Documentary about historic Vancouver park to screen at Vancity

Juan Manuel Sepúlveda spent two years hanging out in Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park in the Downtown Eastside. The director got to know its regulars while letting his camera roll. The result is The Ballad of Oppenheimer Park, a documentary about the park and the daily lives of some of the people who spend time there.

On Sept. 1, Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour St.) will screen the documentary that the Hollywood Reporter calls “an intimate group portrait that can be both heartbreaking and hilarious, focusing on a few lost souls banding together against the raw deal handed to their tribes.’’

According to the Vancity website, “Through allowing for direct participation in the filmmaking process and playing with tropes from the Western genre, Juan Manuel Sepúlveda has created an extraordinary and controversial documentary where the day to day life in this park converts it into a ritualistic space in the struggle to overcome historical and ongoing hardships. Watch The Ballad of Oppenheimer Park trailer.

Co-presented by VIFF and the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival. Tickets from vlaff.org and at the door.

The park is named after Vancouver’s second mayor, David Oppenheimer, and officially opened in 1902. The park is a First Nations burial site and, at one time, the heart of the Japantown community that was forcibly dispersed by the internment programs of WWII. Following months of protest, in 2014 it was officially recognized that the park rests on the unceded territory of the Musqueam First Nation.