The Cindy Sherman of outsider filmmaking, Laz Rojas is infamous to a small circle of VHS tape aficionados for his One-Man Showcase. By wit and by grit—and by wig—Rojas created one of the most singular films, working out of his parents' living room in the early 1990s. With just a camcorder and costumes, playing every role— man, woman, and child—he shot and edited a four-hour, 52-scene production without anyone else's assistance. In it, Rojas talks to himself; he shoots himself; he even kisses himself in the film's most incredible example of trick photography.

In the 90s, One-Man Showcase was the sort of bootlegged gem that circulated amongst VHS nerds looking for the strangest videos they could get their hands on. It's found a bit of a wider audience in the past decade after being uploaded to YouTube. Sundance programmer Mike Plante, Cinefamily programmer Tom Fitzgerald, and Hollywood director David Gordon Greene are among its fans. But for years the origins of the video have remained shrouded in mystery, until Zack Carlson tracked down Rojas himself.

In the second episode of VICE's new documentary series Outsider, Carlson finds Rojas in Los Angeles living with his aging mother, the two of them spending the first half of the month in a motel room and the second half living out of their car. For the first time, Rojas explains the story behind One-Man Showcase.

Although many assumed that the scenes were excised from longer works Rojas had completed, in fact, they were the only parts of the films Rojas had produced. The aspiring actor-writer-director had the idea to shoot a range of material to showcase his versatility, and sent the tape out to talent scouts, casting agents, and studios. Although Rojas didn't get the responses he wanted back then, 25 years later One-Man Showcase has found another audience.

We spoke with Carlson to learn more about Rojas's wildly ambitious demo reel that became a cult film masterpiece and his struggles after making films endure through the present day.

VICE: What was your first reaction to One-Man Showcase?
Zack Carlson: I thought, How did this one person accomplished this all by themselves? It's clearly just him doing it. There's no camera movement. And it just feels like a very singular project. But then the other question was, What was his situation? Was this somebody working by themselves because they were completely cut off from other people? It seems like he's a really isolated creative human being. And then it turns out that his parents were ten feet away watching their son play all these characters, all these ethnicities, and both genders. Finding that out makes it even stranger that he was performing in drag while his dad was watching Bonanza on television. His parents were just completely supportive of his creativity.

It feels like there's a compulsive quality to what he's doing.
And the fact that he made four hours of material and played over 100 characters in just six months is kind of incredible. When you are watching it, you wonder if it maybe took a decade of this guy's life.

Meeting the man behind the tape, were you surprised at all?
I was impressed with how he was so composed and eloquent. He'd been in a really difficult situation for the past few years. It didn't feel like he was putting on airs for the camera. It just felt like he was just born to be a known personality. He seems like he's ready to be a media presence and that is just his nature. He didn't seem like a nut.

And he is still chasing down these projects that aren't necessarily marketable, and he understands the landscape. He is intent on doing his work his way and making a living at it. It is going to be a challenge. He has tenacity but not insanity.

I read online that part of One-Man was featured in Pineapple Express.
David Gordon Greene was fascinated by One-Man and thought it would be fun to put Rojas in a movie. There are 60 characters in a Hollywood film—why can't one of them be this outsider filmmaker? But this happened right when Rojas's father fell ill and the whole family went to Florida to be with him. According to Rojas, that's why he didn't end up with a role in the movie, and instead, there's a point when some characters are watching TV and what's on the television are scenes from the Rojas's showcase tape.

It was heartbreaking for Rojas in a lot of ways. It was what he'd always been hoping for: Hollywood calls, and a major studio wants you.

In the doc, he's a bit defensive about people assuming he's gay because he dresses up as women. I just wanted to tell him, "It's OK, you can be straight and say you like dressing up like that!" Because it seems like he really enjoys it.
Not to mention that he's incredibly skilled at it! You know, when he first released Showcase there was no such thing as YouTube comments. And then when he uploaded it to the internet, all of a sudden, there were all these faceless people online saying "that guy a homo" or whatever idiotic bullshit. I think it really tore him down. He'd never had the benefit of somebody's serious critical reaction to his work. Now the closest thing he had was some jackass typing with their elbows, calling him names.

He's also a very traditional and very religious 53-year-old man. And his mother was in the room when we did that interview. He's lived with his mother his entire life. He's only been a part from her for six months at one point.

When you decided to have a screening for him at Cinefamily, did you have any misgivings or hesitations about celebrating his work in what might be a different context than the one he intended it to be viewed in?
Irony is a killer. It is the worst. And the Cinefamily crowd is not immune to that at all. But it was really important to us that this showing be something respectful to him. We had a fear that maybe nobody would come. Maybe it would be a flop. We did everything we could to fill the place up, and it was packed.

Miraculously, everybody got it. Even if someone saw a bunch of photos of a man wearing different dresses and went out of morbid curiosity, they still got pulled into his story. He got up onstage and started talking, and he was so open. The evening became so personal.

Almost everyone who was at the Cinefamily screening said they didn't remember feeling this inspired. It was a feeling of, This guy did this thing in his parents' living room with no money and no crew that we are now watching 25 years later. I can certainly accomplish whatever I'm setting out to do.All these people were slapped in the face by what his work meant, that anyone can, should, and must do whatever they are driven to do without excuses.

And it didn't make him rich clearly. He's homeless. He's living in a car. But in that moment, he had 150 people who were completely impressed by him and totally adored him, and that means a lot—especially to someone who has struggled to have their creativity acknowledged.

Any updates on Rojas and his mother's situation since you finished the shoot?
There's an LA artist named Sarah Johnson who was fascinated by Rojas's story. She helped with the screening and brought flowers to his premiere. She's taken it on herself to try to get a caseworker for him and his mother, and just to try and help.

But then the day after the Cinefamily screening, Sarah got hit by a car and broke half her body so she is still trying to help while dealing with her own recovery. Then Laz's mother, just weeks after we shot the documentary, she fell and broke her hip. Sarah set up a GoFundMe to help them raise funds for his mother's recovery, which a lot of people donated to.

There was an actor who expressed interest in wanting to let them live in his guesthouse, but it was just a passing thought. Nothing came of it. People have great intentions and everybody wants to help, but Rojas's situation is still the same.

After the Cinefamily and this little doc on him, did you get the sense that he felt validated after so many years?
It's difficult because you do want the people you cover to feel validated, but you also don't want them to assume that this 30-minute documentary is going to lead directly to all of their dreams coming true. It seemed like Laz understood the balance. He said, "This can't be bad for me. It can only be good."

I think right now he is approaching his situation realistically. The first step is to stop being homeless. The next step is for his mother to be stable, health-wise. And then from that point, he will have the foundation to start actively pursuing his filmmaking dreams again. I can't help but be optimistic that he's inches away from being able to clutch onto something that will pull him out of all this crap that he is dealing with.

Friends of Laz Rojas have put together a crowd-funding campaign to help Laz and his mother get back on their feet. Click here to find out more.

As mentioned in the documentary, Laz has a poor credit score, and he and his mother are seeking a guest house or living situation in Los Angeles that doesn't require a credit check. If you have any leads please contact this email: LazRojasHousing@gmail.com.

Follow Whitney Mallett on Twitter.

This article appeared in the May issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

When I first met Jex Blackmore, director of the Detroit chapter of the Satanic Temple, she had just arrived in New York to plan a series of ritualistic performances alongside the release of the movie The Witch. Over drinks, she relayed to me the vertiginous feeling of looking out the plane window and realizing, I'm being flown to New York because I'm a satanic activist.

It sounds weird, but this is Blackmore's life now. In person, she's affable and matter-of-fact, though traces of Satan are noticeable in her tattoos and leather jacket.

Blackmore first learned about the Satanic Temple, a non-theistic religion centered on the literary figure of Satan, in 2013; she began working with it soon afterward. The Satanic Temple is perhaps best known for its high-profile, often ingenious protests against obvious erosions in the separation of church and state—most famously, the group protested a proposed six-foot-tall statue of the Ten Commandments, which was to be erected outside the state capitol building in Oklahoma, by constructing a sculpture of the goat-headed deity Baphomet.

Recently, the group turned its attention toward the rapid proliferation of laws that restrict women's abortion access, legislation that the group sees as religiously motivated. The cause fits naturally with one of the temple's central tenets, "One's body is inviolable, subject to one's will alone"—which is sort of just a fancy way of saying, "My body, my choice." As a spokesperson for the temple, Blackmore engages in what she calls "political theater," much of which focuses on abortion access. In one memorable action, she and other Satanists protested a pro-life group picketing outside Planned Parenthood by dousing a bound, gasping woman with gallons of milk (to represent "forced motherhood").

We cannot allow one single angry voice to speak over or for all of us.

According to Blackmore, the group's political theater exposes the bizarreness of the anti-abortion movement. "When you walk by a Planned Parenthood, and there are children holding up signs of mangled fetuses, praying, and accosting women who try to go into this health clinic, we don't even bat a lash anymore," she said. "That's a huge problem."

Blackmore hopes to meet anti-abortion protesters at their level in order to foreground how extreme the rhetoric around the issue has become and to provide a vociferous counterpoint to the debate: "We cannot allow one single angry voice to speak over or for all of us."

This article appeared in the May issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Brixton Prison Photo by: Adrian Dennis / PA Archive

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

"They treat you differently in prison when you're protesting your innocence. I remember a probation officer telling me, 'With an attitude like that, O'Brien, you'll never get out.'"

Like many prisoners who are wrongfully convicted, Michael O'Brien's 11 years and 43 days of incarceration would alter his life in ways that would have been unimaginable before his arrest. Due to unreliable testimony later shown to be fabricated, the then-18-year-old painter and decorator found himself convicted of murder, receiving a life sentence that tore him away from his young family in South Wales.

"Whether you're innocent or guilty, if you go into prison having never been in before, I don't believe you can come out unscathed or undamaged," he says. "Before I was imprisoned I was a goody two-shoes—I'd never even drunk or smoked—but it changed me as a person. Prison changed my personality completely; I even started taking drugs in there."

It wasn't only the trauma of his conviction that affected Michael's mental health, but his experiences inside. During his time serving at HM Prison Long Lartin, seven men were killed, including one man who died in front of his eyes—a moment he continues to relive in flashbacks.

"You have to have your wits about you when you're in prison, because there are some dangerous people in there. Even saying 'good morning' to somebody could get you killed," says Michael. "When you see things like that—and witness the violence of people being stabbed and smashed over the head with objects like sauce bottles—it has an effect on you. When it gets to the sixth or seventh time you begin to get hardened to it. You think it doesn't affect you at the time; it's not until you come out that you realize it's not normal to see things like that."

Initially diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) while incarcerated, like many inmates who suffer from mental health issues, Michael feels the prison system failed to provide the right support for him. Even after clearing his name and being released on appeal in 2002, little was done to help him transition into life on the outside.

"I struggled to do even simple things like shaving when I came out because the depression was so bad," he says. "When I came out I was very paranoid and I thought people were out to get me—it was like everybody was staring at me. For the first six months after I was released from prison I tried to work with other people in similar circumstances to me to secure their release, but I ended up in hospital because I was having a nervous breakdown."

Michael continues to suffer from the effects of PTSD and will have to take medication for the rest of his life—but his case is not unique.

The issue of mental health care in British prisons remains a contentious one, not least because it raises the ever-existential question of if the justice system's role is to rehabilitate or penalize. How, after all, can a system designed to punish inmates and separate them from their natural support networks have the simultaneous aim of protecting their mental wellbeing?

Like Michael, Robert Brown was a working-class teenager convicted of a murder he did not commit. Serving 25 years from 1977 before his conviction was quashed, he continues to suffer from the mental effects of his imprisonment.

"They arrested me on suspicion of the crime, kept me in a cell for a week, beat me up and assaulted me, then fabricated evidence against me," says Robert. "It's not just the fact that you're falsely convicted of the crime—that just intensifies everything—there's the distress of being incarcerated; prison induces paranoia. It's a violent place and you're around people you don't know, many of whom have committed crimes.

"But there's innocent people I did time with who are still in prison. You look at how long it took to get justice over something like Hillsborough, for example, and it seems to me there's institutionalized injustice. There's corruption from the bottom to the top. It's hard to believe how bad it is until it actually happens to you."

Robert now receives support from the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation (MOJO), the only organization in Britain providing aftercare to victims of wrongful convictions, alongside legal advice to prisoners fighting to overturn their imprisonment. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) receives 130 applications a month from prisoners claiming innocence, and MOJO has received as many requests for support so far this year as it did throughout the whole of 2015.

But to those responsible within the criminal justice system, and to much of the public at large, miscarriages of justice are simply blips in a system that mostly delivers what it is designed to deliver. Watching a true crime documentary, we are happy to believe in America's judicial failures, but we retain faith in the British police and justice system. Time and time again, Robert finds that people assume his guilt in spite of his conviction being quashed. The effects of his imprisonment have left him unable to function in society and to earn a living.

"I've got no money," he says. "I'm broke and struggling through life because I cannot function in the right manner. You don't trust anybody ever again. The whole system let me down and it makes you frightened to trust. You become dysfunctional."

Far from being blips in the system, those on the frontline fighting miscarriages feel that the number of wrongful convictions are on the rise. This is due in part to the withdrawal of legal aid and because juries place too much trust in circumstantial evidence presented by the police.

Applications for appeal by serving prisoners are often rejected on technicalities, and changes to the law have also made it more difficult for victims of miscarriages of justice to claim compensation.

To Paul Mclaughlin, MOJO's co-project manager, who sees the day-to-day effects of a miscarriage of justice on its victim's mental health, the criminal justice system is failing to deliver justice.

"Every person I've dealt with who has had their conviction quashed has suffered severe mental health problems. Often they have experienced trauma, and there are instances of alcoholism and drug dependency," he says. "It happens every day that ordinary people can't get represented properly, and if they are the victim of an injustice they can't have their position adequately examined—almost always because of a lack of financial support."

However, preventing miscarriages of justice and the potential mental health effects on their victims is not just a question of reforming the judicial system as a whole, but a change in public attitudes towards those wrongfully convicted.

Follow James Dawson on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Romania

I've lived in Bucharest for the past three years but I was born and raised in the Transylvanian town of Orăștie. I visit my hometown a few times a year, and every time I go back I can't shake the feeling that Orăștie has been gradually turning into a ghost town. Most streets are empty—you might see a lonesome silhouette down the street when walking around, but nothing more.

So this year, I decided to document the images that create this feeling of displacement in a series I called Hometown. I guess I'm trying to freeze some of my memories of Orăștie because I am afraid for what could be lost next time I visit.

Walking into a comic book store can be intimidating. There are thousands of different titles and usually a man behind the counter you really don't want to bother for fear of a snarky response. Thankfully, our art editor and resident comic book expert Nick Gazin is here to share his list of the top ten best comic books of all time to get you beginners started. And like Nick says, this list is objective so there's really no reason to argue about it in the comments section.

This post originally appeared on VICE Australia.

Australia has a relatively dark history of mental illness treatment. It wasn't until the early 1900s that "lunatic asylums" even employed doctors. A 1938 Royal Commission from Western Australia found one facility suffered severe overcrowding, patients with nothing to fill their days, and staff with no interest in rehabilitating them. It was during this same year that Larundel Mental Asylum was built in Melbourne.

Australia started closing asylums in the 1980s, instead choosing to treat mental illness in smaller hospital units. Larundel was officially closed in 2001 and it has since become a derelict ruin, off limits to the general public. But rumors about the building's checkered past has earned it a reputation for being haunted. Maybe even the most haunted.

I am someone who can't watch horror movies with any hint of paranormal activity. I'll take SAW over The Exorcist any day, every day. But Larundel is near where I live... and I've always wondered. Then, as Friday the 13th rolled near, me and my photographer friend Sean decided why not? We wanted to find out if ghosts are real.

We arrive around 5 PM and walk the perimeter.

Despite the dilapidation, Larundel has somehow still held onto its beauty. It was originally one of Melbourne's three "magnificent asylums for the insane" built in the 1930s and 40s to help present the city as cultured and compassionate. The large windows and sprawling gardens seem like an ornate attempt to convince the outside world that this is not a jail.

The vast grounds are encircled by temporary hurricane fencing. I imagine how it must have looked in full operation, at a time when it held as many as 700 patients.

As the sun starts to set, my new flashlight stops working. Of course. Sean and I sit and watch the building, waiting for the full cover of night. In the sky above we can see Orion's belt to our left—also known as the three brothers of Indigenous astronomy, depending on what you're into.

I go for one more lap around the building, in complete darkness without my flashlight, but I feel at ease. I've felt worse vibes in my own bedroom.

We get inside and find the walls thick with layers upon layers of tags. Bonezz wazzz here. Fuck man, if you're going to go out of your way to make a mark, at least give us some art.

Better. Maybe because this guy gave me a Picasso vibe. It's dark and creepy but the exhilaration of getting in far outweighs any spookiness.

No ghosts so far. Plenty of Gatorade bongs and old Winfield Blues packs though. I was expecting the place to smell bad but it doesn't, the only issue was the dust. I can't see any evidence of squatters.

A noose. Not ominous at all.

Larundel was built around a central courtyard that's inaccessible from the outside. The overgrown bushes rustle with the movement that suggests possums or nocturnal mammals of some kind. Could they be ghost joeys? Keep an eye out for my next in-depth investigation: "Ghost Joeys, Chemtrails, and the Panama Papers."

Some genius had spray painted shadows like these all over the place. No sarcasm: He or she is a genius and we are not worthy of this level of art. When you are walking in a pitch black abandoned mental asylum and your torch catches one of these shadows, you freak the fuck out.

Bummer.

The dust is getting to us, so Sean and I decide to head back to our base outside the grounds and get some whiskey. We make it as far as the main balcony when we see two security cars perched 50 meters away just outside the outer fencing. They're on their phones, looking more or less our direction. We hear dogs. More cars pull up.

We drop down; the balcony wall our only shelter. Security enter the grounds and head towards the Laurendel, high-powered flashlights passing back and forth across the facade, until they are right beneath us.

We lay silently in our dark hidden crevice. I see Sean slowly reach for his camera. No. But he continues. NO NO, shit, don't. But he does. He fucking pokes his head up like a duck in hunting season and takes the snap above.

As we start to crawl back inside through the rubble, I feel like I'm in a goddamn war movie, carefully avoiding the search lights. If you've ever played Sly Racoon on PlayStation 2, this was exactly like that. You can't buy this kind of adrenaline.

But as the rush of fear and excitement tapers off as we realize we'll have to wait them out. We spent a long time trying to get inside Larundel, and now we're stuck here, unable to escape. Sean and I sit in overwhelming silence—somewhere between imminent arrest and freedom—and our mind drifts to how it must have felt to be stuck in these places for years on end, sometimes your whole life.

I imagine myself as a patient, surrounded by guards, screaming to be let free as I'm beaten for refusing to eat, or because I pissed myself. One of my best friends is autistic. If he was born at a different time, these walls would've been his fate. I shudder to think of all the misunderstood people who have wasted away inside Laurendel's walls.

Sean and I both drift off around 3 AM. When we stir around 5:30 AM, the security guards are still patrolling outside. We've been dead quiet this whole time, they probably think we're not even here anymore. All that's left at this point is two guys and one car.

We figure their shift must end at 6 AM, but the sun will rise just after that, so we have a limited time to get the fuck out of here while still under the cover of darkness. At 5:59 AM we hear a car start. We watch them leave and now it's time to go.

We got out right as the final sheet of dark was lifting.

There were no ghosts to be afraid of. Just a few security guards to remind us that for property managers, true terror is a personal injury claim. Luckily they're extinguishing that remote risk with—you guessed it—apartments. There's a $500 million rejuvenation project afoot to give Melbourne more overpriced real estate and less adventure. Somehow, for all those sad people incarcerated in Larundel over the years, I think that makes even less sense than letting it rot.

Follow David on Twitter or Instagram.

All photos by Sean Foster.

Cannes came and went yet again, handing out prizes to a bevy of films that left many in attendance scratching their heads. Arch left-wing Brit realist Ken Loach walked away with the coveted Palme d'Or for his newest drama of working-class strife, I, Daniel Blake, about a heart-attack victim who can't navigate the shameful labyrinth of the British welfare system to secure the disability benefits he'll require to keep himself afloat. Loach, who soon will be an octogenarian and has been bringing his films to Cannes since the late 60s, last won the prize for 2006's Irish Troubles saga, The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

He came out in full Bernie Sanders stump-speech mode at the atypically long and Oscar-ish Cannes Awards night, launching broadsides against British austerity and the increasingly ungenerous welfare system—the latter of which is taken for a persuasive, moving, and aesthetically dull lambasting in the film—before pointing out that, "When there is despair, the people from the far right take advantage. We must say that another world is possible and necessary."

Loach's political drama, which will be released stateside by Sundance Selects later this year, had few calling it a masterpiece after it debuted early in the festival to quaint praise. Coming off a decade of films that were widely seen as disappointments, I, Daniel Blake follows an aging joiner (Dave Johns), who finds that the dole isn't as peachy keen as the Tories make it out to be, and a young mother of two (Hayley Squires) who finds the uncaring system just as useless as she tries to claw her family out of homelessness and hunger.

The film attacks the choleric nature of public aid that has been intentionally designed by conservatives to be humiliating to access at nearly every turn; while not outright villainous, it paints a portrait of understaffed offices with long waits and dour attendants, ones who will use every means to disqualify honest, imperiled individuals looking for a leg up.

"It's shocking because it's not just an issue for people in our country, it's throughout Europe," Loach said at the film's May 13th press conference. "There is a conscious cruelty in the way we're organizing our lives now where the most vulnerable people are told that their poverty is their own fault. If you have no work, it's your fault you haven't got a job."

The favorite films of the critics went home largely unacknowledged. German director Maren Ade's remarkable, two hour and 40-minute comedy Toni Erdmann, about the unorthodox relationship between an uptight corporate consultant and her lonely prankster of a father, was the runaway winner of major Europe trade Screen International's critics poll, but it left without recognition. So, too, did Jim Jarmusch's remarkable Paterson, about a week in the life of a poet-bus driver in the mostly black part of the titular New Jersey town; Jeff Nichols's Oscar-ready miscegenation drama Loving, and Dutch bad boy Paul Verhoeven's Isabelle Huppert vehicle Elle, a movie that will turn conventional feminist thinking on its head and surely inspire volley of think pieces when it finds its way to North America.

Shot by Robbie Ryan, who so impressively lensed Andrea Arnold's Prix du Jury (third-place) winner American Honey, Loach's newest Palme d'Or winner has a drab, pedestrian visual style that is in keeping with Loach's reputation but also feels right for the film. Still, given the sensual intensity Ryan was able to capture on behalf of Arnold, working in a similarly dispossessed American plains milieu, one wonders what Loach's drama would look and feel like had he let his remarkably talented photographer unbutton himself a bit. Yet the unadorned style does keep all focus on the story as it moves from wrenching sadness to outrage, with just enough moments of levity to sweeten the bitter pill. And welfare is one bitter pill indeed: As I, Daniel Blake shows, it's hard work staying on the dole.

According to the film, getting welfare in the UK involves spending 35 hours a week finding a job and then proving that this is how you spent 35 hours of your past week. Like my own father, a life-long laborer who has found, post-debilitating heart attack, that disability benefits are nearly impossible to access for those who aren't completely incapacitated but still unable to go back to the strenuous manual vocations they long relied on, Dave Johns's Daniel Blake doesn't know how to use the internet. Instead of being helped along by welfare staffers, he's mocked and chided, made to feel small and dim. These are the times in which we live, and they remain a disgrace.

Follow Brandon Harris on Twitter. Read more of his coverage of Cannes 2016 here.

The accused in a 2010 murder is preparing to appeal for a lower sentence based upon his race. Photo via Flickr

A Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge has held off sentencing a convicted murderer to allow his defence time to prepare a report on how race played a role in the crime he committed.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Read more of our privacy and security coverage, and be sure to tune into HBO Friday at 11 PM EST as VICE founder Shane Smith meets the man who started the conversation about government surveillance, Edward Snowden.

The first time a doctor told me he had no idea what was wrong with me, I was six or seven years old. As I grew up, my mysterious health problems—ranging from muscle weakness and debilitating fatigue to gastrointestinal issues and pins and needles in my hands and feet—were blamed on everything from my imagination to stress.. But when I hit my early 30s and began struggling to breathe, my doctors finally took my symptoms seriously.

I didn't get an answer right away. I was tested, misdiagnosed, and tested some more before my doctors finally had an idea: mitochondrial disease. Unlike many diseases, mitochondrial disease is a rare disorder that requires genetic confirmation to make a formal diagnosis.

Insurance was the last thing on my mind when my doctor suggested I have my genes tested. All I wanted was an answer and a treatment plan, and without a diagnosis there was little anyone could do. I had no idea that my genetic test results could prevent me from obtaining insurance coverage in the future—and I doubt most people who buy genetic testing kits online are thinking about the long-term risks of having their genes sequenced when they click purchase, either.

The information contained in your genes can't be held against you by health insurance companies or most employers (excluding the military), thanks to the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA). The Affordable Care Act also prevents health insurers from using chronic illnesses and pre-existing conditions, including genetic diseases, to deny coverage or hike up your insurance rates. Where healthcare is concerned, you're unlikely to run into problems with insurance coverage based on your genes alone.

Other types of insurance are a very different story. GINA doesn't cover three major types of insurance: life, disability, and long-term care. Only a handful of states have stepped in to pass their own laws prohibiting genetic discrimination by these types of insurers. This means that insurers can (and do) ask for genetic testing results to make decisions about your coverage and rates. This risk isn't confined solely to people who find genetic mutations that cause diseases they already have, like me. The same risk applies to anyone whose genetic testing indicates a higher risk of developing diseases like diabetes or cancer in the future. Spoiler alert: that's pretty much everyone. A predisposition to diabetes might only bump your premium slightly, multiple experts confirmed, but a predisposition to cancer or neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington's Disease could be enough to deny your application entirely for any of the three types of insurance not covered by GINA. "The genie is out of the bottle," Troy Moore, chief science officer at Kailos Genetics, told VICE. "Many testing, when it is appropriate, and how to communicate with their policy holders."

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing providers like 23andMe market their services as fun and educational, rather than as serious medical testing. What they don't tell you is that insurance providers don't make a distinction between genetic tests ordered by a doctor and the ones you click and buy on a whim on Groupon. Since most of the medical information requested on insurance forms is self-reported, you're just as obligated to report genetic test results you get from your doctor as ones you order online. Failing to disclose requested medical information can result in termination of your policies years after the fact; in the case of a life insurance policy, it can even result in termination of coverage and zero payout after your death.

The real difference between the genetic testing you get through a physician is that they provide pre-testing genetic counseling, in which a qualified expert helps you interpret your results. Even though 23andMe doesn't provide genetic counseling services—and there isn't a single disclaimer or statement of risk to read before you click purchase—any negative results they find still have to be disclosed to potential insurers down the line. "We do everything we can to be good stewards of individual information and empower customers to learn and benefit from many aspects of their genetic identity," Kate Black, 23andMe's privacy officer and corporate counsel, told VICE. "We rely on them to be educated and empowered customers. " However, some basic investigating revealed that there is very limited information about GINA in 23andMe's customer care section.

When consumers are informed about the potential risks of genetic testing, they often change their minds. Kailos Genetics shows interested consumers a video that discusses the risks before they complete their purchase. The number one reason customers gave after deciding not to continue with their purchase was the threat of long-term consequences. "Often a person has prepared themselves to take the test and the personal implications that go along with it, only to realize that it could put them at risk of insurance coverage," Moore told VICE. "They do not wish to take the risk of the results entering their medical record and being available to the insurance companies."

After having both my mitochondrial and nuclear genomes tested—yes, you have two separate genomes; most people just get the latter tested but because of my medical situation I had both—spent somewhere in the ballpark of $20,000, and waited nearly six months for results, all I got was an educated guess.

My genetic testing turned up a mutation that could, in theory, cause a form of mitochondrial disease. But it will take years, maybe even decades, of medical research to know for sure. In the meantime, I have the same fuzzy "suspected" mitochondrial disease diagnosis I had before all of that expensive testing, and there's no way I can get life, disability, or long-term care insurance now. Even if my health improves in the future, I will always have that genetic testing hanging over me.

For parents of sick kids, genetic testing is even more complicated. Nichole Rust and I connected through a Facebook group for families of mitochondrial disease patients. Like me, her son is suspected of having mitochondrial disease. In order to get the most accurate picture of her son's genetic testing results, his doctors have asked her to have her genes sequenced, too. This is very common when genetic diseases are suspected because it helps doctors interpret the child's results. But it also puts healthy family members at risk: They may find that they carry the same mutated gene as their sick child, or another one entirely. "I've still not done it," Rust told me. "I have concerns with these types of things." For now, Rust has opted against having her genes tested, even though by doing so she knows she is potentially withholding information that could help her son's medical treatment.

While insurance coverage is one risk, it's not the only way genetic testing screwed me over. When I was told I could have mitochondrial disease, it completely changed my perspective of myself and my life. I lost my hope for the future, and feared that all I had left was a progressive march toward worsening health. As difficult as my health problems themselves are, it was the lack of hope brought on by seeing my genetic mutation in black and white that was truly devastating.

My reaction isn't rare. "The findings from some genetic tests can be life-altering, and people should decide whether or not they wish to receive the results after substantial contemplation," Adam C. Powell, a healthcare economist and adjunct professor at Northeastern University, told VICE. "Genetic discrimination is a real threat now, and the negative ramifications of genetic tests can come not just from insurers, but also from within ."

In spite of all this, genetic testing can be life-saving. Moore pointed out that many of his company's clients have a family history of life-threatening cancers, and genetic testing can help them access screening and prophylactic treatments. These changes can mean the difference between catching a cancer when it's very treatable versus when it's extremely advanced and unlikely to respond to treatment. It's also possible for people with a positive family history to find out they don't carry a certain gene, and are actually at a lower risk of that disease than their family history would suggest.

Even in my own case, my genetic testing didn't confirm my mitochondrial disease diagnosis, but it did rule out pretty much everything else. By ruling out other diseases that mimic mitochondrial disease, my doctors have been able to move forward with a treatment plan that has improved the quality of my life in small ways, while abandoning previous approaches that were often unsuccessful and sometimes even made things worse. Through time, I even regained my hope for the future.

The takeaway for now isn't that no one should undergo genetic testing; it's that consumers need to be educated about all of their risks and take steps to mitigate them. This can include signing up for comprehensive insurance policies before making the decision to pursue genetic testing, and using a lab that offers genetic counseling services or doing your own research to make sure you fully understand all of the risks. Despite their commercial billing as fun, genetic tests aren't a toy or something to choose lightly.

I'm glad I got my genes tested even though it didn't give me the clear-cut answer I was hoping for. But if I had it all to do over again, I would make sure I got my insurance coverage taken care of before I signed on the dotted line.

Hiroyuki Ito and his wife

In the summer of 2015, my wife and I bought what are called JR Passes, tickets that let you ride as many trains across Japan as you want for weeks.The catch is that the pass is only available to foreign tourists who visit Japan temporarily. You are Japanese and want to see Japan? No discount for you!

We escaped this thanks to a loophole that says that Japanese people with permanent residency in a foreign country count as visitors. When we received our US green cards in June 2015, the first thing we did was buy JR Passes, with the intention of spending five weeks in Japan riding around with no destination in mind. There was no travel itinerary whatsoever. My wife stayed with me for the first leg of the trip, but from Hokkaido I continued on my own for two weeks.

Without her, I headed south and visited 15 more cities across ten prefectures. My journey was to end at Amakusa ("Heaven's Grass") Island in Kumamoto. While traveling through the south, I started to notice ominous clouds everywhere. I soon learned that Typhoon Goni, which had just killed more than a dozen people in the Philippines, was going to land on Amakusa around the same time I was planning to have peace of mind there. At the port of Kumamoto city, the ferry company was selling only one-way tickets to Amakusa since all service would be terminated because of the incoming typhoon.

When I reached the inn on Amakusa I had made reservations at, the old lady at the counter was surprised to see me. "Why are you here? Goni is coming. I will give you the full refund. Get out of here as soon as you can," she told me. She gave me directions to the bus depot and I ran the whole way there. Hello and goodbye Amakusa!

Later that night, Goni hit Kumamoto and the neighboring Kyushu Island in full force. Rivers overflowed, public transportation was suspended, and more than 520,000 people were advised to evacuate their homes.

In January 2016, we were back in Japan for three weeks and we visited the missing piece of our last trip, Okinawa. Through all that traveling, I shot 251 rolls of Tri-X and made 1,156 silver gelatin prints. You'd think that's more than enough material to make a book, but not quite. Around one-third of my new book was selected from an additional 1,000 prints from many more short trips I made in Japan between 2011 and 2014 that share the same spirit of rediscovering one's own home country.

The Japan I saw was full of contradictions: It was ancient and modern, western and eastern, democratic and feudal, peaceful and anarchic, sacred and profane, anonymous and unique—just to name a few. It is a pretty complex character with a lot of charm, and a lot of issues. Opposing forces create dynamic tensions that drive you crazy and keep you going. Going where? I don't know. But the country is forever moving forward and my job is to document its endlessly fascinating paradoxes.

View more of Hiroyuki Ito's photos below.

Hiroyuki Ito is an artist and photographer living in NYC. You can follow his work here.

Image supplied

In 2016, there are a lot of corporations spending a lot of money convincing customers they're not evil. This is a product of the internet, surely, but also of the anti-globalization movement of the 90s and early 2000s. This was a period that praised anything by Michael Moore or Rage Against the Machine, while economic forums around the world attracted riots. And of all the people credited with solidifying the movement, it's Naomi Klein who stands out.

The Toronto-based author and activist has been documenting the shortfalls of neoliberalism for more than 20 years. She began with 1999's No Logo, which examined the way companies like Nike and GAP had cannibalized youth culture at a dire cost to foreign workers. She's since broadened her attack, arguing in 2014's This Changes Everything that capitalism is ostensibly incapable of curbing climate change.

In short, Naomi has spent her adult life arguing that many of the world's influencers are wrong. Not just wrong, but cruel, manipulative, and dangerous. So I got her on the phone to ask how she feels about them.

"When I started writing the belief was that if you privatize everything, good things will follow," she told VICE. Then she describes how events in the past decade—from the GFC to the recent slump in oil prices—have bared holes in neoliberal thinking. Those who believed in the free market in the 90s weren't idiots; they just hadn't been proven wrong yet. "And now this thinking is in crisis, which has led to equally the rise of Trump and Sanders."

I point out that although Trump and Sanders might represent frustrations, Trump stands for a lot more than right-wing economics. "Yes, but anger has to go somewhere," she responds. "When things don't work the left traditionally blames big power, while the right blames immigrants."

I should mention it's hard to talk to Naomi Klein on the phone without feeling nervous. Every question I asked her elicited a second-long pause before she delivered a perfectly phrased 100-word answer. It's clear she's spent a long time thinking and talking about the same ballpark of issues.

Of course, it's been a lifetime. Naomi was born from a long lineage of people concerned with equality and social justice. Her paternal grandfather was a committed communist in his youth, even organizing a strike over pay conditions where he worked as an illustrator at Disney. He and Naomi's grandmother lived in a tent outside the LA studio for several months of 1941, while her father, Michael, was still just a baby.

Michael grew up in New Jersey and became a doctor. He was a lively opponent to the Vietnam War, which is how he met a young activist and filmmaker named Bonnie Sherr. When Bonnie fell pregnant with Naomi's older brother, and Michael was drafted to the war, they immigrated to Montreal where Naomi was born in 1970.

Naomi and her brother Seth grew up watching their mother making films with a feminist collective at the National Film Board, while her father instituted the first birthing room at his hospital. It was household of lively debate and acoustic guitar, and on weekends the family crossed the border to a cabin in Vermont, listening to history shows on the car stereo. Naomi has since written that she found the family dynamic but a bit earnest, and actually embarrassing as a teenager. But as she put it, "Our fights were less about actual transgressions than about my silence, my sullenness, and—as my dad was always fond of putting it—my 'refusal to be part of this family.'"

But as a student in the mid-90s, Naomi began to see something that scared her. Universities had began making deals with soft drink corporations, which were funding consumer research under the pretext of health studies, while grabbing exclusive access to campus vending machines. And as ads for multinationals began to fill campus bathrooms, Naomi decided that the struggle had shifted. What, in the 1970s, had been a fight for equality, had became a battle over the free market in the 90s.

It's now been 17 years since the publication of No Logo, and while Naomi refuses to use the word "optimistic" she describes feeling a quiet sense of possibility. "If changing the system was simply about tackling climate change, I'd say no, capitalism will never change. But now it's about so much more than that." She describes the weight behind Black Lives Matter as an example, and explains how the burned, bankrupted oil fields around Fort McMurray have prompted a more personal, human approach from Canada's media. She harks back to something she told me earlier—faith in neoliberalism has taken some blows, and people are starting to respond.

I ask if she'd ever consider entering politics, and Naomi scoffs. "No, but I think I'm more happy about being called an activist." Her recent work The Leap Manifesto describes how Canada could transition to a 100 percent renewable economy by 2050. Along with this call to action, her work with climate change lobby group, 350.org, sees her fulfilling more of an organizer roll. "Maybe instead of politics I can continue this kind of work, and I feel very excited about that."

Naomi Klein has recently been awarded the 2016 Sydney Peace Prize. She will receive the prize at a ceremony in November.

Follow Julian on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

It took three days for the Greek police to complete the evacuation of Europe's largest makeshift refugee camp in Idomeni, next to the border between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia. For months, 13,000 people have been trapped there, hoping to cross the border and start a new life in Europe. According to the Greek state news agency, the last 783 refugees, who were in Idomeni until noon on Thursday, boarded 18 buses and were transferred to organized shelters near the city of Thessaloniki.

Back in Idomeni, you could now only hear the noise of trucks trying to clear up what remained of the camp. Scattered across the area were tents, pots filled with food, dolls and toys covered in dust, children's drawings, and strollers.

After the completion of the evacuation on Thursday, the railway line between Belgrade and Thessaloniki reopened. According to Greek economic newspaper Naftemporiki, the closing of Idomeni's train station during the last 70 days has cost the Greek railway authorities about €2.5 million ($2.8 million).

In 2015, more than 800,000 refugees and immigrants had passed through Idomeni following the so-called Balkan Route to central Europe. The borders were closed in the middle of March, which trapped thousands of people on the Greek side. Idomeni—a small Greek village with about a 150 residents—became a symbol of the refugee drama in the Balkans and Europe.

During the three days the evacuation lasted, 3,817 refugees were taken away by buses. But last Monday—one day before the evacuation started—the Greek government announced that about 8,500 refugees were staying in Idomeni. That means that about 5,000 people either left on their own or hid somewhere near the border, hoping to find a way to cross illegally.

Doctors Without Borders denounces the compulsory transfer from Idomeni to organized camps, remarking that there was a general lack of information. On top of that, their workers were restricted from providing any humanitarian assistance to refugees.

All screenshots of 'Half-Life 2: Episode One' via Steam

To release a game episodically—to refer to it as a "season"—is today intended to mimic the style of television drama. It's no accident that The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, two of TV's most widely regarded series, have been processed into episodic games (by Californian studio Telltale). The proclamation is clear: the quality of writing in these video games is comparable to that of premium TV drama. But why invite the comparison in the first place?

Words like "emotional," "narrative," and cinematic" have long been used by game-makers in order to suffuse their work with quality by association, implying it has the thematic consistency of a truly great movie, or heart-rending potential of an actual tragedy. But doing this only elucidates video game-makers' insecurity—and by and large, the entire culture of video games' insecurity, too.

Games like Life is Strange and The Wolf Among Us, which are heavily written and attempt to develop their characters, cannot be positioned purely as video games because video games, it has come to be believed, are not a forum for lofty, narrative pursuits. Games are dumb. Games are just for fun. Story in games is like story in porn.

And so, out of that pervasive but self-defeating notion, The Walking Dead and games like it are expounded as semi TV series, simultaneously imbuing them with vicarious prestige while giving game-makers tacit permission to do the unthinkable: release video games with stories that demand players' attention.

These insecurities, about what games should be, what players expect, and what game-makers are allowed to do, were evident ten years ago this June in another episodic game, Half-Life 2: Episode One. Not unlike Half-Life 2 proper of two years previous, Episode One is at war with its own nature, terrified of both first-person shooter genre tropes and traditional video game excess.

Like hundreds of video games, Episode One features extended sequences where characters recite exposition and make phatic remarks to one another, but it refuses to run them as cutscenes: instead of losing control of your character and watching, essentially, a short film, while other characters are talking, you're allowed to move around and either listen or not listen. It's more interactive but it's not better—it makes it possible to turn dialogue scenes into a ridiculous pantomime, where Gordon Freeman is crawling and jumping in circles as his companions debate the end of humanity.

Similarly, the game's reluctance to give you a gun (it's maybe an hour and a half of play before you get one) is perhaps well intentioned, but has the inverse effect. Defeating enemies by solving puzzles, or simply standing back and letting your companion, Alyx Vance, kill everyone for you, is perhaps a different approach to video game combat, appealing to players' initiative and modesty. But again, it's not better.

It's a word I hate to use, because I like to think that all expression, all artwork, even if it's poor, is in some way enriching, but the opening hours of Episode One are boring. What I presume is a fear on the game-makers' part, a fear to embrace some standards of video games or more specifically first-person shooters, turns Episode One into a timid, desperate game. It feels like somebody, or some group of people on Half-Life 2's development, was not comfortable with it being a shooter. Combat is held back as long as possible, guns are tinny and ineffectual, and the enemies all feel like empty suits that just flop down dead, en masse.

Some will argue that Episode One's (or Episode Two's or Half-Life 2's) disinterest in shooting is rooted in grander ambitions; that these are story games, focused on world building and intrigue. But when Half-Life's central character never says a word—when I spend the whole of Episode One being talked to, right in the eye, by Alyx and all I can do is stare mutely back, never uttering as much as syllable—I find it hard to agree that Half-Life is that interested in story. It's a game afraid to dirty itself with traditional gaming pleasures.

At the same time, though, it hasn't the sophisticated writing to justify itself as something other or above standard video games. It's insecure, to the point that it won't dedicate to either video game genre or heavyweight storytelling.

It's a pity, because with a little more confidence, a little more willing and bite, Episode One—and Half-Life 2, by extension—would be a better shooter with a better script. It still boasts some inventive set-ups, like surviving an underground parking lot filled with monsters, or covering civilians as they escape from the secret police, and if the combat were weightier and the game didn't make you feel ashamed for using guns, moments like that could really sing.

Likewise, Alyx remains one of the most plausible, endearing characters in video games. She's funny, she's brave, she's occasionally vulnerable—she's someone you truly enjoy being around. And if you could actually talk to her, all of these aspects would be felt much more. It's unfortunate that Half-Life 2, though reticent to throw in with the tropes of first-person shooting, is happy to lead with a silent hero, the most abysmal video game cliché of all.

Half-Life 2: Episode One is not an episodic game in the way we've come to expect. It's not narratively led, replete with explicit moments of player choice and determined to prove that decisions have consequences. But it nevertheless has a lot in common with the episodic games of today. It seems to resent, or at least fear too close an association to, its own medium. Where the insecurity of The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and Life is Strange might be measured by their eager emulation of television drama, Episode One's identity crisis is present in its weak shooting mechanics and half-formed character dynamics. It's a game neurotically aware of what video games do too often, but too frightened to attempt what they attempt so rarely.

If Half-Life 3 is taking so long, perhaps it's because so many pretenses about video games still exist. While they're trying to be like TV, or trying to be like films, or trying to be anything but formed of game-makers' own, proud, confident volitions, great video games will struggle to be made.

Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.

Canada's own True Detective. Photo courtesy Global TV

Last night I purposely watched what may be the single-most "Canadian" piece of television that has ever aired in the Great White North. I'm honestly afraid to even type out the premise of this show lest I inadvertently conjure a Canadian Beetlejuice who is just waiting for someone to write too many words about hockey in one sentence before being unleashed.

Sorry Brandon Walsh.

Follow Amil Niazi on Twitter

Over the past seven days, America witnessed four mass shootings that left one dead and 16 injured. The attacks bring the US mass shooting body count so far this year to 111 dead and 400 injured. Meanwhile, Europe suffered one mass shooting that left two dead and 11 injured, bringing the continent's body count in such attacks up to 20 dead and 66 injured.

The week's mass shootings in the United States were once again routine by national standards, drawing limited media attention. At about 12:30 AM Saturday, a drive-by shooting at a high school graduation party in Griffin, Georgia, killed a 16-year-old boy and injured three others. Around 7 PM on Sunday, a drive-by targeting a group of people in a car in Nashville, Tennessee, injured four. Less than three hours later, another drive-by on a group outside a nightspot in New Orleans, Louisiana, injured four more. And at about 7:30 PM Monday night, a shooting at a house littered with guns and drugs in Newark, New Jersey, left five more injured.

Meanwhile, Europe's mass shooting, which unfolded on Sunday at about 3 AM at an outdoor music festival in the small town of Nenzig, Austria, was the largest (although not the deadliest) such attack on the continent this year. After reportedly arguing with a woman in a parking lot, a 27-year-old man grabbed a long gun from his car and fired randomly into the crowd—the kind of indiscriminate shooting you don't often see in Europe. The attacker created a stampede among attendees before ultimately killing himself. An unexpected public terror rivaling the worst mass shootings of America in a usually quiet part of the world, the Nenzig attack ticked almost every box for unrelenting media coverage, generating stories throughout the week in not just European but also American outlets.

But the tail-end of the week saw attention shift towards an attack in New York City that fell below VICE's threshold for a mass shooting: At about 10 PM Wednesday, a shooting broke out in the third-floor VIP room of the city's Irving Plaza concert venue, where the rapper T.I. was gearing up to perform to a crowd of about 1,000. The details of the incident remain hazy, but police have arrested rapper Troy Ave (born Roland Collins), 30, who suffered a graze wound to his leg; police say he was a shooter. Troy Ave's bodyguard-manager Ronald "Edgar" McPhatter, 33, died of a gut shot while in the hospital. Bystanders Maggie Heckstall, 26, and Christopher Vinson, 34, were also hospitalized with bullet wounds to the leg and chest, respectively; both are now said to be in stable condition. The shooting stemmed from an earlier fistfight, but it's unclear exactly who Troy Ave allegedly shot—i.e. whether he was responsible for all of the gunshot wounds, including the graze wound to his own leg, or just some of them.

For his part, NYC Police Commissioner William J. Bratton quickly blamed the shooting on what he describes as the thuggish nature of rap culture, a problematic contention at best. But his take still gets at the key reason this shooting received the mass media attention that a previous, technically "mass" shooting in New York last month did not: it involved, if only tangentially, names like 50 Cent and TI—prominent figures in American pop culture. The distorting power of celebrity isn't particularly novel or surprising when it infiltrates events like this one. But it is depressing that the United States still seems to accord more value to the lives and injuries of those proximal to its stars than the many others coping with what has become a national epidemic of mass gun violence.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Donald Trump, the petty, vindictive real estate heir who has become the Republican presidential nominee thanks to a combination of insults and a promise to build a big wall, is having a pretty good week. Last Friday he was endorsed by the NRA, on Thursday he officially clinched the Republican nomination, then Fox News aired a documentary on his family that was praised as "like something you'd see on state-run television somewhere."

To top it off, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll showed him with an edge over Hillary Clinton in the general election—an edge earned at least in part by a sudden surge in his popularity among millennials. The survey reports a pretty major jump in the way young people view Trump: In March, Clinton had a 64–25 lead among registered voters under 30, but as of May that gap had been narrowed to 45–42. Her support dropped across all demographics in the new poll, but the fact that a huge number of twentysomethings were suddenly siding with the GOP was the big news.

Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney among young voters 67–30 in 2012, and conventional wisdom is that millennials can't stand the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to social issues. So, what the fuck? Are young people actually turning to Trump?

The right-wing blogosphere certainly thinks so. The white supremacists at the Daily Stormer (trigger warning on that link right there) hailed the poll as a sign that "liberal SJWism can, one, win them over for himself, or, two, make them stay home."

A Friday Associated Press piece on young people who support Trump offered some competing theories. Author Morley Winograd told the AP that millennials may be thinking,"'The system is rigged, I need somebody to totally overthrow the system' and that's what Trump says he's going to do and that's what Sanders says he's going to do." The idea is that the current generation is deeply distrustful of the system that brought us the financial crisis, a crumbling infrastructure, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—anyone who says they're going to shake that system up is going to have at least some appeal, whether they come from the left or the right. The AP quoted several twentysomethings who say that their decision isn't between Trump and Clinton, it's between Trump and Sanders.

If Trump's support is actually just dislike for Clinton, it's possible to chalk some of the ABC poll result up to an increasingly heated Democratic primary. A Harvard poll in April found that millennials overwhelmingly hated Trump—the problem is just that they don't like Clinton that much either. A Public Policy Polling survey from this month said that voters undecided between Clinton and Trump backed Sanders by a 41–8 margin.

If Sanders eventually falls short and endorses Clinton, as nearly everyone expects, some of his passionate young supporters will likely come around to the view of, Oh yeah, Trump really is that bad. (The question of how many Sanders fans wouldn't cast a Clinton ballot is hotly debated, but polls show that most of them would vote for the former secretary of state against the real estate mogul.)

Still, the ABC poll is something of an outlier. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll also released this week had Clinton leading Trump among young people 55–32, even as Trump's overall numbers rose; a CBS/New York Times poll from earlier this month had the gap at 47–34.

Not that those numbers are where Clinton wants to be—if she wants to maintain the "Obama coalition" that won the last two presidential elections for Democrats, she needs young people in her camp, and she needs them in large numbers. Convincing Sanders to stump for her (along with Obama himself) will probably help, as will highlighting some of her millennial-specific policy proposals, like letting people refinance their student loans. (Trump's proposal on student debt, by contrast, is incredibly vague, like most of his campaign platform.)

The silver lining for Clinton is that though many young people aren't as excited about her as they are about Sanders, the argument that they should do everything they can to stop the thin-skinned, secretive, ignorant Trump is a fairly good one. Trump is going to spend this campaign raising questions about Clinton's future—Clinton's task is going to be asking millennials if they really want their future to be guided by Trump.

VICE's new film LOCKED OFF captures the urgent energy of the UK's current rave scene, uncovering the illegal parties being thrown across the country, in spite of the slow decline of licensed British clubs. Bolt-cutters are back in fashion and squatters are taking over from traditional promoters.

But how much does this latest wave of free partiers owe to the original UK rave scene: the second summer of love, the arrival of ecstasy and the birth of acid house? Some of the parallels are obvious – it's still, ultimately, people taking drugs and listening to repetitive music. What's less clear is whether they share a creative outlook or a political ethos.

In an effort to fully explore the shared heritage between today's raves and the parties of yore, we showed LOCKED OFF to a few promoters, producers, DJs, and door-pickers from the previous generation of party-throwers, to see how they think the new school holds up in comparison.

Related: Watch 'LOCKED OFF'

DENZIL ROBERTS

Photo by Luke Overin

Denzil Roberts spent the best part of the 90s running the doors of London venues like Legends, as well as M25 raves during the acid house days. Denzil's job as a door-picker was simple: if you weren't right for the party then you weren't getting in.

VICE: What are your initial impressions of the current UK free party scene?
Denzil: The underground rave scene that is taking place now has got no soul, no love, no energy, and no great looking people. Just a load of people playing music, in a dirty warehouse. The summer of love was off the wall and nothing now comes close, they are on a different planet now.

OK, so not a fan. Why do you think the vibe has changed?
Back then people came together as one and partied in a united way—you could feel the electricity coming from the crowd. Now it's just lots of little parties in a dirty warehouse listening to noise. The people, the style, the fun, energy, and our love for the music and coming together is missing now, it's just tacky people in tracksuits everywhere.

So can we call this a renaissance of the illegal rave?
Cool illegal raves are still taking place with amazing people if you know where to look.

PETER DUGGAL

Peter Duggal came to prominence as a producer in the early 90s under the name Demonik. His record "Labyrinthe" was a regular in the warehouse days and was sampled by Altern-8 on their track "Infiltrate 202."

VICE: What are your initial impressions of the current UK free party scene?
Peter: It's really interesting, and I think if I was to wind the clock back and be 17 again, I'd definitely be checking some of these nights out. Not that gabber one in Wales though, my ears would not thank me for it!

What are some of the big differences between the scene now and the scene in your day?
Peter: When I was producing there was more of an air of invention and so much uncharted territory. You'd spend days crafting an amazing bleep from a really gritty square wave. Now, everyone has everything available to them now, the technology is incredible. That's undoubtedly a good thing, but to me personally it has always been the case that people create more interesting music with less.

Do you think the atmosphere at the parties has changed?
It seems a lot of the spirit about these free parties revolves around the adventure in the illegality of them, playing cat and mouse with the police, being a bit naughty. There was that back then too, but everyone I personally knew from that scene was singularly interested in the music, and everything else was secondary. The big thing that came across to me was that it all looked a bit more edgy, and a bit less fun.

Does the response from the police seems harsher or more lenient?
It's the same really. There seems to me a bit of a lack of authenticity in all this "standing off." I mean, if I'd broken into someone else's building, loaded myself up with chemicals and then the police arrived to shut it down, I'd feel a bit odd complaining about it. All the premeditation with the squatter's rights signs, I don't know, it all seems like it's meant to be spontaneous, but in essence, it's staged.

SEAN JOHNSTON

Electronic music website RA describes Sean Johnston as both an "Acid House Veteran" and a "Balearic Survivor." His DJ career started in the 1980s, and since then he has played a constant role in the UK nightlife. He currently produces music with the Hardway Bros and recently held a residency alongside Andrew Weatherall titled "A Love From Outer Space."

VICE: What are your initial impressions of the current UK rave scene?
Sean: I can really relate to where all the kids in the film are coming from. Our situation was very similar: repressive Tory government; shit, violent, townie night-clubs, and a real desire for something that was exciting and our own.

How different is the music?
The gabber kids seem to be playing exactly the same records the Fear Teachers were playing in 92. Did they get their records on eBay?

Quite possibly. What about the atmosphere—do you think that has changed much?
Seems to be exactly the same, but then, will we ever want to stop getting high and dancing to music? It's a tribal thing.

So do you think anything is missing?
Back in the early days there was an evangelical fervor and loved up vibe that was down to the quality of the pharmaceuticals. That seems to be missing, understandably.

Does the response from the police seems harsher or more lenient?
It seems to be similar to me, by and large. The police would let you get on with it if you weren't taking the piss and causing too much disturbance. Our objective was always to pull off a great party without them even getting wind of it. There were groups like Spiral Tribe who were much radical and confrontational who seem to have blazed the trail for Scumtek. I never went to their dos because their music was utterly shit.

So should we call this a renaissance of the illegal rave?
Don't call it a renaissance, it's a continuum. They have been going on every weekend for as long as I can remember. It's just the social, economic, and political situation that conspire to make it more visible. It's great to see a film like this and seeing something we started being carried on by the next generation. Glad that the youth of today of still got a bit of the renegade spirit. Good luck to all of them!

BILLY BUNTER

At age 15, Billy 'Daniel' Bunter was already DJing at the seminal Labrynth/2000AD in Dalston. He played a leading role in both UK happy hardcore and later hard house scenes. Along with Slipmatt, he spearheaded the Helter Skelter series, which came to define the late-90s rave scene.

VICE: What do you make of the new free party scene?
Billy: This is a continuation of what was happening 25 years ago, just as what we were doing was a continuation of the 25 years before, a continuation of the Woodstock era. The ethos hasn't changed. As an 18-year-old, what do you want to do? Whatever you're not supposed to do. Our generation wasn't doing anything new in terms of partying illegally. It's a youth thing. Any form of music has to come with an element of decadence. And out of that comes new music, and creativity.

Would you want to be a part of this rave scene?
I'd like to be healthy enough to kick down warehouse doors and run away from the police. A few years ago when the new warehouse scene started happening, I saw older promoters trying to get into it. But I saw it and I knew it wasn't my place to get into it. It's not my turn anymore. I put on licensed events now.My kids are 18 and 21 and the way they feel when they hear new house or drum and bass is exactly how we felt when we first heard records from Chicago.

But you still put on raves?
For me now, I'm throwing raves for my demographic, people who are 35 to 40 and now have kids. If they are going to have a night out they have to plan it in advance, call a babysitter and book coach travel down from wherever they live. I can't really ask them to help me break into a warehouse.

Are the parties you see in LOCKED OFF missing anything?
Do you know what I despise? The fact that many people from my generation are all, "It ain't as good as it was when were partying, there's no peace and love." People say that the kids today don't care about peace and love because they are fighting off the police? But that's the same as how it was in my day. People would lob bricks at the police in the Biology days if the rave was getting shut down.

Does the police response seem more extreme?
Again, it's all generational. Life in 1989 was so different. Back then it caught the police by surprise. Loopholes in the law were there to be exploited. We're now in a different era. The police have learned in the last 25 years that if they are heavy handed, they can end it quicker. That said, those violent episodes are one minute snapshots that make it onto the news. I bet there are raves all over the country that are shut down peacefully, or where the police join in with the party.

Mark Saunders, probably getting yelled at by a weed activist. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim

Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders walked into his press conference Friday morning with a "message."

"If you don't have a license from Health Canada and you're distributing marijuana, it's unlawful," he said. Unfortunately for Saunders, hardly anyone could hear him over the chorus of accusations being shouted by a rowdy crowd of weed activists who hijacked the event.

Saunders held the presser at police headquarters to release details about Project Claudia, the drug squad investigation into dispensaries in Toronto that resulted in raids at 43 pot shops across the city Thursday.

In total, the chief said 90 people were arrested and 186 charges were laid, mostly relating to trafficking and cash from proceeds of a crime. A massive amount of cannabis in its various forms was seized, including 269 kilograms of dried bud and more than 400 kilograms of edibles; the cops also confiscated 23 grams of cocaine from one of the locations and $160,000 in cash.

Saunders, speaking above a large display of seized edibles, said Project Claudia has been in the works for a few weeks, sparked by 50-70 community complaints regarding the influx of dispensaries.

He had a few talking points he was clearly hoping to stick to, primarily that under the law "there's no such thing as a dispensary" and that a lack of standardization of products sold in dispensaries poses risks to the public.

"There is no quality control whatsoever on these products and as you can see they're marketed in way to disguise the unknown and unregulated amount of THC in the products," he said.

Just a fraction of the medicated goodies Toronto cops seized from dispensaries. Photo by Seb FoxAllen

That comment set off a barrage of angry questions from activists in the crowd, who hammered Saunders one after the other without giving him a chance to respond.

"Is that an assumption or do you actually have documentation from hospitals and stuff that prove these are a health concern?" asked one activist, following up with, "Where are you suggesting these people go to? Back to the black market? Back to the alley ways? You think that's not a health risk, getting your medical marijuana from an alley way?"

A few of them began shouting "show us a victim" and "show us the evidence" proving weed is in fact harmful.

"How can you justify it's a health concern when it's the most benign substance you can ingest?... It has literally never killed anybody," they continued.

Read more: If Justin Trudeau is About to Legalize Weed, Why Are We Still Imprisoning People Over it?

At one point, barely audible, Saunders asked two people to be removed from the room so he could have a "legitimate" conversation. One of them, longtime Vancouver-based activist Jodie Emery, who is in town to open two new dispensaries this weekend, simply moved forward and continued berating Saunders.

"The patients are the victims," she proclaimed.

When asked again by reporters what evidence he had of children—or anyone—consuming and being harmed by marijuana from dispensaries, Saunders said there is none.

"I don't have any evidence of that and I don't want any evidence of " he said, adding another concern is that people don't know the people they're purchasing weed from at dispensaries, nor the source of the product. Asked by VICE where he expected the thousands of patients who use dispensaries to get their marijuana from now, he said those who have a Health Canada prescription will still have access.

Saunders would not say how much Project Claudia cost. On Thursday the Toronto Taxpayers Coalition released a statement saying the dispensary crackdown is a waste of money; a Mainstreet Research Poll conducted earlier this week indicates 75 percent of Torontonians polled support dispensaries and 58 percent are against a crackdown.

Saunders said most the 43 dispensaries busted had been complained about by neighbours. He said he consulted with the city of Toronto, which laid 79 zoning and licensing charges Thursday that carry $50,000 fines, and the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, prior to carrying out Project Claudia.

"I feel very strongly the charges will stick," he said.

After the press conference, activists carried on protesting outside police headquarters, smoking weed while slamming the cops and Justin Trudeau.

"Legalization is the new prohibition," said Emery.

Saunders said police will continue to investigate dispensaries, but with the feds set to legalize marijuana by sometime next year, it's unclear who will have the last word.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Check out Akvile's website, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook.