Watch 65 RedRoses, Oprah’s 2012 Hot Doc

Make Valentine’s Day more than a Hallmark moment—give someone a new lease on life.

PASS IT ON | Talk about hot documentaries. The locally made film 65_RedRoses about New Westminster’s Eva Markvoort, the irrepressible artist/writer/blogger who squeezed 10 decades of loving—and living—into a quarter of a century before succumbing to cystic fibrosis two years ago, is the 2012 official selection of Oprah Winfrey’s Documentary Club. The film, which has won a boatload of other honours for filmmakers Philip Lyall and Nimisha Mukerji, will premiere on OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, sometime this spring, but you can watch it for FREE on March 8 (and meet the filmmakers) at the Nat and Flora Bosa Centre for Film and Animation at Capilano University.

The film takes its title from Markvoort’s online journal 65_RedRoses (the name derives from 65 Roses, kid-speak for cystic fibrosis), which she began in 2006 to connect with others who share her genetic condition. It chronicles her wait for a donor double-lung transplant that, while it could never lead to a cure (CF is always fatal), might afford her some years of normalcy and let her experience something most of us take for granted: full deep breaths.

The Love You Make

According to all those who knew and loved her (and they were legion), Markvoort judged a successful day not by how much love she received but how much she was able to give, something that was definitely on my mind last weekend when I scrambled to grab a decent Valentine’s Day card before they were gone and make a reservation for a romantic dinner for me and my husband.

Dinners and cards are lovely gestures, for sure, but after reading about Markvoort and learning from her posts of the incredible experiences she managed to cram into the two years she lived post-transplant, it feels like Valentine’s Day would be the perfect occasion to literally dedicate your heart (and other organs) to an organ donor program so someone like Markvoort can continue to live after you’re gone. —C. Rule

To find out about the Capilano University screening of 65_RedRoses, visit capilanou.ca; CLICK HERE  to view the trailer. Read Markvoort’s journal entries, at www. 65redroses.com. Find out how to become an organ donor at  transplant.bc.ca

Photo: Eva Markvoort and Cyrus McEachern