HOOKERS OW DAVIE A look at Vancouver's prostitution nightmare IT HAS been almost one year since Toronto film- makers Holly Dale and Janice Cole walked the streets of Vancouver’s West End, to learn about and record the lives of hookers who work and live there. The result of eight months research and almost one year of production is the film Hookers ... On Davie, now in its Wancouver premier through the Vancouver Film Festival. The film is an honest, sym- pathetic portrait of what a Street prostitute is. Honest because the film-makers chose a documentary style PROSTITUTION is of growing concern in Vancouver, and is the subject of a film now premiering in town, called Hookers on Davie. By COLIN LAMONT without narration, in which female and male prostitutes, transvestites and transexuals paint their own often chilling picture of life on the street. Co-directors Dale and Cole, in Vancouver to pro- mote the film, sat in a Rob- son Street cafe last week, Executive Offices Secretarial Services Phone Answering Photocopying #300 - West Vancouver 4497 Marine Dr 925-1147 reflecting back on production of their film and commenting on the ever-growing opposi- tion by many West End residents to the world’s oldest trade being plied in _ their neighborhood. ‘“‘We’re not the kind of film-makers who do a type of journalistic report,’’ explain- ed co-director Janis Cole. ‘“We like to take a par- ticular subject and try to give an audience the chance to get to know those people the way that we got to know them.”’ Cole said that this was the reason that no narration was used, in order to let the friday news — May 18, 1984 hookers tell their own stories, the way they see life on the street. The directors spent two months prior to filming get- ting to know the hookers and to gain their trust. During this period, Cole said they came to know the hookers™ community as a_ relatively pimp-free one, where pro- stitutes co-operated with one another, exchanged bad trick lists and wanted an honest story told about their lives. In a matter of fact way, throughout the film, hookers like Michelle, a 24 year-old transvestite, tell of having photos submitted Newsroom 985-2131 ‘‘only stabbed three people in my life.’’ Another hooker tells of being forced (sometimes at knife-point) to perform her services for free by three customers in one night. Working sometimes with a hidden camera inside a van and sometimes on foot, Cole and Dale followed the Héokers through rain and shine, day and night as they haggled with johns, disap- peared into dark cars, shared meals and drinks, jokes and quarrels. “It’s one thing to read about the violence and then to actually witness it,’’ com- mented co-director, Holly Dale. ‘“*We were there the night Michelle stabbed her trick, just before we started film- ing, if was quite devastating to see that type of violence.”’ Cole and Dale were themselves exposed to some tense situations during film- ing, despite good co- operation from Vancouver police, who gave them two direct lines to call in case of emergency. The co-directors found themselves facing down a pimp who had just beaten a prostitute and left her covered in blood after she refused to give him money. ‘The pimp tried to force Laate Tirtie: Sota! boirieecta Rd. terticgtt TLE FUN RUN Time Out Sports SuperValu (Westlynn Mall) Brooks SECTION ENTERTAINMENT T.V. - MOVIES - WGO us into an apartment but we wouldn’t go,’’ recalled Dale. ‘*It was scary, very scary,”’ added Cole. One thing that surprised both film-makers was the young age at which many prostitutes begin. ‘It’s amazing when _ so- meone has been a prostitute for 1] years and they are only 22-years-old,’’ adds Dale. ‘‘They started at a young age and grew up knowing prostitution better than they knew anything else and that’s why they were still working at it when they were young adults.’’ Due to the legalities involv- ed in filming juveniles under 18, the film doesn’t show any juvenile prostitutes, instead the young adult hookers tell how they got their start, most of them opposed to juvenile prostitution. One scene now so very familiar on the West End streets but missing in the film ts the Shame The Johns movement. Groups of West End citizens gathering up_ the licence numbers of customers’ cars and descrip- tions of the johns just didn’t exist when the film was made See page C2 v v Cron bon: J ( FON h May 26 1984 9:15 a.m. Warm-up 9:55 a.m. Start 19th & Grand Blvd, NV Lynn Valley Park & Institute 6.8 km or 45 miles or 4 27kmor 1.5 miles tor Jrs 980 9211 WwW. TIME OUT stty Entry Fee | S600 >Aov Rees tree T Shirt : trrercs SPORES roa 480 0116 1199 Lynn Valley Hoe J al