What World Do You Live In?
2014, HD Video, 1:30:00
The feature-length documentary film What World Do You Live In? premiered at 9 October 2014 at The Royal. What World Do You Live In? began as a collaborative video and activism project between Director Rebecca Garrett, Doug Johnson Hatlam and Sanctuary, a church community drop-in, and evolved into an unflinching immersion into a world rarely well-understood by those who do not experience it first hand. It is expected that the film will be a significant contribution to debates swirling around policing and violence.
Early reviews in the Toronto Star, The Walrus, and Spacing have described the film as “wrenching,” “horrific and disturbing” while insisting that it “needs to reach a broader audience” and is “a must see for those interested in Toronto’s policing issues.”
The film is dedicated to the memory of Chris Gardian who died in February 2011, several days after a severe beating by Toronto Police. Veroniqué Mavré, Mr. Gardian’s partner before his death, has been overwhelmed at each viewing: “You have no clue how much it means to me. I am so grateful for all of you who believe and listen to us.”
The narrative arc of the film suggests that perennial mistreatment of people who are poor, racialized, and psychiatrized has intensified and expanded following the targeted economic violence of Toronto’s G20 and the subsequent impunity afforded to Toronto Police.
“We have to stop calling the police,” says activist Anna Willats. The message resonates in dozens of stories collected by former Sanctuary street pastor Doug Johnson Hatlem. Conflict erupts in the Sanctuary community over whether nonviolence can be an effective strategy in the face of ongoing police harassment and violence. While no easy solutions are surfaced, an impressively resilient and defiant community refuses to be silenced.
Garrett has rigorously applied the structures and principles of community-based art to documentary filmmaking since her first major project in Zimbabwe (1991). Garrett’s work with First Nations and anti-poverty organizations insists on facilitating a collective voice in communities under siege. The Sanctuary community itself determined that it wanted the project to be seen by as wide of an audience as possible without compromising the community’s ability to tell its own story.
archive: Sanctuary Stories
Jordan’s Story