VIFF: Chi

"A hard, often unflinching look at ’the art of dying,’ Chi fully earns the tears you’ll likely be shedding."—Globe & Mail

 

"Anne Wheeler, returns to her roots in documentary with a touching and inspiring film that follows Vancouver actress Babz Chula through the last months of her life. Chula, a fixture on the Vancouver film and theatre scene, is here a lively spitfire, an adventurer, a woman whose life-force—or chi—vibrates with vitality. At 62, she is in the advanced stages of an eight-year battle with breast cancer that has metastasized to her liver and is further complicated by a rare blood cancer. Desperate, she seeks ayurvedic treatment at a small, remote clinic in India.

Wheeler documents the excruciating treatments that Babz undergoes, hoping to put her cancers in remission. After six weeks, Babz looks 20 years younger than when she arrived. She declares with renewed energy, “I feel like I’m healing, I don’t feel sick anymore.” But it is not to last. The prognosis demands that she move towards palliative care, which she chooses to spend at home."

CHI plays on October 3 at 645pm at SFU Woodwards and again on Oct 6 at 120pm at International Village.