The Cinematheque

Filmmakers in Attendance

“The myth of the frontier is an invention that rationalizes the violence of gentrification and displacement.”

Geographer Neil Smith, quoted in “Raise Shit,” a poem by Bud Osborn

Nathaniel Geary and Ryan Sudds have made many friends and a few films in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES). Geary’s Keys to Kingdoms is a collaborative ​“film poem” with poet and activist Bud Osborn (1947–2014) based on his narrative poetics and the impact of the war on drugs. Sudds’s Just Poems (About Drugs) depicts long-time members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), an organization Osborn helped create in the early 2000s, as they browse the poet’s archived notebooks at Simon Fraser University. With his writings as a touchstone, they reflect on Osborn’s legacy and VANDU’s ongoing work. Centring poetics, these films emphasize the continuum of artistic and cultural acts that have been articulated across decades of local struggle and solidarity.

Keys to Kingdoms
Canada 1999
Nathaniel Geary
22 min. 16mm

Just Poems (About Drugs)
Canada 2026
Ryan Sudds
22 min. Digital

Introduced by co-programmers Steff Huì Cí Ling and Bobby Malone.

Followed by poetry readings and Q&A with the filmmakers.