Luk'Luk'I

It’s February 28th, 2010: the last day of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. At 12:15PM the puck drops for the Gold Medal game between Canada and the USA. In just a few hours this prolific event will undergo an apotheosis as one of the most remarkable games in hockey history. Yet all the while, in areas obscured by the patriotism and affluent façade of the game, another state of nature buzzes: the Downtown Eastside.

“Luk’Luk’I” is the name for the swampy area known today as Vancouver’s ‘Downtown Eastside’. This film begins with the Downtown Eastside and the people who live there: the descendants of a long–and ongoing–invasion, taking upon their shoulders the colonial legacy of the most violent and repressed aspect of Canadian national identity. Angel Gates is a mother and part-time sex worker. Eric Buurman is a father juggling his son and landscaping job with his heroin addiction. Angela ‘Rollergirl’ Dawson is a larger-than-life street celebrity and icon, roller-skating around town and interacting with virtually all of Vancouver. Mark has recurring visions of being taken away to another world. And finally, there’s Ken, a man with a disability who’s just trying to find companionship and to get to see the games.

Weaving their stories together over the course of one day, LUK’LUK’I is a film which reciprocally engages the real-life stories of five resident non-actors playing themselves under fictionally re-created scenarios, all taking place during the 2010 Gold Medal Men’s Hockey Game. The film refuses linear narration, refuses explanation, refuses biography. The queer comes through as the abject in society.

Trailer...