Plot

As dawn breaks and most of the city still sleeps, the long-time merchants of Vancouver's Chinatown are hard at work. They haul out their produce stands and set up their makeshift vendor carts in preparation for what they hope will be a busy day. But, like many ethnic enclaves in urban centres across North America, their clientele is dwindling. This once vibrant and thriving neighbourhood is in flux as new condo developments and non-Chinese businesses move in and gradually overtake the declining hub of the Chinese community. Everything Will Be, from Sundance award-winning director Julia Kwan, captures this fascinating transformation through the intimate perspectives of the neighbourhood's residents, diverse merchants and new entrepreneurs, who offer their poignant reflections on change, memory and legacy. A public art installation erected on the roof of a local real estate mogul's contemporary art gallery - housed in one of the oldest buildings in Chinatown - illuminates in neon the words 'EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT.' Night and day, this sign looms over Chinatown. Everything is going to be alright. The big question is - for whom?

2011. Vancouver's Chinatown has gone through a slow transformation over the years, where it is not nearly as vibrant in terms of sheer numbers of people on a day-to-day basis and the stability of life, especially in the businesses, as it was during its heyday. There are still some elements of the old Chinatown, such as some of the merchants (including one Italian grocer) and their way of doing business including the now ninety year old woman who sells Chinese language newspapers on a storefront stoop, the Chinese singing club, the mah jong halls, some of the old rooming houses, and the clan benevolent associations, which have all long acted as venues of socialization for the Chinese community and many housed in one hundred year old buildings. Some of the "new" generation of Chinese believe it is important to invest in their vision of what they see as their Chinatown, such as the woman who took over and updated her father's tea shop, and the artist who transformed a former storefront into his combined work/display/retail space. But with many of the traditional Chinese abandoning Chinatown, many of those older businesses have closed their doors, leaving empty storefronts, some which have been taken over by non-Chinese businesses. And Chinatown has not been immune to the development pressure that has hit Vancouver, with new high rise condo buildings springing up within and around the neighborhood. Arguably the most auspicious of Chinatown's new non-Chinese "residents" is development consultant Bob Rennie, who has renovated some of those one hundred year old buildings, including one in which he houses his own art gallery, one of those art installations a 24/7 lit neon sign "Everything Will Be Alright" atop the building. With these aspects of old and new, there must be communication between the factions to create a vibrant neighborhood. A question then becomes for who this new Chinatown will serve and if those constituents still include the old Chinese as a collective. Will everything be alright?