At VIFF Centre, A Bullet Pulling Thread shows an artist stitching grief and protest into quilts
New documentary profiles Marilyn Farquhar’s struggle to memorialize her brother, B.C. homeless activist Barry Shantz
Marilyn Farquhar working on a self-portrait (right) in A Bullet Pulling Thread.
A Bullet Pulling Thread screens at VIFF Centre from June 11 to 13 in a double feature with the short Violet Gave Willingly. Marilyn Farquhar is on hand, with her quilts, for a Q&A at the June 11 7:30 pm screening, along with Violet Gave Willingly’s Deborah Dumka
QUILTING IS NOT an art form that you immediately connect to protest—nor did, initially at least, the woman at the centre of the new documentary A Bullet Pulling Thread, set to debut at Vancouver International Film Festival’s VIFF Centre.
Directed by Ian Daffern, the film tells the story of Marilyn Farquhar, an Ontario artist who says she used to make “happy quilts” until tragedy hit her life. From there, she started working her way through loss toward justice with a needle and thread. Early on we see the resulting works, from the “Kairos” series she will display at VIFF Centre for the June 11 screening—one a self-portrait, where Farquar buries her head in her hands with grief, another stitched with the words “I’m such a piece of shit/I’ve only caused heartache…”
The story ties into several crises that have haunted B.C. in recent years—especially homeless tent encampments and police response to mental illness—in surprising ways.
The film traces the life of Farquhar’s brother Barry Shantz, a colourful, outspoken activist who advocated for the tent-city dwellers in Abbotsford. Later, he met a tragic end when he was shot in 2020 by an RCMP officer during a mental-health crisis, barricaded at home in Lytton. Daffern alternates between the story of Barry’s sometimes hard-scrabble life (which included imprisonment on drug charges) and that of Farquhar today, following the Ontario quilter on a cross-country journey to continue his memory and advocate for his causes. Barry wanted to make a difference, and now his unconditionally supportive sister does too.
Throughout, Daffern’s camera uses closeups to capture the intricacy of Farquhar’s quilting, and the three-dimensionality of its layered stitching and fabric. In one scene the artist talks about the dichotomy of what she does, working in “something soft and meant to be comforting” that also displays the “rawness of emotion”. At the same time the quilts are tactile–literally offering something to hold onto through difficult times, for herself and for the people who see her work displayed.
The film will hit a chord with anyone interested in the issues Shantz addressed so often on the evening news a decade or so ago, tirelessly fighting Abbotsford’s treatment of tent-city dwellers—remember the chicken manure and rubber bullets?—and pursuing a fight against that city’s actions targeting the homeless population all the way to a Supreme Court win. On a personal level, the documentary is a compassionate call to listen when someone expresses distress—as Barry did in those words stitched on one of Farquhar's quilts. And on an artistic level, it’s a fascinating ode to the strength of women’s work— modest, quiet, underappreciated quilting, once practised by Farquar’s own Old Order Mennonite aunts, becoming empowered and emotionally exposed. You’ll see the art form for all the tenacity and strength it requires—making it an unexpectedly apt medium to memorialize her brother. 
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