Executive & Artistic Director’s Report

Daisies (Sedmikrásky), Věra Chytilová, 1966

The COVID-19 pandemic may have shut down our physical operations for much of 2020, but it didn’t change The Cinematheque’s core mission nor diminish the determination of our fantastic team to continue providing exceptional programs to our community. What astonishes me most, as I look back over a truly challenging year, is how much of our work as cultural presenters and media educators we were actually able to complete, despite everything! The pandemic was a significant disruptor, and forced us to close our cinema for significant periods. Yet, through those in-theatre screenings we were able to offer, and by “pivoting” (as current parlance has it) to online presentations, The Cinematheque managed to do much of the public film programming it had planned to do in 2020. Likewise our Learning & Outreach team (lead by Chelsea Birks, who assumed her position mere days before COVID changed everything): by improvising and adapting, it was able to continue providing its excellent array of school-year and summer programs to students and youths. I am very proud of what our people have accomplished in these most difficult and uncertain times.

This has been a watershed year globally in other ways, too: a year in which organizations and institutions everywhere have been challenged to think critically and honestly about issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion—including and especially systemic issues. Diversity and inclusion have always been a hallmark of the work we do, in our public film programs and our Learning & Outreach initiatives, and the values we hold dear. But 2020 has been a year to really take stock of how successful we’ve been, or not been, in fundamentally, systemically, deeply embedding these values in our organization and its practices. And how we might do better going forward. I’m excited that our board and staff made it a priority to begin this critical work in 2020, and are committed to carrying it forward in the year and years ahead. We will, in the meantime, continue to ensure that a wide diversity of voices, artists, and cultural perspectives is represented in our public work. This has always been a curatorial priority, and an outreach priority, of The Cinematheque. Our overriding organizational goal in 2020 was, of course, survival! The Cinematheque is a nimble, resourceful organization, driven by a dedicated team passionate about the work it does. Keeping that team intact and engaged, and finding ways, new and old, for it to continue doing its cultural work during COVID, represented the very best way of shepherding The Cinematheque through the year and, in due time, getting beyond the pandemic. Government assistance also played a crucial role. The Cinematheque has benefited from the general subsidies and supports offered to businesses and other endeavours in our society, but also, critically, from the particular support extended by cultural agencies at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels. These public funders responded rapidly, and, in many instances, in extraordinary ways, to the threat COVID has posed to the arts sector. Our private donors were generous to us as well. Encouragingly, this has left The Cinematheque in a stable financial position at 2020 year-end, and well-situated to ride out the prevailing circumstances for a while at least. And, at the time of writing, in the spring of 2021, “a while at least” is still what we’re facing.

I am, then, especially grateful this year to all the many stakeholder and supporters whose commitment makes this a vital and purposeful organization: our patrons, volunteers, professional staff, board members, donors, funders, and programming partners.

Hey, is that a light at the end of the tunnel? The glint of a big, shiny vax needle? Could it be a projector beam bouncing off a movie screen as an audience of friends and strangers sits together, enraptured by cinema? We can only hope. And hoping we are!

Jim Sinclair

Executive & Artistic Director