It’s lights, camera, and action for the Victoria Film Festival (VFF). The VFF celebrates cinema and this year will bring together filmmakers and film enthusiasts for 120 movies.
One movie screening this year is Ghosts of the Sea, a documentary that delves into Virginia Tangvald’s search for clues about her brother Thomas’ death at sea, which leads her to unravel the dark secrets of her family history and her father, the famous sailor Peter Tangvald.
“For a long time, I tried to just not give it too much importance. But somehow that doesn’t work,” says Tangvald. “I started to really feel this itch to understand who my father was… and when my brother disappeared, I’d say I thought, okay, I have to change strategy, instead of always avoiding my father’s story and the family story, I really have to look into it face on.”
Her father died in a shipwreck when Tangvald was five. She and her brother were both born at sea on the ship her father built. However, they had different life paths. While her mother brought her back to dry land, her brother (who had a different mother), followed in his father’s footsteps.
“I asked myself that question a lot—Why was he still so drawn to that life at sea when he lost everything?” says Tangvald. “And I think that he was very loyal to the story that my father had built… [which was] if you really want to live fully, you always have to live on the edge of death. So I think that my brother wasn’t able to question that because it was too painful, because his father was really all he had.”
Thomas, who was also an experienced sailor, set sail in bad weather with no radio or motor, an unusual decision for someone who knows the sea. The film explores the possibility of a family curse and that perhaps Virginia is bound to the same destiny.
“I also felt that pull and that lure [to follow my father’s path],” says Tangvald. “When my brother disappeared at sea, I thought, I really have to figure this out because I’m going to do the same thing. Some way or another, unconsciously or not. I think I was able to break the curse because of this movie, because of the storytelling, because of the research, because I was able to retake control over the narrative.”
Once she delved deeper into the story of her father, she found out some dark secrets about him. Tangvald says that her father had a selfish way of living and an idea of freedom that led him to live a lonely life.
“He imprisoned himself in his own notion of freedom,” says Tangvald. “All of a sudden, he was this poor old man alone stuck on a boat with nowhere to go and with no perspectives. So he was totally trapped. It was really a catch-22, because he thought that other people were the enemy of his freedom, but, in fact, he needed other people to be free.”
Tangvald hopes that the audience leaves the theatre reflecting on the importance of owning one’s own story.
“Figuring out who you are and how you want to live, its stories tell us a lot about ourselves,” says Tangvald. “So we should really be aware of the stories that we tell about ourselves and who gets to tell the story of who we are.”
Victoria Film Festival
Various times, Friday, February 7 to Sunday, February 16
Various prices and venues
victoriafilmfestival.com