Remember Their Names (Janis Cole)

Documenting grief and pain
By Fran Schechter

The notorious serial killer never appears in Remember Their Names, an installation by NOW contributor and documentary filmmaker Janis Cole about the prostitutes, many of them aboriginal, who disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Cole doesn’t need to remind us how they met their end; instead, she focuses on the women and the grief of friends and relatives who searched for them.

In a darkened room, two projections feature missing-persons posters: The larger screen switches from group to individual mug shots, the floor below it strewn street-memorial-style with flowers, photos, stuffed animals and native smudge bundles. The smaller projection is overlain with police quotes justifying their inaction. Some paper posters are crumpled on the floor.

You can’t help wondering what terrible life experiences put these women here. In a short video on the third wall, Sarah Jean DeVries, one of the dead, speaks frankly about heroin as she shoots up. A desk nearby holds a photo of her daughter and photocopied pages from DeVries’s diary, wrenching words of self-loathing and rage at the men who used her.

Though this documentary work doesn’t pack the angry, visceral punch of Vigil, Rebecca Belmore’s performance on the same subject, it’s still a moving cry of pain for those lost in this ugly chapter of our recent history.

At Trinity Square Video, to August 8. Cole gives a master class Saturday (July 18) from 3 to 5 pm.

NOW | July 15-22, 2009 | VOL 28 NO 46
Copyright 2009 NOW Communications

NOW Magazine
Remember Their Names