Vancouver Courier: NEW article on Vaisbord’s Little Mountain film

This new article by Jennifer Thuncher in the Vancouver Courier appeared a week after the “official” fundraising campaign was over. It’s one of the best ones written and can be found HERE.   Filmmaker and activist David Vaisbord doesn’t give up easily, but then again neither do the subjects featured in his soon to be completed documentary. For the last six years, Vaisbord has documented the ongoing fight over social housing at Little Mountain, Vancouver’s oldest public social housing development, located in the Riley Park neighbourhood just east of Queen Elizabeth Park. – See more at: http://www.vancourier.com/entertainment/little-mountain-doc-takes-on-life-of-its-own-1.1159601#sthash.QaWD7VZz.dpuf Little Mountain doc takes on life of its own Film about Vancouver’s oldest public social housing development six years in the making – See more at: http://www.vancourier.com/entertainment/little-mountain-doc-takes-on-life-of-its-own-1.1159601#sthash.LTJP4c4K.dpuf

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Local Filmmaker Aims to Document Little Mountain Social Housing Struggle

CiTR Radio’s THE CITY Interviews Vaisbord about The Little Mountain Project on June 20, 2014. Listen to the recorded podcast below: http://thecityfm.org/2014/06/20/podcast-local-filmmaker-aims-to-document-little-mountain-social-housing-struggle/ David Vaisbord discusses the importance of the Little Mountain Story and his campaign to create a documentary film to showcase the community and residents’ struggle against the BC government.The Little Mountain story centres around Little Mountain residents – many of them seniors – fighting to remain in their apartments in Vancouver’s first social (public) housing development and demanding demolished social housing units be replaced on the site… David Vaisbord July 2014  

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A message from Rand Chatterjee

Dear David and the thousands of former Residents of Little Mountain Housing, The story of Little Mountain Housing, a 7-hectare piece of public land developed to house ultimately thousands of returning war veterans, their families, and many more Vancouver families from 1954 to 2009, is a story of the brilliant success of public housing, and its tragic demise. Public advocates, lawyers, rock stars, tradespeople, small business owners, public servants, devoted parents, and honours students made their homes there, watching and helping each other’s children grow and mature. A resilient, diverse, complex, and stable community called Little Mountain its home until foreign capital, electoral finance scandal, and Machiavellian power politics scattered the community in every direction and demolished their homes.  In a city with the worst homelessness and child poverty rates in North America, over 740 people were robbed of their economic stability, their social connections, their relationships with school and teachers, and their pride of place.  Their extended community of thousands of neighbours rallied and demonstrated for years against this scourge of disaster capitalism, but without immediate success. Five years later, the rubble from this destruction remains, like a bombed out and abandoned city after a brutal war of extermination.[…]

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Calling all NDP MLAs

North Vancouver Councillor Pam Bookham is calling out NDP MLAs to support the Little Mountain Film. She has generously announced that she will be matching any and all MLA contributions up to a total of $5,000. So what are you waiting for! Call your MLA today and get them to support the Little Mountain Film: www.indiegogo.com/projects/little-mountain-film/ The Campaign on Indiegogo ends on June 23rd! Please get your contributions in by 11:59pm Monday night! Go to the campaign by clicking HERE. Go to our FACEBOOK site for MORE PHOTOS, DIARIES, TESTAMONIALS Thank You!

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Globe and Mail: Film documents tragedy of Little Mountain

Globe and Mail’s Stephen Quin writes: Vancouver documentary filmmaker and activist David Vaisbord is giving away social housing, 29 grams at a time in neat little boxes marked “Genuine Medium Ground Social Housing.” It’s part of a campaign to promote and help finance the completion of his new documentary about the Little Mountain housing complex. More here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/film-documents-tragedy-of-little-mountain/article19061187/ Thanks for reading. David V

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Crowdfunding Diary – Week 5 / part 2

Crowdfunding Campaign Diary Week 5: Up all night packing up boxes of “Ground Social Housing” for Main Street Car Free Day. Call it real estate, call it heritage, call it what you want, I’ll be selling it. Wearing a suit and tie at 25th and Main. See you there! This is hard. Your contributions will get me through the day: http://ow.ly/xN4M4 I’m a filmmaker damnit!

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Global News report on The Little Mountain Film

Global News correspondent Darlene Heidemann interviewed filmmaker David Vaisbord and resident Ingrid Steenhuisen, of the Little Mountain project on the site on June 11th.  Vaisbord’s son Julian makes his first cameo appearance on TV. http://globalnews.ca/news/1389565/little-mountains-past-and-its-uncertain-future-subject-of-new-documentary/

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Little Mountain Redevelopment Stalled Again

Little Mountain Redevelopment Stalled Again Developer’s refusal to provide amenities symptomatic of a failed housing strategy. By Ned Jacobs Since 2009, when all but four of the 224 homes at Little Mountain Housing were demolished, the 15-acre site, which housed a well-functioning community in 2007, has sat fenced off and empty except for a scattering of trees. A single rowhouse building remains because several of the tenants courageously refused to be displaced by BC Housing (BCH). Rather than forcibly remove the tenants, which would have made the provincial government’s ongoing public relations disaster even worse, they were allowed to remain, as chronicled by documentary maker David Vaisbord. Vaisbord & Jacobs at Advisory Group Meeting 2012 Eventually, BCH initiated eviction proceedings, but the holdout tenants appealed, arguing that there was no rationale for them to leave as there was still no plan in place to redevelop the site and no urgency to demolish the remaining building, which they hope will be preserved as a neighbourhood museum and gallery. Although a lengthy, oft-delayed planning process had finally produced the Little Mountain Policy Statement (LMPS) to guide rezoning and detailed planning, Holborn Group, the subsidiary of a family-owned Malaysian merchant bank, which had[…]

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“The Eviction of Sammy and Joan”

In 2012 BC Housing attempted to evict – once and for all – the last tenants of the last building at Vancouver’s Little Mountain Housing Project. What stood in their way? A lot of community! A key piece of the resistance was a film series by David Vaisbord showing the lives of current and former residents. The “Eviction of Sammy and Joan” was one of those films: The Campaign on Indiegogo ends on June 23rd! THANK YOU TO ALL WHO GENEROUSLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS CAMPAIGN. I’ve made many new friends and contacts in the process of running this campaign.  I look forward to delivering the REWARDS of participation to every one of you who chose one, and WITH EVERYONE, I look forward to our continued dialogue on the future of our city. There are still many ways to contribute to this campaign on line and off line, and we will shortly be making a few updates to the LITTLE MOUNTAIN FILM website in order to make it easy for you to do so. Go to our FACEBOOK site for more information, testamonials, photos, diaries, etc. Thank You! David Vaisbord

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The Little Mountain Film on CBC Radio’s “On The Coast”

Hello People! Yesterday at 5:30pm I sat down with Stephen Quinn of CBC Radio’s “On the Coast” to talk about The Little Mountain Film. If you missed it OPEN UP THIS BLOG page to play the audio!   That’s me and Stephen in a couple of selfies at CBC Vancouver. Please contribute to the campaign to finish the film at Indiegogo! Check out the NEW Perks! Cheers, David  

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You may ask…what’s in it for me?

You may ask, what’s in it for me? The Little Mountain Film is not a vanity project. Rather, it is a learning tool. And there is no better mechanism for sharing knowledge than a great entertainment experience. In addition to being a well-told dramatic story, the Little Mountain Film shows how effective community organization resulted in a major victory for the last tenants at Little Mountain and the community as a whole. We need to understand the rules of civic engagement if we are to envision and build communities across Canada, the places we want live in for generations to come. You may wonder why I don’t ask the government to fund my film. I did in fact, receive funding in 2009 and in 2010 from the BC Arts Council, which helped support my work for the past 6 years, and although it took care of bare essentials it did not provide enough funding to take this multi-year project into a full length documentary. There are no longer any significant arts grants available for major documentary films, nor is there substantial support from Canada’s private broadcasters, and our public broadcaster – the CBC – has been cut into oblivion. Our[…]

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