Processing your request, Please wait....This award-winning documentary film, shot in Vancouver, Canadas notorious Downtown Eastside, caught the eyes of audiences, film makers and critics world wide for its unusual and sensitive depiction of life on the street.
Through A Blue Lens documents a year of life and death on the street and behind tenement walls. The striking thing about the film is not the horror of drug abuse but the story of how the interaction between the police and the drug addicts, with the camera as a catalyst, actually changed the people involved. The cops became more sympathetic to the people on the street and the drug addicts, in having friendship extended to them by the police and film makers, developed self esteem and, in some cases, actually cleaned up.
Released in 1999. 53 min. Director: Veronica Alice Mannix. Documentary film.
It’s so well done. I work as a paramedic downtown in a large city and still, we treat addiction as a behavior or disorder of one’s personality. We cannot address the problem until we treat addiction as a true medical condition. The stone age man found in preserved condition in the italian alps had the genome for heart disease dispelling the myth that heart disease is a modern condition. The same applies to addiction. Some people are genectically more prone to respond to these chemicals be it cocaine, heroine, or alcohol, than others. The interaction of these substances and their corresponding receptors at the cellular level produces effects that cause rapid addiction and dependance. We need to stop jailing and persecuting but instead treating and preventing in a proactive way.
When you do find it, let us know… I’m looking for it too..
The movie is for sale for $50..
I am willing to donate $12,50
we need three more people, and the we can post it here.
Thanks for that one Justen, but there is a full length follow up called; Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens. Just can’t seem to find it anywhere other than the trailer for it.
Tears for April: Happy Tears (Follow Up)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG6jVDUTlD4
Thanks for this one!
I found out that there is a follow up to this one 10 years later called Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens. Unfortunately I can’t seem to locate it online. Perhaps you guys will find it and post it on your site if you can locate it. Cheers!
Thanks for the heads up on the follow up, I wasn’t aware of it!
Bleak, beautiful; poetry.
Probably can convince some kid to dont do hard drugs.