Along with the artistic talents of the Downtown Eastside, the annual Heart of the City Festival highlights the activism that’s been vital to the solidarity of the neighbourhood. Among the best known of those activists has been the documentarian Sid Chow Tan.

For the third year in succession, he is presenting “My Art is Activism,” a collection of video clips from his personal collection. When asked, Sid Tan says, “I’ve seen a lot. I’ve written about it a lot. I’ve thought about it a lot and I’ve actually done some actions. And ‘My Art is Activism’ is the culmination of some of those acts.”

But when the subject of a fourth collection next year arrises, Tan says, “Well, that’s a tough one because four is not such a great number in Chinese.” When skipping four and going to five is mentioned, “You can do that, or you can go to six. It’s a good number eight is a good number.”

The event is presented online on Zoom on November 2 at 3 pm and will be followed by live Q&A with Sid.

The presentation will then be archived for the next year on the Heart of the City website.