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.
