The Academy Award winning filmmaker John Zaritsky discusses his new documentary, A Different Drummer: Celebrating Eccentrics, which debuts at the Vancouver International Film Festival this week, with Joseph Planta.

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, at TheCommentary.ca.

A new movie having its world premiere this week at the Vancouver International Film Festival is the latest from the Academy Award winning filmmaker, John Zaritsky. It’s called, A Different Drummer: Celebrating Eccentrics. It’s a charming film about some interesting people in the United States, Britain, and Canada who challenge people’s conception of convention. In colourful and unique ways, they seem happier in worlds that they cultivate that seem different from what some might call normal. The relevant question seeing this film is ‘what is normal?’ John Zaritsky joins me again. We’ll talk about this film, the people he talks to in it. There’s a guy in Utah who lives in caves and who hasn’t used money since the 1990s. In Britain, we meet a member of the fringe Monster Raving Loony political party, an inventor of inventions that would confound even Rube Goldberg, as well as a woman who was a model for the artist Lucien Freud. In Vancouver, we meet Laura-Kay Prophet, a woman who’s popularly known as the city’s Duck Lady, walking around with a duck, giving money to the homeless. Throughout the film we get the research done by Dr. David Weeks, a neuropsychologist and psychotherapist who’s spent a decade studying 1,000 eccentrics. It’s quite an informative, heartbreaking at times, but generally uplifting film. There are two screenings of the film: Wednesday, 08 October 2014 at 7.00pm at The Rio Theatre, where Laura-Kay Prophet and her duck will attend, and a second screening at SFU Woodwards, Friday, 10 October 2014 at 1.15pm. Visit www.viff.org for tickets and information. John Zaritsky directed A Different Drummer. He won an Oscar for his documentary Just Another Missing Kid, and he’s won countless other awards for his long list of film credits. Please welcome back to the Planta: On the Line program, John Zaritsky; Mr. Zaritsky, good morning.

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