I was looking at an article about the first ever Recovery Day in Canada, which was celebrated just a few days ago in Vancouver and came across a gem from the past in the comments section; an award winning documentary by the name of “Through a Blue Lens”.
This award-winning documentary film, shot in Vancouver, Canada’s 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.
This documentary was made during the height of the then unpublished scandal of the missing women in downtown Vancouver. At least one of the women who appears on camera named April Reoch was later identified as one of the victims. She died on Christmas Day of 2000.
The film clocks in at just under an hour long, this part 1 is 9:40, and if your moved to watch the rest you can find parts 2-6 here.
