during the apartheid re- gime in South Africa. After the screen- ing, there will be a Q&A at John Fluevog Shoes in Gastown. Going beyond stereotypes and cele- brating 20 years of democracy are the two major themes at the festival this weekend. “We're celebrating 20 years of de- mocracy in South Africa. It’s a big an- niversary as well, so we’ve got a lot of focus on that,” Eliot said. The festival started in 2011 and is en- tirely volunteer run with all proceeds going to the non-profit organization Education without Borders. The orga- nization is mainly focused on educa- tional programs in Gugulethu, a town- ship near Cape Town, South Africa. David Chudnovsky, the festival founder, met with people from Educa- tion without Borders in 2010 after a trip to South Africa. Chudnovsky and the organization originally planned to keep it small. “We expected to show one movie, and we ended up with a film festival the first year that was successful and we continued to do the work and have, what I think, is really interesting and entertaining and educational films,” Chudnovsky said. Chudnovsky and Eliot said some of the people involved with the festival are people who know South Africa. It’s a mix of people who were originally from there or who have visited the country a lot, they said. “Tt’s a tremendously interesting and complex country that has been por- trayed in a very unidimensional and very stereotypical way in the West. We want to help people to understand how interesting and complicated the place is and how much we can learn from the experiences,” Chudnovsky said. There are still individual tickets and full-weekend passes available. Tickets for students are $10. “Last year, it was much bigger than the previous two years. This year, it’s bigger than those. We just keep grow- ing which is fantastic,” Eliot said. [ A Sachs, lawyer, writer and for- THE GUARDIAN photo Albie Sachs will be attending Vancouver’s South African Film Festival. EDMOND LU photo Paul Mon-Kau poses with one of the many Belgian beers he has featured at his bar, The District. Drinking Belgium A North Vancouver bar has been offering a vart- ety of beers leading up to Belgian Beer Day BY EDMOND LU n celebration of Belgian Beer Day, a North Vancouver restaurant, The District, decided to hold a “30 Days of Belgian Beer” event which start- ed March 7. Each day, the restaurant, situated near Lonsdale Quay, features a differ- ent Belgian import beer for $4 off, and for Belgian Beer Day on April 5, all 30 will be sold at the feature price. The District has carried Belgian beers for the last seven years. Owner Paul Mon-Kau is from the Netherlands, and when opening his restaurant felt Belgian food was both something he could personally identify with and more accessible than Dutch food. The decision to feature Belgian beer was a natural fit. Belgian beer holds a certain mys- tique for beer drinkers because each one is different and difficult to catego- rize. “They've always made beers with different flavours and components and spices and herbs,” Mon-Kau_ said. “When people say, ‘Oh, it’s a Belgian- style beer,’ that’s a blanket way of say- ing it’s not a lager or IPA.” According to Mon-Kau, Belgium pro- duces 850 regular beers and 9,000 sea- sonal beers. Adding to the mystery of Belgian beer are the old legends surrounding the secretive brews produced by Trap- pist monks. One Vancouver brewer, Ben Coli, seeks to demystify Belgian beer through the product of his soon-to- open micro-brewery Dageraad Brew- ing. Coli has a a nine-part online journal on the brewery website, which his ex- periences with Belgian beer and open- ing the brewery. Dageraad will be brewing beer in the traditional Belgian style, and will be the first in the province to do so. “To really do it properly in a lot of ways, you really need to dedicate your- self to it, to get to know the yeast,” Coli said. Colin hopes to promote the catego- ry-defying Belgian-style beer and make it more accessible for Vancouverites looking to try the brew. Coli suggested people can be appre- hensive about trying a new beer, but encouraged everyone to branch out with their beer tasting. “You just have to be up for an adventure, to give it a go.” 66 To re- ally do it properly in a lot of ways, you really need to dedicate yourself to it, to get to know the yeast BEN COLI Talking to strangers One man has decided to talk to at least one Van- couver resident every day BY KARLY BLATS say, “Don’t talk to strangers?” Well, Colin Easton, creator of The Stranger Project 2014, would disagree with your mother’s words. The project, started on Jan. 1 initial- ly began because Easton said he’d been thinking a lot about making connec- tions with people and was curious to discover people’s stories. As a result, Easton decided that every day he would hit the streets of Vancouver and meet a random individual. At first, Easton said he was doing the project for himself on his own, Facebook posting only a story a week. But interest in the project began to grow and a good friend encouraged him to start a separate Facebook page for the project. Ultimately, The Strang- er Project 2014 was born. “T thought, ‘Now that I’ve gone public I kind of have to do this,” said Easton. Whether during his daily commute or on a casual walk around the city, Easton said there’s no real method to where he goes to look for strangers. “Tf it’s cold or raining I go into malls or into coffee shops probably in the summertime when the days get longer I'll venture into areas that aren’t neces- sarily my neighborhood.” On day 81 (he’s currently on day 92) Easton met a Vancouver woman named Liz who told him, “I’m sure I don’t have anything interesting to tell you. I’ve lived a very ordinary life.” However, be- cause of the project and posting on Facebook, a long-lost relative of Liz, who hadn’t seen her in 25 years, reached out to her. Easton said he has spoken to every- one from heroin addicts to women who have had to give up their children for adoption. You can follow the project on Face- book at The Stranger Project 2014, on Twitter at @thestranger2014 or on Ins- tagram at @TheStrangerProject. H::: you ever heard your mother FACEBOOK photo Colin Easton (right) poses with one of the many strangers he has met. FACEBOOK photo Liz had a longtime relative contact her after chatting with Easton.