The Cinematheque JAN + FEB 2017

1

EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL CINEMA

y

HELLO DESTROYER

JAN

+

FEB 2017

1131 Howe Street | Vancouver | theCinematheque.ca

CANADA'S TOP TEN FILM FESTIVAL MAREN ADE BC FILM HISTORY CANADA ON SCREEN TAKESHI KITANO CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS DOXA + THE CINEMATHEQUE

ON SCREEN

CANADA y JANUARY + FEBRUARY 2017

CANADA’S TOP TEN FILM FESTIVAL

JAN 13–22 #SEETHENORTH THE BEST OF 2016 IN CANADIAN FEATURES, SHORTS, AND STUDENT SHORTS

T

he year’s best Canadian films are in the spotlight in The Cinematheque’s annual presentation of the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival. Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival, this celebration of excellence in our national cinema showcases Canadian achievements in feature-length films, short films, and student short films.

The festival’s feature, short, and student short selections are each chosen by a panel of filmmakers and industry professionals from across Canada. To be eligible, films must be directed by a Canadian citizen or resident and have been released commercially or played a major film festival in Canada.

Acknowledgments: The Cinematheque is grateful to the Toronto International Film Festival for making this Vancouver presentation of the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival possible. Special thanks to Steve Gravestock, Senior Programmer, Festival Programming, TIFF; and Lisa Haller, Senior Programming Associate, Festival Programming, TIFF, for their kind assistance.

Program notes adapted from texts provided by TIFF. All Ages Welcome!

Admission to those under 18 will be in accordance with the provisions of the specific rating for each feature film or shorts program.

Annual $3 membership required for those 18+

OPENING NIGHT

GUESTS IN ATTENDANCE

Window Horses (The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming)

Canada 2016. Dir: Ann Marie Fleming. 88 min. DCP

Vancouver filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, one of Canada’s most beloved animators, crafts an extraordinary tale of art, history, and family. Rosie, a young poet of Chinese and Persian descent, lives in Vancouver with her overprotective but loving Chinese grandparents but dreams of an artistic and glamorous life abroad. An invitation to a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran, rocks her boat, and though she has never travelled on her own, she decides to embark on the trip that will change her life. Voiced by a cast that includes Sandra Oh, Ellen Page, and Don McKellar, and displaying Fleming’s typical intelligence and humour, the film seamlessly integrates different animation styles; the richness of its world is presented for us to marvel at with the same wide-eyed wonder as Rosie. Best B.C. Film & Best Canadian Feature Film, VIFF. — Magali Simard, TIFF FRIDAY, JANUARY 13

Opening Night: Canada's Top Ten Film Festival Reception, Refreshments, and Guests in Attendance 6:30 pm - Doors 7:30 pm - Introduction and screening of Window Horses

2

Angry Inuk

Canada 2016. Dir: Alethea Arnaquq-Baril. 85 min. DCP

Director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s Angry Inuk examines, with heartbreaking effect, the impact of protests against seal hunting on Inuit communities in Canada and elsewhere. Part exposé, part personal documentary, and part community portrait (her family lives on Baffin Island, one of the regions hardest hit by bans), the film charts the history of the anti-sealing movement with precision and clarity. Anti-sealers still use old images of whitecoat baby seals being clubbed, decades after such hunting was banned, and still imply that the seal population is endangered, although it has quadrupled since the 1980s. Why? Seal-hunting protests and campaigns, many led by celebrities, are by far the most lucrative for animal rights and environmental groups. ArnaquqBaril painstakingly underscores the unfunny irony: people from the wealthiest areas in the world lecturing the most economically-challenged on how to live.

Audience Award, Hot Docs. — Steve Gravestock, TIFF SATURDAY, JANUARY 14 – 4:30 PM

Maliglutit (Searchers)

Canada 2016. Dir: Zacharias Kunuk. 94 min. DCP

Fifteen years ago, Zacharias Kunuk directed Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, winner of the Caméra d’Or at Cannes and recently voted the top Canadian film of all time. In his latest feature, Kunuk and collaborator Natar Ungalaaq use the revenge plot of John Ford’s 1956 Western The Searchers as inspiration for the tale of an Inuk man and his band of maliglutit (“followers”) who set out across the barren Arctic in search of the marauders who have ransacked his home and kidnapped his wife. Like Ford’s film, Kunuk’s Searchers explores the repercussions of violence; unlike Ford, Kunuk questions the colonial ideology inherent to the Western and the possibility of justice in a seemingly unjust world. With a tale as timeless as the landscape in which it is set, Canada’s foremost Inuk filmmaker has provided us with another classic. – TIFF SATURDAY, JANUARY 14 – 6:30 PM

Old Stone

Canada/China 2016. Dir: Johnny Ma. 80 min. DCP

Johnny Ma’s impressive feature debut takes us on an unnerving trip through China’s social strata. For taxi driver Lao Shi (Chen Gang, extraordinary), every day is a fight for his family’s economic survival. One day, he accidentally hits a motorcyclist. When the ambulance takes too long to arrive, Lao drives the injured man to the hospital himself, only to discover that he’s now legally responsible for the medical bills. Plunged into a bureaucratic nightmare and faced with financial ruin, he is forced to embrace retribution as his only possible escape. Ma’s film begins as an observant social-realist drama and turns into a furious, bloody film noir. But even as Old Stone goes into full cinematic overdrive, it runs on an engine of humanism and empathy. Best Canadian First Feature Film, TIFF. – Magali Simard, TIFF SATURDAY, JANUARY 14 – 8:20 PM

Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves (Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau)

loaded with incendiary rhetoric. Demanding and rigorous, it is somehow, simultaneously, absurdly funny and invigorating. It’s also divisive: some will find the revolutionaries sympathetic; others will be appalled. But few could legitimately disagree that Revolution – with its opening five minutes of black film leader, fake intermission, and stunning tableau scenes – is one of the most indelible and audacious works to emerge from Quebec and Canada in recent memory. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF SUNDAY, JANUARY 15 – 7:00 PM

Canada’s Top Ten Student Shorts 2016 Boys Will Be ● Teryl Brouillette, Ryerson University, ON. 19 min.

Bumby the Barely-Witch ● Jessica Tai, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, BC. 3 min.

Drifter ● Olivia Lindgren, Langara College, BC. 10 min.

Feathers ● Sarah Kieley, Sheridan College, ON. 6 min.

Island | Saari ● Ella Mikkola, University of Regina, SK. 6 min.

Land of Nod ● Ivan Ramin Radnik, Humber College, ON. 16 min.

Les Beiges ● Étienne Lacelle, Concordia University, QC. 11 min.

My Invisible Mother ● Pascal Huynh, Concordia University, QC. 3 min.

Nothing Grows Here ● Lauren Belanger, Ryerson University, ON. 16 min.

This is Not an Animation | Ceci n’est pas une animation ● Federico Kempke, Sheridan College, ON. 5 min.

Film synopses available at thecinematheque.ca TUESDAY, JANUARY 17 – 6:30 PM

Mean Dreams

Canada 2016. Dir: Nathan Morlando. 104 min. DCP

Nathan Morlando’s second feature more than delivers on the promise of his debut, Edwin Boyd – Citizen Gangster (Best Canadian First Feature, TIFF 2011). The life of teenaged Jonas (Josh Wiggins) is dominated by his father’s struggles with the family farm and his mother’s battle with depression.

When Casey (Sophie Nélisse) moves in down the road, the two click immediately. They’re a good pair, but Jonas’s father sees Casey as a distraction, while Casey’s father, Wayne (Bill Paxton), an alcoholic policeman prone to explosive outbursts, sees Jonas as competition. With nowhere to turn, Jonas and Casey are faced with an impossible decision. Atmospherically shot by Steve Cosens, one of Canada’s finest cinematographers, and featuring excellent performances, Morlando’s film creates a sensitive portrait of the dilemmas facing young people trapped by circumstance and history. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF TUESDAY, JANUARY 17 – 8:25 PM

Canada 2016. Dirs: Mathieu Denis, Simon Lavoie. 183 min. DCP

Winner of TIFF’s Best Canadian Feature prize, Those Who Make Revolution… was inspired by directors Denis and Lavoie’s speculations about Quebec’s massive 2012 student demonstrations, and what might have happened had the fervour not dissipated. A study of youth and political dogma, the film, in which four largely middleclass radicals hole up in a dingy bungalow and plot violent revolution, is like an agitprop fire sale,

3

Canada’s Top Ten Shorts 2016 Single-bill admission price in effect for Canada’s Top Ten Shorts. See one or both programs for the applicable single-bill price: $11 Adults / $9 Students & Seniors Film synopses available at thecinematheque.ca Program I Blind Vaysha | Vaysha, l’aveugle ● Theodore Ushev, QC. 8 min.

Frame 394 ● Rich Williamson, ON. 29 min.

Emma ● Martin Edralin, ON. 13 min.

Her Friend Adam ● Benjamin Petrie, ON. 17 min.

Fluffy | Flafi ● Lee Filipovski, ON. 24 min.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19 – 6:30 PM

Program II Mariner ● Thyrone Tommy, ON. 20 min.

SNIP ● Terril Calder, ON-MB. 15 min.

Mutants ● Alexandre Dostie, QC. 16 min.

Fish ● Heather Young, NS-NB. 11 min.

A Funeral for Lightning ● Emily Kai Bock, BC. 25 min.

Werewolf

Canada 2016. Dir: Ashley McKenzie. 78 min. DCP

The hardscrabble existence of two homeless addicts is portrayed with sensitivity and brutal honesty in Nova Scotia filmmaker Ashley McKenzie’s powerful debut feature. Doggedly and courageously refusing to romanticize its characters’ lives, Werewolf is shot in oblique close-ups that capture the disorientation and frustration of young junkies Blaise and Vanessa.

Sleeping in tents, fighting with government bureaucrats, the two survive by harassing people to let them cut their grass with the rusty old mower they haul over dirt roads and through rainstorms.

Such scenes capture the futility and struggle in their lives with startling power, like some crack-addled version of the Stations of the Cross. McKenzie and her actors skilfully inspire empathy in us even as we find the characters’ actions perplexing and troubling.

Werewolf confirms the promise of McKenzie’s acclaimed short films. — Steve Gravestock, TIFF FRIDAY, JANUARY 20 – 8:20 PM

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19 – 8:20 PM

Closing Weekend Reception!

Guests in Attendance!

Hello Destroyer Canada 2016. Dir: Kevan Funk. 110 min. DCP

Limited Run!

It’s Only the End of the World (Juste la fin du monde)

Canada/France 2016. Dir: Xavier Dolan. 95 min. DCP

Xavier Dolan (Laurence Anyways, Mommy), delivers yet another visionary work. It’s Only the End of the World, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, is a thunderous drama about home and familial roots.

Terminally-ill writer Louis (Gaspard Ulliel) comes home after 12 years away to tell his family he is dying. It’s the proverbial prodigal’s return, except that his family is not so ready to forgive him. His mother (Nathalie Baye) has struggled to keep the family together; his tempestuous siblings (Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux) and introverted sister-inlaw (Marion Cotillard) have their own crosses and grudges to bear. The group deconstructs a life’s worth of damaged family dynamics. Dolan gives Jean-Luc Lagarce’s source play a stunningly-stylized adaptation, shooting almost entirely in intense close-ups. It’s a bold aesthetic choice that gets to the heart of the characters’ experience. – Magali Simard, TIFF

Timely, uncompromising, and devastating, Vancouver filmmaker Kevan Funk’s debut feature raises troubling questions about how we teach boys to become adults, particularly within the context of our national obsession: hockey. A new recruit on the junior-league Prince George Warriors, Tyson Burr (Jared Abrahamson) is an enforcer, tasked with digging the puck out of corners and protecting more skilled players. Shy and inarticulate, he’s the product of a world that values aggression over emotional development. When Tyson grievously injures an opponent, he discovers that the “family” around him is much more self-serving and cutthroat than he thought.

Few Canadian artists have had the courage to question our assumptions about our national game; fewer still have mounted such a forceful critique of an athletics system that forges young boys into weapons, then abandons them when they become inconvenient. B.C. Emerging Filmmaker Award, VIFF. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF SATURDAY, JANUARY 21

Closing Weekend: Canada's Top Ten Film Festival Reception, Refreshments, and Guests in Attendance 6:30 pm - Doors 7:30 pm - Introduction and screening of Hello Destroyer

FRIDAY, JANUARY 20 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 21 – 4:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 22 – 8:30 PM

Nelly

Canada 2016. Dir: Anne Émond. 101 min. DCP

#SEETHENORTH 4

The frankness and dramatic weight that writer-director Anne Émond (Nuit #1, Our Loved Ones) lends her stories is extraordinary. Her third feature, Nelly, is a creatively-imagined portrait of one of the most controversial writers in Quebec history. When Nelly Arcan (born Isabelle Fortier) published Putain (Whore), her debut novel, in 2001, it caused a sensation with its tale of prostitution based on Arcan’s own experience.

But with success came crushing anxieties, all of which found their way into Arcan’s work. Émond’s onscreen Nelly is a composite of the writer’s many personas and fictional characters, brought to life in an astounding, kaleidoscopic performance by Mylène Mackay. As the film moves from one striking passage of Arcan’s oeuvre to the next, from elating highs to desperate lows, we are immersed in her lush and punishing world.

– Magali Simard, TIFF SUNDAY, JANUARY 22 – 6:30 PM

MAREN ADE BEFORE TONI ERDMANN

“One of the 50 best filmmakers under 50 . . .

If I had to point to one young filmmaker in the world whose future seems to me the brightest, it would be Maren.”

Kent Jones, Cinema Scope

If there was a film in 2016 that rivalled the curveball humour, squirmy awkwardness, or blindsided joys of German writer-director Maren Ade’s universally-adored Toni Erdmann, we didn’t see it! Named the best film of the year by the International Federation of Film Critics – a first for a woman-helmed picture – Ade’s coup de maître may feel like it came out of left field, but it’s only the latest (albeit, the most loudly trumpeted) in a succession of acclaimed, prize-winning films from the gifted 40-year-old filmmaker.

To mark the Canadian theatrical release of Toni Erdmann (due January 27, 2017), we present Maren Ade’s remarkable preceding features, The Forest for the Trees (2003) and Everyone Else (2010) – both beguiling, measured comedies that further established the so-called “Berlin School” as Germany’s first substantial new wave since the New German Cinema of the 1960s and ’70s.

“Marvellous . . . A tartly comic tale of teachers

“[Does] for the 21st-century couple what

on the verge of a nervous breakdown . . .

Polanski’s Knife in the Water or Antonioni’s

For a college project, it’s astonishing.”

L’Avventura were doing in the ’60s.”

Jamie Wooley, BBC

Philippe Garnier, LA Weekly

“This insightful, affecting, and tightly-

“So much is right and true in this lovely,

realised piece bodes well for Maren Ade’s

delicate work that it comes breathtakingly

future career . . . A commanding lead

close to perfect.”

performance by Eva Löbau.”

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily

The Forest for the Trees

Everyone Else

Germany 2003. Dir: Maren Ade. 81 min. 35mm

Germany 2009. Dir: Maren Ade. 124 min. 35mm

Maren Ade’s fantastic debut feature, winner of a Special Jury Prize at Sundance, is a compactly-crafted, disarmingly-honest account of an idealistic young teacher drifting comically out of her professional and personal depths. That it was Ade’s thesis project as a student at the Munich Academy for Film and Television – completed when she was just 26 – makes its maturity and directorial aplomb all the more impressive. Melanie (played with cringe-worthy perfection by Eva Löbau) is a mousey twentysomething hoping for a fresh start in southwest Germany after being offered a teaching post midyear. She begins to unravel when her progressive but undisciplined teaching style fails, her colleagues ostracize her, and her disastrous misreadings of a trendy neighbour’s social cues jeopardize a desperately sought-after female friendship. Shot on digital video in Ade’s hometown of Karlsruhe (where both her parents work as teachers), the film has a lo-fi, home-movie quality that adds to its intimacy, unease, and unexpectedly sublime denouement.

The first film by a “Berlin School” affiliate to win big at Berlinale – runner-up for Best Film; top prize for Best Actress – Maren Ade’s extraordinary second feature confirmed what her superb debut feature (The Forest for the Trees) made a compelling case for, and her latest (Toni Erdmann) took a victory lap for: the arrival of a confident, refreshing new voice in European cinema. An incisive, erotic, emotionally on-point portrayal of modern love in your thirties, it features festival breakouts Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger as Gitti and Chris, an in-love German couple vacationing at Chris’s family villa in Sardinia. Upon meeting a seemingly happier, more career-successful couple, their latent insecurities, romantic posturing, and aptitudes for cruelty shift into focus. Delicately crafted by Ade with wit and uncommon honesty – not to mention face-palming awkwardness, fast becoming her forte – Everyone Else found a spot on the year-end top-ten lists of Film Comment, Village Voice, and Variety.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4 – 8:50 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5 – 6:30 PM

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 8:10 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5 – 8:10 PM

(Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen)

(Alle Anderen)

5

THE IMAGE A HISTORY OF FILM IN BRITISH COLUMBIA - TAKE 3 "Culture filters things, telling us what we should retain and what we must forget. In this way it gives us some common ground, with regard to mistakes as well as truths.” – Umberto Eco, This is the Not the End of the Book

I

n our third season of “The Image Before Us: A History of Film in British Columbia,” we do a curatorial zoom out to include some of the most culturally and historically significant works ever produced in British Columbia.

We open with In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first feature film made in B.C., and the first made anywhere with an all-indigenous cast. We acknowledge the impressive contributions of our own Hollywood North by presenting McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and That Cold Day in the Park (1969), two Robert Altman-directed films from the early days of our motion-picture and television industry. And we celebrate Larry Kent and Peter Bryant, two pioneering indie cinema auteurs, who participated in Vancouver’s various responses to the films of John Cassavetes, the New American Cinema, and the French Nouvelle Vague.

At the same time, we stay on message with familiar themes woven through this multi-year series — films that are personal responses to the contemporary social contexts of place and family, and expressions of the autobiographical. Ross Weber’s masterfully-executed second feature Mount Pleasant (2006) resonates or at least rhymes with the extraordinary changes Vancouver has been undergoing. Julia Kwan’s remarkable debut feature Eve and the Fire Horse (2005) examines themes of family and faith through the eyes of its nine-year-old protagonist. And Patricia Gruben, one of our most cherished avant-garde filmmakers, takes on the nonfiction genre of the autobiographical essay with Ley Lines (1993), her metaphysical meditation on family and place.

With every year, our series has widened its frame, as more homegrown films and filmmakers worthy of scrutiny and study, of remembering, screening, and celebrating, present themselves, just as new and daring films continue to be made.

Our series continues to draw inspiration from Colin Browne’s pleasurable critique of films made in B.C., The Image Before Us (1986), a film that asks us to carefully examine the images before us — what is shown, what is intended, what stories and experiences are omitted, and why?

I hope that the various thematic strands of the series and the films themselves allow audiences to reflect on our present situations here in British Columbia, and that new generations of filmmakers might ask new questions and tell new stories in their films, as they seek inspiration from filmmakers and films that have come before. – Harry Killas

Harry Killas’s historical documentary films about British Columbia include Spilsbury’s Coast; Glowing in the Dark, on the history of Vancouver’s neon art and design; and Picture Start, about the first generation of Vancouver’s “photoconceptual” artists. A graduate of NYU’s grad film program, Killas is currently working on an expanded version of Picture Start, entitled Is There A Picture, and an autobiographical documentary, Greek to Me. He is Assistant Dean of Dynamic Media at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Opening Night

In the Land of the Head Hunters USA/Canada 1914. Dir: Edward S. Curtis. 65 min. DCP

A remarkable portrait of the Kwakwaka’wakw (formerly Kwakiutl) people of northern Vancouver Island and the central coast, In the Land of the Head Hunters was the first feature film made in B.C. and is the oldest extant feature made in Canada. It’s also the first feature made with an entirely indigenous North American cast. Directed by Edward S. Curtis, the renowned American photographer of First Nations life, the film mixes documentary and dramatic elements; it records authentic traditions and rituals, including the potlatch ceremony, but also offers an epic tale of love, war, and adventure set in pre-European times. It premiered in New York and Seattle in December 1914.

This beautiful DCP restoration includes John J. Branham’s original 1914 score performed by Vancouver’s Turning Point Ensemble. preceded by

Behind the Masks Canada 1973. Dir: Tom Shandel. 37 min. Digibeta

The famed French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss discusses sacred masks made by First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, and visits a carver on Vancouver Island, in this short documentary by Vancouver’s Tom Shandel.

Introduced by Colin Browne, Vancouver filmmaker, poet, scholar, and Professor Emeritus at SFU MONDAY, JANUARY 16 – 7:00 PM

Early Hollywood North: Focus on Robert Altman

McCabe and Mrs. Miller USA 1971. Dir: Robert Altman. 121 min. DCP

Robert Altman’s magnificent revisionist Western, filmed in West Vancouver, is one of his major achievements. Warren Beatty is mysterious stranger McCabe, a gambler and supposed gunfighter, who rides into a rough mining town looking to make some money. Julie Christie is Mrs. Miller, the opiumsmoking madam who becomes his business partner in running a brothel. Their flourishing operation soon attracts the dangerous attention of powerful business interests. Leonard Cohen’s haunting music and Vilmos Zsigmond’s moody cinematography make important contributions. “A supremely beautiful movie . . . Altman’s sharpest visualization of the corruption of the American Dream” (Derek Malcolm). “This modern classic is not like any other film” (Pauline Kael).

6

That Cold Day in the Park USA 1969. Dir: Robert Altman. 112 min. 35mm

Introduced by Harry Killas

Robert Altman’s second studio picture and first truly personal work was this undervalued rarity, shot in Vancouver in 1968, and made just before M*A*S*H, his commercial breakthrough. A take on the psychological horror film, and an unsettling study of sexual repression and obsession, it’s one of a number of idiosyncratic Altman works (including Images and Three Women) exploring the psychopathology of lonely women. Sandy Dennis, fresh off her Oscar win for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, plays a frustrated spinster who invites a young drifter (Michael Burns) into her home, only to then make him her prisoner. Altman, of course, would also shoot 1971’s masterful McCabe and Mrs. Miller in Vancouver. Restored 35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Restoration funding provided by The Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

MONDAY, JANUARY 23 – 6:30 PM

MONDAY, JANUARY 23 – 8:50 PM

LEY LINES

IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS

BEFORE US Early Vancouver Independents Free Screening!

CANADA ON SCREEN: FEATURE FILMS

The Bitter Ash is presented as part of Canada On Screen, a celebration of Canada’s 150 essential moving-image works. Canada On Screen is a year-long, nation-wide program honouring Canada’s 150th birthday and its rich cinematic heritage. Screenings are free of charge. For more information, see page 8–9.

The Bitter Ash Canada 1963. Dir: Larry Kent. 79 min. DCP

In 1963, a 26-year-old UBC student named Larry Kent wrote and directed the first modern and truly Canadian feature made in Vancouver. Produced for a mere $5,000, this stylish, scandalous drama set against the sexual revolution was also, arguably, the first modern Canadian feature, predating Donald Owen’s Nobody Waved Goodbye by a year. Kent’s brash film follows the sexual shenanigans of a young man torn between adult responsibility and the freedoms offered by the emerging counterculture. Set to a free jazz score and imbued with New Wave visual energy, The Bitter Ash announced itself as something new and vital in Canadian cinema. A notorious nude scene saw it banned in many locales, but also made it highly popular on Canadian campuses! “A big piece of Canadian and B.C. film history . . . The Bitter Ash is to Vancouver what La Dolce Vita is to Rome” (Brett Enemark).

The Supreme Kid Canada 1976. Dir: Peter Bryant. 90 min. DCP

Rare screening! Writer-director Peter Bryant’s amiable comedy was the first feature made by an alumnus of the SFU Film Workshop, an important incubator of 16mm filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s. (“What the Workshop does,” Bryant said in a contemporary Cinema Canada article, “is get people involved who are really interested in making films. No courses, nothing.

That’s all they want to do.”) His episodic road movie follows Ruben (Frank Moore) and Wes (Jim Henshaw), two hippyhobos who meet motley characters and have misadventures as they drift around B.C. Helen Shaver has one of her first big-screen roles, as does Terry David Mulligan. Praised for its easy-going attitude and feel for character and pacing, The Supreme Kid was one of the first B.C. indie features to screen at an international festival, appearing at Karlovy Vary (and Toronto). DCP courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

There will be a 15-minute intermission between The Bitter Ash and The Supreme Kid Free admission this evening for both films.

Introduced by Tom Scholte, award-winning Vancouver stage and screen actor and Professor, Acting and Directing, Department of Theatre and Film, UBC MONDAY, JANUARY 30 – 6:30 PM

Gentrifying Vancouver

Mount Pleasant Canada 2006. Dir: Ross Weber. 87 min. 35mm

The gentrification of Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbour is the backdrop for writer-director Ross Weber’s thoughtful tale of three dysfunctional couples whose destinies intertwine after a six-year-old girl injures herself with an addict’s discarded needle she finds in her yard. Doug (Ben Ratner) and Sarah (Camille Sullivan), who have just moved into the ’hood, are the girl’s distraught parents; the experience sends Doug on an angry mission against the druggies, prostitutes, and johns frequenting the area. Nadia (Katie Boland) and boyfriend Nick (Tygh Runyan) are teenaged addicts; Nadia supports their habits by hooking. Stephen (Shawn Doyle), married to Anne (Kelly Rowan), is a well-

off west side businessman who cruises Mount Pleasant to buy sex. Weber won the Leo for Best Director. “Beautifully crafted . . . A strong cast offer powerful and confident performances in this engaging drama” (Vancouver I.F.F.). preceded by

Flowers.

Canada 2015. Dir: Jessica Johnson. 8 min.

In Vancouver filmmaker Jessica Johnson’s short, made at SFU, a young woman tries to avoid an awkward confrontation.

Introduced by Curtis Woloschuk (TBC), Canadian Shorts Programmer, VIFF MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6 – 7:00 PM

First Feature

Focus on the Personal Film

Eve and the Fire Horse

Ley Lines

Canada 2005. Dir: Julia Kwan. 92 min. 35mm

Canada 1993. Dir: Patricia Gruben. 72 min. DCP

Julia Kwan’s stylishly-shot charmer, a festival hit at home and abroad, is set in a loving re-created early-1970s Vancouver. Eve centres on precocious nine-year-old Eve (Phoebe Kut), ominously born in the Year of the Fire Horse – said to produce difficult children! She and older sister Karena (Hollie Lo) let their wild imaginations get the best of them – and get them into trouble – as they fervently embrace Catholicism, Buddhism, and superstition (and, sometimes, a mixture of all three) in order to cope with several crises in their immigrant Chinese family. The film’s multiple awards include six Leos, a Special Jury Prize at Sundance, Most Popular Canadian Film honours at VIFF, and the Canadian Screen Award for best first feature. “An exceptional feature debut . . . Both a finely wrought period piece and a slice of delicately captured childhood” (Ken Eisner, Variety).

Vancouver filmmaker Patricia Gruben’s highly original, highly personal film, a mind-expanding documentary essay in the Chris Marker/Sans Soleil mode, uses the mystical geographical concept of “ley lines” as a metaphoric means for excavating the history of her own family and exploring the process of uncovering one’s roots. Gruben’s experimental journey begins with an excerpt from The Incredible Shrinking Man, and then takes us from Texas to Germany to Tuktoyaktuk; much of it is structured around a conversation between the director and her imaginary child self. Neuron-firing musings abound: on the micro and the macro, time and space, dowsing, Hitler, a tycoon who bequeathed $2 million to a lump of dirt. “Ley Lines eschews conventional narrative storytelling in favour of associative and cumulative revelation . . . A carefully shaped and resonant work of great imaginative power” (David McIntosh, Toronto I.F.F.).

Guest in attendance: Julia Kwan Introduced by Shaun Inouye, Operations and Programming Associate, The Cinematheque MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 7:00 PM

preceded by

Zmena - Medzi Dvoma Svetmi

(Change – Between Two Worlds) Canada 2016. Dir: Eva Pekarova. 3 min.

In Emily Carr University student Eva Pekarova’s meditative experimental short, images of an immigrant family living in B.C. are used to explore nature, tradition, and the displacement of peoples.

Guest in attendance: Patricia Gruben MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 7:00 PM

7

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES

CANADA ON SCREEN A year-long program celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday and its rich cinematic heritage.

T

he Cinematheque is proud to celebrate Canada’s 2017 sesquicentennial with Canada On Screen, an exciting national initiative co-produced by TIFF, The Cinematheque, Library and Archives Canada, and the Cinémathèque québécoise.

Canada On Screen is the most ambitious retrospective of Canada’s moving-image heritage ever mounted. In honour of Canada’s 150th birthday, a list of Canada’s 150 essential moving-image works, based on a countrywide poll of critics, scholars, and industry professionals, has been compiled across nine categories: feature films, documentaries, shorts, animation, experimental films and video, moving-image installations, music videos, commercials, and television shows. These 150 masterworks, many of them newly restored, will be made available to Canadians everywhere in 2017. A full list of the essential 150 is available at tiff.net/canadaonscreen Beginning in January and continuing throughout the year, The Cinematheque will present special free screenings showcasing many of these 150 works. Please join us and discover – or rediscover – the breadth, boldness, and wealth of Canada’s cinema history, a remarkable cultural legacy.

CANADA ON SCREEN OPENING NIGHT FRIDAY, JANUARY 6 The Cinematheque begins its year-long series of free Canada On Screen presentations with a B.C.-themed program featuring Sandy Wilson’s Genie-winning feature My American Cousin (1985) and Emily Carr grads Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis’s Palme d’Or-winning animated short When the Day Breaks (1999).

FREE ADMISSION! CANADA ON SCREEN: FEATURE FILMS

My American Cousin Canada 1985. Dir: Sandy Wilson. 89 min. DCP

Now a classic of our national cinema, writer-director Sandy Wilson’s charming film à clef is both an affecting comingof-age tale and a witty meditation on Canadian-American cultural tensions. Sandy Wilcox (Margaret Langrick) is a preteen growing up in the 1950s in B.C.’s Okanagan, where she’s bored (“Nothing ever happens!”) and also tired of being treated like a child. Everything changes with the arrival of Butch (John Wildman), her dreamy, red-convertibledriving cousin from California, who seems to embody everything exciting Sandy’s been longing for. My American Cousin was a popular hit at home and abroad, and won six Genie Awards – for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actress (Langrick), Actor (Wildman), and Editing (Haida Paul). Arriving on the heels of The Grey Fox, it also solidified B.C.'s ascendance as an important filmmaking centre – and was a rallying cry for women in film everywhere!

In Person: Sandy Wilson preceded by

CANADA ON SCREEN: ANIMATION

When the Day Breaks Canada 1999. Dir: Wendy Tilby, Amanda Forbis. 10 min. DCP

This exquisitely beautiful and compassionate animated short by Alberta natives Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis, who met while studying at Vancouver’s Emily Carr College (now University), won a Palme d’Or at Cannes, a Genie at home, and was nominated for an Oscar. In a city populated by farm animals, gentle Ruby the pig seeks comfort after witnessing a tragic accident.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 6

Opening Night: Canada On Screen Reception, Refreshments, and Guests in Attendance 6:30 pm - Doors 7:30 pm - Introduction and screening of My American Cousin and When the Day Breaks

8

FREE ADMISSION! CANADA ON SCREEN: FEATURE FILMS

FREE ADMISSION! CANADA ON SCREEN: FEATURE FILMS

The Dog Who Stopped the War

The Bitter Ash

(La guerre des tuques)

Canada 1984. Dir: André Mélançon. 92 min. 35mm

This special Canada On Screen presentation screens in conjunction with our Cinema Sunday film program for children and their families. See page 18 for film description and more details.

Canada 1963. Dir: Larry Kent. 79 min. DCP

This special Canada On Screen presentation screens in conjunction with The Image Before Us: A History of Film in British Columbia – Take 3. See page 7 for film description and more details.

MONDAY, JANUARY 30 – 6:30 PM

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15 – 1:00 PM

FREE ADMISSION! CANADA ON SCREEN: DOCUMENTARIES

preceded by

Manufactured Landscapes

CANADA ON SCREEN: DOCUMENTARIES

Canada 2006. Dir: Jennifer Baichwal. 90 min. 35mm

Jennifer Baichwal’s devastatingly beautiful film, lensed by the gifted cinematographer Peter Mettler, was named Best Canadian Feature at TIFF and won the Genie Award for Best Documentary. It profiles celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, known for his large-scale studies of industrial vistas, as he works on a project in China, shooting slag heaps, a massive factory, and the epic disruption caused by the Three Gorges Dam. “The film is far more than a straightforward portrait of an artist. Landscapes is as much about the aesthetic, social, and spiritual dimensions of industrialization and globalization as it is about Burtynsky and his work. The film focuses on the human cogs in the machine, the tedium the workers endure, the sometimes toxic and alienating impact on the people these efforts are supposed to benefit . . . Manufacture Landscapes is a truly unsettling look at contemporary existence” (Steve Gravestock, Toronto I.F.F.)

Corral

Canada 1954. Dir: Colin Low. 11 min. DCP

A milestone in Canadian cinema, Colin Low’s rule-breaking actuality film, produced by the National Film Board as part of its “Canada Carries On” series (presenting stories of Canadian life to Canadians) is one of NFB’s most honoured works. Shot at the Alberta ranch where Low, then 27, was raised, Corral offers a lyrical portrait of a cowboy “breaking” a horse. Its lovely images are set to a gentle, evocative guitar score; in a radical break with NFB documentary orthodoxy at the time, there is neither narration nor a didactic message. Wolf Keonig’s fresh hand-held cinematography itself departed from familiar Hollywood depictions of cowboys. Tom Daly, another NFB legend, edited.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 7:00 PM

FREE ADMISSION! CANADA ON SCREEN: FEATURE FILMS

preceded by

Les Ordres

CANADA ON SCREEN: EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND VIDEO

(Orders)

Canada 1974. Dir: Michel Brault. 107 min. 35mm

Michel Brault’s second fiction feature, a Kafkaesque political drama examining a dark chapter of our modern history, is one of Canadian cinema’s great works. Following the imposition of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis of 1970, five innocent people are arrested, held without charge, and subject to various humiliations. Les Ordres was based on the actual experiences of many of the 450 Quebecers detained at the time. Brault, one of Canada’s finest cinematographers and foremost practitioners of cinéma direct, here mixes fiction and documentary techniques to create a film of urgency. He has his actors introduce themselves and their characters, and then intersperses “interviews” with those characters throughout the drama. The result is a harrowing account of liberal democracy gone askew. Les Ordres is the only Canadian film ever to win the Best Director prize at Cannes. It also won Canadian Film Awards for Best Feature, Director, and Screenplay.

Rat Life and Diet in North America Canada 1968. Dir: Joyce Wieland. 16 min. 16mm

Canadian rats held as political prisoners by American cats make an heroic escape in Joyce Wieland’s playful, highly political short, a classic of avant-garde cinema and an ironic parable, rendered with structuralist touches, of rebellion and resistance.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19 – 7:00 PM

Print courtesy Cinémathèque québécoise

9

SUN TICKETS

MON

1

TUES

2

3

WED

4

CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS JANUARY 1–3

HOW TO BUY TICKETS Day–of tickets go on sale at the Box Office 30 minutes before the first show of the evening.

Advance tickets are available for credit card purchase at theCinematheque.ca ($1 service charge applies). Events, times, and prices are subject to change without notice.

The Cinematheque is recognized as an exempt non–profit film society under the B.C. Motion Picture Act, and as such is able to screen films that have not been reviewed by the B.C. Film Classification Office. Under the act, all persons attending cinematheque screenings must be members of the Pacific Cinémathèque Pacifique Society and be 18 years of age or older, unless otherwise indicated.

ALL SCREENINGS ARE RESTRICTED TO 18+ UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED $3 ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP

8

JANUARY 9

New Restorations

One-Eyed Jacks – 7:00 pm

New Restorations

10

11

Black Girl + Borom Sarret – 6:30 pm L’Argent – 8:15 pm

THURS

5

New Restorations

FRI

6

New Restorations

Black Girl + Borom Sarret – 6:30 pm

L’Argent – 6:30 pm

L’Argent – 8:15 pm

Black Girl + Borom Sarret – 8:15 pm

12

New Restorations

The Shooting – 6:30 pm

GUEST

7

Canada On Screen

Opening Night

15

GUEST

16

Canada’s Top Ten Those Who Make Revolution Halfway... – 7:00 pm

22

REQUIRED FOR THOSE 18+

23

Canada’s Top Ten

Nelly – 6:30 pm It’s Only the End of the World – 8:30 pm

theCinematheque.ca

GUEST

BC Film History

In the Land of the Head Hunters + Behind the Masks – 7:00 pm

GUEST

BC Film History

McCabe and Mrs. Miller – 6:30 pm

17

Canada’s Top Ten

Canada’s Top Ten Student Shorts 2016 – 6:30 pm

18

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Seven Songs for a Long Life – 7:30 pm

19

Mean Dreams – 8:25 pm

24

13

New Restorations

L’Argent – 6:30 pm

GUEST

14

Canada’s Top Ten

Opening Night

Canada’s Top Ten

Canada’s Top Ten Shorts 2016: Programme I – 6:30 pm

20

DIM Cinema

Outfitumentary – 7:30 pm

26

That Cold Day in the Park – 8:50 pm

New Cinema

Staying Vertical – 6:30 pm

Canada’s Top Ten

It’s Only the End of the World – 6:30 pm

Canada’s Top Ten

Angry Inuk – 4:30 pm Maliglutit (Searchers) – 6:30 pm

Doors - 6:30 pm

Old Stone – 8:20 pm

21

GUEST

Canada’s Top Ten

It’s Only the End of the World – 4:30 pm Closing Weekend Event

Werewolf – 8:20 pm

Canada’s Top Ten Shorts 2016: Programme II – 8:20 pm

25

The Shooting – 6:30 pm One-Eyed Jacks – 8:10 pm

Window Horses - 7:30 pm

Cinema Sunday Canada On Screen The Dog Who Stopped the War – 1:00 pm

New Restorations

Doors - 6:30pm My American Cousin + When The Day Breaks - 7:30pm

The Shooting – 8:15 pm

One-Eyed Jacks – 8:10 pm

SAT

Doors - 6:30 pm Hello Destroyer - 7:30 pm

27

New Restorations

Tampopo – 6:30 pm

New Restorations

New Cinema

Tampopo – 8:30 pm

Staying Vertical – 8:45 pm

28

New Restorations

Tampopo – 4:00 pm New Cinema

Staying Vertical – 6:30 pm New Restorations

Tampopo – 8:30 pm

GUEST

IN THIS ISSUE

29

CANADA’S TOP TEN 2–4

New Restorations

Tampopo – 6:30 pm

30

New Cinema

Staying Vertical – 8:45 pm

MAREN ADE 5

BC Film History Canada On Screen The Bitter Ash + The Supreme Kid – 6:30 pm

31

1

New Cinema

Staying Vertical – 6:30 pm

2

New Resorations

3

New Restorations

Tampopo – 6:30 pm New Cinema

Tampopo – 8:30 pm

4

Maren Ade

The Forest for the Trees – 6:30 pm

Everyone Else – 6:30 pm The Forest for the Trees – 8:50 pm

Everyone Else – 8:10 pm

Staying Vertical – 8:45 pm

Maren Ade

BC FILM HISTORY 6–7 CANADA ON SCREEN 8–9 NEW RESTORATIONS 12-13

5

NEW CINEMA 13

Maren Ade

The Forest for the Trees – 6:30 pm

6

BC Film History

Mount Pleasant – 7:00 pm

8

7

Canada On Screen

Manufactured Landscapes + Corral – 7:00 pm

9

10

Chan Centre Connects

Good Night, and Good Luck – 7:00 pm

DOXA + THE CINEMATHEQUE

Do Not Resist – 7:00 pm

11

Everyone Else – 8:10 pm

TAKESHI KITANO 14 CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS 15 DOXA + THE CINEMATHEQUE 15 DIM CINEMA 16

GUEST

12

13

FEBRUARY 14

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL

FRAMES OF MIND 17

15

FEBRUARY 11–14

CINEMA SUNDAY 18

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Best and Most Beautiful Things – 7:30 pm CC

VIMFF.ORG

16

17

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL

18

FEBRUARY 16–17

))

From Our Collection

George Washington – 6:30 pm Ratcatcher – 8:15 pm

VIMFF.ORG

FROM OUR COLLECTION 19 Rated G Rated PG Rated 14A

CC

))

19

Cinema Sunday

20

Rated 18A

The Peanut Butter Solution – 1:00 pm

Closed Captions

Canada On Screen

Descriptive Audio

Les Ordres + Rat Life and Diet in North America – 7:00 pm

BACKGROUND IMAGE:

L’Argent

26

Takeshi Kitano

Boiling Point – 6:30 pm

27

GUEST

BC Film History

Eve and the Fire Horse – 7:00 pm

GUEST

BC Film History

21

22

DIM Cinema

The Common Sense – 7:30 pm

23

Takeshi Kitano

24

Takeshi Kitano

25

Takeshi Kitano

Violent Cop – 6:30 pm

Boiling Point – 6:30 pm

Violent Cop – 6:30 pm

Boiling Point – 8:30 pm

Violent Cop – 8:25 pm

Boiling Point – 8:30 pm

28

Ley Lines – 7:00 pm

Violent Cop – 8:25 pm

2017 Annual Pass Experience a year's worth of Essential Cinema for $ 320 PURCHASE AT THE BOX OFFICE ON SCREENING NIGHTS, OR CALL OUR OFFICE AT 604.688.8202 MON-FRI 9am-5pm.

SUN TICKETS

MON

1

TUES

2

3

WED

4

CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS JANUARY 1–3

HOW TO BUY TICKETS Day–of tickets go on sale at the Box Office 30 minutes before the first show of the evening.

Advance tickets are available for credit card purchase at theCinematheque.ca ($1 service charge applies). Events, times, and prices are subject to change without notice.

The Cinematheque is recognized as an exempt non–profit film society under the B.C. Motion Picture Act, and as such is able to screen films that have not been reviewed by the B.C. Film Classification Office. Under the act, all persons attending cinematheque screenings must be members of the Pacific Cinémathèque Pacifique Society and be 18 years of age or older, unless otherwise indicated.

ALL SCREENINGS ARE RESTRICTED TO 18+ UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED $3 ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP

8

JANUARY 9

New Restorations

One-Eyed Jacks – 7:00 pm

New Restorations

10

11

Black Girl + Borom Sarret – 6:30 pm L’Argent – 8:15 pm

THURS

5

New Restorations

FRI

6

New Restorations

Black Girl + Borom Sarret – 6:30 pm

L’Argent – 6:30 pm

L’Argent – 8:15 pm

Black Girl + Borom Sarret – 8:15 pm

12

New Restorations

The Shooting – 6:30 pm

GUEST

7

Canada On Screen

Opening Night

15

GUEST

16

Canada’s Top Ten Those Who Make Revolution Halfway... – 7:00 pm

22

REQUIRED FOR THOSE 18+

23

Canada’s Top Ten

Nelly – 6:30 pm It’s Only the End of the World – 8:30 pm

theCinematheque.ca

GUEST

BC Film History

In the Land of the Head Hunters + Behind the Masks – 7:00 pm

GUEST

BC Film History

McCabe and Mrs. Miller – 6:30 pm

17

Canada’s Top Ten

Canada’s Top Ten Student Shorts 2016 – 6:30 pm

18

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Seven Songs for a Long Life – 7:30 pm

19

Mean Dreams – 8:25 pm

24

13

New Restorations

L’Argent – 6:30 pm

GUEST

14

Canada’s Top Ten

Opening Night

Canada’s Top Ten

Canada’s Top Ten Shorts 2016: Programme I – 6:30 pm

20

DIM Cinema

Outfitumentary – 7:30 pm

26

That Cold Day in the Park – 8:50 pm

New Cinema

Staying Vertical – 6:30 pm

Canada’s Top Ten

It’s Only the End of the World – 6:30 pm

Canada’s Top Ten

Angry Inuk – 4:30 pm Maliglutit (Searchers) – 6:30 pm

Doors - 6:30 pm

Old Stone – 8:20 pm

21

GUEST

Canada’s Top Ten

It’s Only the End of the World – 4:30 pm Closing Weekend Event

Werewolf – 8:20 pm

Canada’s Top Ten Shorts 2016: Programme II – 8:20 pm

25

The Shooting – 6:30 pm One-Eyed Jacks – 8:10 pm

Window Horses - 7:30 pm

Cinema Sunday Canada On Screen The Dog Who Stopped the War – 1:00 pm

New Restorations

Doors - 6:30pm My American Cousin + When The Day Breaks - 7:30pm

The Shooting – 8:15 pm

One-Eyed Jacks – 8:10 pm

SAT

Doors - 6:30 pm Hello Destroyer - 7:30 pm

27

New Restorations

Tampopo – 6:30 pm

New Restorations

New Cinema

Tampopo – 8:30 pm

Staying Vertical – 8:45 pm

28

New Restorations

Tampopo – 4:00 pm New Cinema

Staying Vertical – 6:30 pm New Restorations

Tampopo – 8:30 pm

GUEST

IN THIS ISSUE

29

CANADA’S TOP TEN 2–4

New Restorations

Tampopo – 6:30 pm

30

New Cinema

Staying Vertical – 8:45 pm

MAREN ADE 5

BC Film History Canada On Screen The Bitter Ash + The Supreme Kid – 6:30 pm

31

1

New Cinema

Staying Vertical – 6:30 pm

2

New Resorations

3

New Restorations

Tampopo – 6:30 pm New Cinema

Tampopo – 8:30 pm

4

Maren Ade

The Forest for the Trees – 6:30 pm

Everyone Else – 6:30 pm The Forest for the Trees – 8:50 pm

Everyone Else – 8:10 pm

Staying Vertical – 8:45 pm

Maren Ade

BC FILM HISTORY 6–7 CANADA ON SCREEN 8–9 NEW RESTORATIONS 12-13

5

NEW CINEMA 13

Maren Ade

The Forest for the Trees – 6:30 pm

6

BC Film History

Mount Pleasant – 7:00 pm

8

7

Canada On Screen

Manufactured Landscapes + Corral – 7:00 pm

9

10

Chan Centre Connects

Good Night, and Good Luck – 7:00 pm

DOXA + THE CINEMATHEQUE

Do Not Resist – 7:00 pm

11

Everyone Else – 8:10 pm

TAKESHI KITANO 14 CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS 15 DOXA + THE CINEMATHEQUE 15 DIM CINEMA 16

GUEST

12

13

FEBRUARY 14

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL

FRAMES OF MIND 17

15

FEBRUARY 11–14

CINEMA SUNDAY 18

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Best and Most Beautiful Things – 7:30 pm CC

VIMFF.ORG

16

17

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL

18

FEBRUARY 16–17

))

From Our Collection

George Washington – 6:30 pm Ratcatcher – 8:15 pm

VIMFF.ORG

FROM OUR COLLECTION 19 Rated G Rated PG Rated 14A

CC

))

19

Cinema Sunday

20

Rated 18A

The Peanut Butter Solution – 1:00 pm

Closed Captions

Canada On Screen

Descriptive Audio

Les Ordres + Rat Life and Diet in North America – 7:00 pm

BACKGROUND IMAGE:

L’Argent

26

Takeshi Kitano

Boiling Point – 6:30 pm

27

GUEST

BC Film History

Eve and the Fire Horse – 7:00 pm

GUEST

BC Film History

21

22

DIM Cinema

The Common Sense – 7:30 pm

23

Takeshi Kitano

24

Takeshi Kitano

25

Takeshi Kitano

Violent Cop – 6:30 pm

Boiling Point – 6:30 pm

Violent Cop – 6:30 pm

Boiling Point – 8:30 pm

Violent Cop – 8:25 pm

Boiling Point – 8:30 pm

28

Ley Lines – 7:00 pm

Violent Cop – 8:25 pm

2017 Annual Pass Experience a year's worth of Essential Cinema for $ 320 PURCHASE AT THE BOX OFFICE ON SCREENING NIGHTS, OR CALL OUR OFFICE AT 604.688.8202 MON-FRI 9am-5pm.

NEW RESTORATIONS “An astonishing movie – so ferocious, so haunting, and so unlike anything we’d ever seen.” – Martin Scorsese

“Remains a cultist legend that’s never received the attention it deserves.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

“Dense with cool fury . . . Five decades after its premiere, the movie, like all of Sembène’s work, remains too little seen.” – Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

The Shooting

Black Girl (La Noire de…)

Senegal/France 1966.

Dir: Ousmane Sembène. 65 min. DCP

A landmark of the African cinema celebrates its 50th anniversary with a new restoration! Black Girl, the eye-opening debut feature of Senegalese novelist and master filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (Xala, Ceddo, Moolaadé), the “Father of African Cinema,” is credited with being first feature made in sub-Saharan Africa by a black African director. When Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop), a naïve young Dakar housemaid, relocates to the French Riviera with the French family she works for, her dreams of an exiting new life are quickly supplanted by the realities of domestic drudgery and racist and colonialist attitudes. Diop, in her first role, shines in Sembène’s incisive, deceptively simple character study. The film’s luminous black-and-white images have great expressive power. Black Girl won France’s Prix Jean Vigo, awarded for “independence of spirit and originality of style,” and launched the career of one of world cinema’s essential talents.

preceded by

Borom Sarret (The Wagoner)

Senegal 1963. Dir: Ousmane Sembène. 20 min. DCP

A poor man tries to eke out a living as a cart driver in Dakar in Ousmane Sembène’s striking neorealist short, said to be the first film ever made by a black African. “It isn’t just a milestone, it’s an outstanding work: funny, insightful, beautifully shot, and heartbreaking” (Jordan Hoffman, The Guardian).

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 5 – 8:15 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 9 – 6:30 PM

"One of the greatest of last films; Bresson slammed the door on his way out.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker “Bresson once again makes us realize how little most films make of the resources of cinema. A masterpiece.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

L’Argent

France 1983. Dir: Robert Bresson.

84 min. DCP

The awe-inspiring farewell film of Robert Bresson, one of cinema’s immortals, freely adopts a Tolstoy novella (“The Forged Coupon") and transposes it to contemporary France. L’Argent (“Money”) charts the circulation of a counterfeit 500-franc bill and the contagion of evil it spreads as it passes from hand to hand. When an innocent man unwittingly uses it to pay for a meal, the consequences prove disastrous. As in all Bresson’s major works, the real drama here is internal, spiritual, metaphysical; it derives not from plot or character but emanates from a rigorous austerity and intensity, from a meticulous accumulation of detail. In Bresson, objects and gestures miraculously transform into manifestations of the transcendent! L’Argent is one of Bresson’s best and most beautiful films – and one of his most harrowing indictments of modernity’s spiritual bankruptcy. It shared the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1983 with Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4 – 8:15 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 5 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 9 – 8:15 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 12 – 6:30 PM

12

BLACK GIRL

USA 1966. Dir: Monte Hellman.

81 min. DCP

Indie stalwart Roger Corman did incalculable good for American cinema.

One example came in the form of $150,000 for a relatively untested director (Monte Hellman) and his acting friend (Jack Nicholson) to go into the Utah desert to shoot two quick-and-dirty Westerns back to back.

The Shooting emerged as the more elliptical, philosophical, and accomplished of the pair (though the other, Ride in the Whirlwind, is nothing to sneeze at). With Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus as avowed influences, the odd, existential Western – written by Five Easy Pieces’ Carole Eastman – casts Warren Oates as an ex-bounty hunter escorting a mysterious woman (Millie Perkins) across the desert to settle a score; Nicholson is the black-clad gunslinger trailing them. Lionized by the nouvelle vague in France, but relegated to a TV release in the U.S., Hellman’s arty cult masterpiece ushered in a new, alternative take on genre: the acid Western!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 7 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 12 – 8:15 PM

“One-Eyed Jacks is one of my favourite Westerns and it was more than a privilege to be on the team that restored it for audiences around the world to rediscover or fall under its spell for the first time.” – Steven Spielberg

One-Eyed Jacks USA 1961. Dir: Marlon Brando.

141 min. DCP

Screen legend Marlon Brando stepped behind the camera (for the first and last time) to direct himself as a bandit with a bone to pick in this lush, landmark revenge Western, one of the genre’s most brilliant, baffling, production-plagued masterworks.

Beset by problems from the get-go – director Stanley Kubrick jumped ship for England and Lolita; Sam Peckinpah’s script was scrapped – it marched valiantly on with actor-(now)director Brando at the helm. The result: a wildly over-budget, longdelayed, “method” Western set perplexingly by the sea - and running nearly five-hours long in Brando’s final cut. Paramount trimmed it for release; it tanked at the box office. Vindicated in recent years by, among others, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg – the two oversaw this 4K digital restoration – it features a riveting, calculated performance by Brando as a betrayed bank robber hell-bent on revenge against his former partner (Karl Malden), now a sheriff. The gorgeous VistaVision cinematography earned an Oscar nomination.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 7 – 8:10 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 8 – 7:00 PM WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11 – 8:10 PM

“A film gourmand’s lusty dream . . . Perhaps the funniest movie about the connection between food and sex ever made.” – Hal Hinson, Washington Post “No foodie film is as deliriously, obscenely pleasurable . . . A kind of food reverence that borders on porn.”

– David Edelstein, New York Magazine “A weird, mouth-watering masterpiece . . . It’s delicious and you’ll slurp up every bite.”

– Dan Kois, Slate

Tampopo タンポポ Japan 1985. Dir: Juzo Itami.

115 min. DCP

Food, sex, and movie madness are the main ingredients of Juzo Itami’s oh-so-tasty Tampopo, a major art-house hit in the 1980s now newly restored and available for the first time in decades. When Clint Eastwood-like trucker Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and his young sidekick Gun (Ken Watanabe) land in the struggling roadside ramen joint of widow Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto), it sets off a madcap (and surprisingly sensual) quest for the perfect bowl of Japanese noodles. Itami’s rambunctious “Ramen Western,” a freewheeling surrealist satire in the Buñuelian manner, is full-to-bursting with movie parodies, erotic exploits, and noodle-slurping ecstasy, and more or less introduced ramen to North America. For which we say: Domo arigato! “In a new restoration, more vivid and seductive than ever . . . Tampopo creates a culinary empire of the senses while entertaining an audience like crazy” (Michael Sragow, Film Comment).

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26 – 8:30 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 27 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 28 – 4:00 PM & 8:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 29 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 8:30 PM THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 6:30 PM

NEW CINEMA “A holy-shit movie . . . The most shocking movie at Cannes last year.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair “A perversely humorous and frequently bizarre tragicomedy . . . Strange, wholly unpredictable, and invigorating.” – Jordan Cronk, Sight & Sound "Top Ten Films of of 2016." - Cahiers du Cinéma

The new film from the director of Stranger by the Lake

Staying Vertical (Rester vertical)

France 2016. Dir: Alain Guiraudie. 100 min. DCP

The startlingly unconventional Staying Vertical, French auteur Alain Guiraudie’s follow-up to 2013’s Stranger by the Lake, his international breakthrough, finds beauty, wonder, and mystery everywhere it looks – at rolling landscapes and wild wolves; at birth, death, and sex; at the messy, marvellous spectrum of carnal desire. A fairy-tale-like meditation on what it means to be a vertical animal, it follows sexually-fluid screenwriter Léo (Damien Bonnard), who, while wandering the countryside in search of inspiration, unexpectedly becomes a single parent after fathering a child with a shepherdess (India Hair). Pitched somewhere between the neo-Bressonian austerity of Bruno Dumont and the deadpan comedy of Luis Buñuel, Guiraudie’s bawdy, beguiling film subverts norms and expectations at every turn, and has a dreamlike logic that begins to approach the mythic. With its oddball digressions and often very explicit images, it’s also guaranteed to divide audiences – but there’s no denying that Guiraudie is a singular, and singularly open-hearted, talent!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 27 – 8:45 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 28 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 29 – 8:45 PM WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 8:45 PM

13

BOILING POINT

NEW RESTORATIONS

Takeshi Kitano x 2 “The single most arresting filmmaker working in Japan today, Takeshi Kitano is one of the most original and idiosyncratic artists in world cinema.” – Tom Charity, The Rough Guide to Film New Restoration!

Violent Cop

その男、凶暴につき

(Sono otoko, kyôbô ni tsuki) Japan 1989: Dir: Takeshi Kitano. 103 min. DCP

The explosive directorial debut of Takeshi Kitano (Sonatine, Fireworks/Hana-bi) came as a surprise: Kitano, under his stage name “Beat” Takeshi, had hitherto been known (and hugely popular) as a motor-mouthed comedian and ubiquitous TV personality in Japan. Kitano’s fast-paced, hard-boiled thriller casts the director himself – or, rather, alter-ego “Beat” Takeshi – as Azuma, a laconic, Dirty Harry-like cop battling yakuza gangsters and corrupt police officials following the suicide of a colleague and the kidnapping of his own sister. Kitano picked up the director’s reins after Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) exited the project; his stylistic touches, including moody long takes and Erik Satie music, elevate the film above typical genre fare and anticipate the internationally-acclaimed auteur to come. “Electrifying entertainment” (Tony Rayns, Time Out). “With deadpan wit, moral ambiguity, and flashes of extreme violence, it signaled the arrival of a major and new talent” (David Wood, BBC).

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 8:25 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 8:25 PM

Boiling Point ３－４Ｘ１０月 (3-4x Jûgatsu)

Japan 1990: Dir: Takeshi Kitano. 96 min. DCP

Takeshi Kitano is on full boil in his audacious, outrageous second feature; Boiling Point, with its bold blend of shocking violence, deadpan humour, dizzying tonal shifts, and languid, minimalist visuals, sets the template for Kitano triumphs to come. It may also be the only film ever that begins and ends in a Port-A-Potty! Masahiko Ono is hapless, daydreaming Masaki, a gas-station attendant who plays, not very adeptly, amateur baseball.

When Masaki’s cluelessness runs him afoul of a gangster, he and a friend hightail it to Okinawa, where they ultimately link up with bad-ass, completely-bonkers Uehara (Kitano himself, as “Beat” Takeshi), a rogue yakuza on a mission of his own. “Kitano’s handling of tones, which range from the grimly depressive to the irreverently hilarious, is amazing. Also amazing is his performance” (Lisa Alspector, Chicago Reader). “The funniest film to date from a key ’90s filmmaker” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out).

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 8:30 PM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 8:30 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 6:30 PM

14

CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS The Chan Centre Connects Series and The Cinematheque present

Good Night, and Good Luck USA/France/Great Britain/Japan 2005. Dir: George Clooney. 93 min. Blu-ray Disc

It’s 1953, and the piece of talking furniture called television is still a novelty in American living rooms. On it, Sen. Joseph McCarthy is using fear, falsehoods, and belligerence to become, arguably, the most powerful man in the land (sound familiar?). Respected newsman Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn), the principled “face of television,” has had his fill of McCarthy’s tactics and decides to fight back, mapping out his strategy with producer and confidant Fred Friendly (George Clooney, who also directs). A mass medium and a nation are going to change in the process – while on the air. A deft ensemble cast plays staff members in the bustling CBS newsroom, while the real-life McCarthy is also in the mix, via archival footage cut into the drama.

The film’s soundtrack is performed entirely by Dianne Reeves (with a small jazz ensemble), and won the 2006 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album. “An electrifying movie event” (Rolling Stone).

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9 – 7:00 PM

This special screening is presented in conjunction with Dianne Reeves’s performance at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Wednesday, February 22 at 8:00 pm.

The Chan Centre Connects Series presents outreach activities related to visiting artists performing in the annual concert season at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC. For more information on these events, please visit chancentre.com/connects

www.chancentre.com

DOXA AND THE CINEMATHEQUE “A quietly seething look at present-day policing in America . . . An experience best had in the cinema.” – John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter “Gratitude goes to those documentarians who shine a broader light, which is what Craig Atkinson does in Do Not Resist . . . Maybe it takes a documentary to generate the kind of anger necessary to galvanize the public.” – Jay Weissberg, Variety

Best Documentary Award, Tribeca Film Festival 2016 DOXA Documentary Film Festival and The Cinematheque present

Do Not Resist

USA 2016. Dir: Craig Atkinson. 72 min. DCP

The most shocking sequence in Craig Atkinson’s incendiary new film doesn’t take place on the streets of Ferguson, or in the middle of a SWAT raid – it happens in a hotel conference room during a presentation to police officers. “What do you fight violence with? Superior violence. Righteous violence. Violence is your tool . . . You are men and women of violence.” Superior violence increasingly means 48,000-pound armoured vehicles, assault rifles, and rocket launchers, employed in poor or marginalized communities where civilians are termed “the enemy” in a rhetoric of war. Do Not Resist exposes the political machinations that led U.S. police forces to resemble paramilitary organizations. Expertly-chosen court and news footage show the cause-and-effect relationship between bureaucratic decisions and street-level reality. But the most deeply troubling ideas examined are the shifts in attitude, as police become something akin to an occupying army. As the U.S. slides further into a fascist mentality, Do Not Resist is a necessary and critical film. – Dorothy Woodend FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – 7:00 PM This screening of Do Not Resist is the first event of an ongoing series of new documentaries co-presented by DOXA Documentary Film Festival and The Cinematheque. doxafestival.ca

15

THE COMMON SENSE Courtesy of Melanie Gilligan and Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf

Moving-image art in dialogue with cinema www.dimcinema.ca Programmed by Michèle Smith, co-editor of Drawing Room Confessions.

Outfitumentary USA 2016, Dir: K8 Hardy. 82 min. DCP

“In 2001, I set out on the structuralist journey that has become my first feature film, Outfitumentary. I named the project at the outset, and considered it a document for posterity, an important record of the dress codes of a radical lesbian underground. The formal rules I imposed were simple: to roll my video camera and capture a shot of myself from head to toe with a turn to provide front and back. Ultimately, I played fast and loose with my own rules, but stayed true to my original intentions” (© K8 Hardy, NY, 2016).

Programmed by Tobin Gibson K8 Hardy (b. 1977, Fort Worth, Texas) is an artist and filmmaker based in New York.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25 – 7:30 PM

The Common Sense Great Britain 2014-15. Dir: Melanie Gilligan. 60 min. DCP

Filmed in the episodic style of a sci-fi miniseries, The Common Sense revolves around the Patch, a “neurological entertainment device” that allows people to feel one another’s embodied experience, physical sensations, and emotions. When the Patch’s network suddenly breaks down and has to be rebooted, the world is changed, splitting into two parallel realities: one where wide-scale political disruptions have broken out; the other where life continues as it was before.

Melanie Gilligan is a Canadian artist based in London and New York who uses speculative and dystopian narratives to explore contemporary issues. We are delighted to premiere this new version of The Common Sense specially made for a cinema audience.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – 7:30 PM

OUTFITMENTARY Copyright K8 Hardy; courtesy the artist; Hardy Studio; Picture

16

Palace Pictures

BEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS

A Monthly Mental Health Film Series Presented by The Cinematheque and the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry

The Cinematheque is pleased to join with the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry in presenting “Frames of Mind,” a monthly event utilizing film and video to promote professional and community education on issues pertaining to mental health and illness. Screenings, accompanied by presentations and audience discussions, are held on the third Wednesday of each month.

Series directed by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Director of Public Education, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.

Programmed by Caroline Coutts, film curator, filmmaker, and programmer of “Frames of Mind” since its inception in September 2002.

Seven Songs for a Long Life Great Britain 2015. Dir: Amy Hardie. 82 min. DCP

A hospice isn’t usually a place associated with music, but Strathcarron Hospice, near Glasgow, is a bit unusual.

“More life in your days” is their motto, and this remarkable documentary, filmed over four years, is a testament to that maxim. The film details the journeys of six people who utilize the daycare services at Strathcarron, where they are encouraged by a dedicated (and very musical!) nurse who uses singing as a fundamental part of the coping process. Songs by Sinatra, Sting, Cass Elliott, REM, and others become the soundtrack for the lives of Tosh, Dorene, Julie, Nicola, Iain, and Alicia; Nicola’s rendition of “Everybody Hurts” is sure to bring even the most jaded audience member to tears. But be assured: this is not a typically depressing movie about death. Rather, it’s a celebratory film about making the most of (the rest of) your life, told with equal parts humour and humanism.

Post-screening discussion with Dr. Romayne Gallagher, a physician in the Palliative Care Program at Providence Health Care and a Clinical Professor in the Division of Palliative Care at UBC. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18 – 7:30 PM

Vancouver Premiere!

Best and Most Beautiful Things USA 2015. Dir: Garrett Zevgetis. 91 min. DCP

Twenty-year-old Michelle Smith, a recent high school grad living with her mom in rural Maine, wants the same things most young people want: adventure, romance, a job, and independence. But Michelle also has some unique challenges. She’s legally blind, has been diagnosed (possibly incorrectly) on the autism spectrum, and struggles with depression and anxiety. But this precocious and irrepressible young woman is determined to, as she says, “make the world her burrito.” Notwithstanding the appalling 75% unemployment rate amongst the visually impaired, and her family’s understandable concern, Michelle’s journey of self-discovery leads her down some interesting paths – into the kink and BDSM communities, towards a first love, and a solo trip to L.A. to explore a (possibly dodgy) internship as a voice actor. “One of the year’s most touching documentary films . . . A powerful, affecting journey into a young woman’s mind as she searches for connection and empowerment” (Xaque Gruber, Huffington Post).

Post-screening discussion with Shawn Marsolais, founder and Executive Director of Blind Beginnings. Blind since age 18, Shawn obtained a Masters in Vocational Rehabilitation Counselling in 2012 and has worked as an advocate for the visually impaired and their families for the past 20 years.

This film will be presented with descriptive audio for the visually impaired and captions for the hearing impaired. Many thanks to VocalEye Descriptive Arts, a non-profit society and the first live descriptive arts service for the blind in Canada, for providing support and equipment. To reserve your receiver and earpiece, contact (604) 688-8202 or info@thecinematheque.ca WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15 – 7:30 PM

17

THE DOG WHO STOPPED THE WAR

Cinema Sunday An Afternoon Film Program for Children and Their Families

$6 Children & Youths (under 18) $9 Adults (Cinematheque membership not required) In celebration of Canada’s big 150 (or sesquicentennial), Cinema Sunday patriotically presents “Made in Canada,” a yearlong engagement with family films hailing from the True North! Each month, we’ll screen an all-ages movie that showcases Canada’s extraordinary, diverse talents – both in front of and behind the camera – as well as the cities, landscapes, and cultures that make this country our home.

Films will be introduced by Vancouver film history teacher and critic Michael van den Bos.

Free Screening!

Canada On Screen – Feature Films The Dog Who Stopped the War (La guerre des tuques) is presented as part of Canada On Screen, a celebration of Canada’s 150 essential moving-image works. Canada On Screen is a year-long, nation-wide program honouring Canada’s 150th birthday and its rich cinematic heritage. Screenings are free of charge. For more information, see page 9.

The Dog Who Stopped the War (La guerre des tuques)

Canada 1984. Dir: André Mélançon. 92 min. 35mm

The first and arguably best in Montreal producer Rock Demers’s iconic “Tales for All” series, The Dog Who Stopped the War ranks as one of Canada’s most cherished children’s films – on top of being perhaps the perennial holiday movie for Canadian families. It concerns a group of kids on Christmas break who decide to stage a mock war – the “war of the toques” – in the form of an epic, all-consuming snowball fight.

The rules are simple: one team defends a snow fort, the other storms it. As the battle escalates and bad-blood between friends develops, a sudden tragedy teaches the children – and those watching – an invaluable lesson about the vanity of war.

Directed by the late André Mélançon with restrained sentimentality and palpable care, this canonized classic still resonates today as an affecting anti-war allegory, as well as a celebration of Canada’s wintry wonderments. Dubbed in English.

After the movie, join us for a Skype Q&A with Rock Demers, founder of Les Productions La Fête – dubbed the “Disney of the North” – and the “Tales for All” series, which includes, among others, The Dog Who Stopped the War and The Peanut Butter Solution (screening in February).

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15 – 1:00 PM

The Peanut Butter Solution Canada 1985. Director: Michael Rubbo. 94 min. 35mm

The hair-raising Canadian comedy that creeped out a generation, The Peanut Butter Solution enjoys almost legendary status among those who saw it growing up – largely owing to its wonderfully nutty story. Eleven-year-old Michael, on a dare, enters a burned-down mansion and sees something that literally scares the hair off his head. Bald, bewildered, and bummed out, he’s visited by a pair of ghosts who offer him a remedy - a magic formula made of peanut butter - and a warning: it musn't be overused. When Michael heedlessly mixes extra PB into the concoction, not only does his hair grow back as promised – it won’t stop! The second film in Rock Demers’s “Tales for All” series (after The Dog Who Stopped the War, screening in January) is the stuff of fond, weird memories for many Gen X-ers across Canada. Taking things familiar and safe – breakfast condiments, teachers, the very hair on our heads – it transforms them into elements ominous and unknown.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19 – 1:00 PM

18

GEORGE WASHINGTON

FROM OUR

Collection 35mm prints from The Cinematheque archive

George Washington USA 2000. Dir: David Gordon Green. 89 min. 35mm

David Gordon Green’s extraordinary debut, an intimate, impressionistic, achingly beautiful tale of love, friendship, and childhood, is a poetic film in the Terrence Malick mode. (Malick, himself a fan, would produce one of Green’s subsequent features.) Set in a derelict North Carolina hamlet, and acted by a non-pro cast, George Washington follows a group of impoverished preteens, black and white, headed by 12-year-old Nasia, the film’s wise-beyond-her-years narrator. Her new boyfriend is awkward, eccentric George; one of “God’s mysteries and mistakes”; he’s literally soft in the head. The non-linear plot takes a hard narrative turn midway through; Green’s lyrical film won wide praise for its strong sense of place, ravishing CinemaScope landscapes, and odd, unsettling mix of documentary realism and allegory. “A unique film . . . A breathtaking debut from a director capable of greatness” (Rick Groen, Globe and Mail).

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18 – 6:30 PM

Ratcatcher

Great Britain/France 1999. Dir: Lynne Ramsay. 94 min. 35mm

The acclaimed first feature of Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) is an arresting, startling original tale of childhood set in a poor Glasgow neighbourhood in the 1970s. “Ramsay’s astonishingly assured debut centres on a 12-year-old (William Eadie, excellent) who, haunted by the (secret) role he played in a pal’s accidental death by drowning, gradually retreats into a private world of solitude, strange friendships, and consoling dreams of a new home for his family . . . Ramsay’s bold visual sense, droll wit, and tender but unsentimental take on the various characters and their relationships makes for a distinctly poetic brand of gritty realism, and one of the most impressive first features by a British director in some years” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out).

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18 – 8:15 PM

Manual Cinema's Ada/Ava

“theatrical magic” - The New Yorker

A hauntingly beautiful story told with vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, live-feed cameras, puppets, actors and live music.

Chan Centre at UBC I Telus Studio Theatre Tickets and info at chancentre.com

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE

VOLUNTEERS

THE CINEMATHEQUE PROGRAM GUIDE

200 – 1131 Howe Street Vancouver, BC V6Z 2L7 Phone: 604.688.8202 Fax: 604.688.8204 Email: info@theCinematheque.ca Web: theCinematheque.ca

Theatre Volunteers: Aya Alvarez, David Avelino, Mark Beley, Taylor Bishop, Eileen Brosnan, Jeremy Buhler, Nadia Chiu, Hannah Corboy, Rob Danielson, Steve Devereux, Bill Dovhey, Yaz Ebrahi, Moana Fertig, Kevin Frew, Lesli Froeschner, Andrew Gable, Shokei Green, Owen Griffiths, Paul Griffiths, Savannah Kemp, Tash King, Michael Kling, Ray Lai, Christina Larabie, Sharon Lee, Britt MacDuff, Abbey Markowitz, Liam McClure, Dawn McCormick, Vit Mlcoch, Kelley Montgomery, Sean Murphy, Adrian Nickpour, Chahram Riazi, Will Ross, Hisayo Saito, Sweta Shrestha, Raimondo Spano, Stephen Tweedale, Nathaniel Vossen

Program Notes: Jim Sinclair, additional program notes by Shaun Inouye Advertising: Lizzie Brotherston Proofreading: Lizzie Brotherston Design: Marc Junker

STAFF Executive + Artistic Director: Jim Sinclair Acting Managing Director: Lindsey Wasserman Managing Director: Kate Ladyshewsky (on leave) Operations + Programming Associate: Shaun Inouye Communications + Marketing Manager: Lizzie Brotherston Education Manager: Liz Schulze Education Coordinator: Hayley Gauvin Venue Operations Manager: Linton Murphy Assistant Theatre Managers: Sarah Bakke, Jessica Johnson, Aryo Khakpour, Justin Mah, Paige Smith Head Projectionist: Al Reid Relief Projectionists: Tim Fernandes, Ron Lacheur, Cassidy Penner, Helen Reed, Ryan Ermacora Film Archive Resident: Olivia Babler BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Distribution: Hazel Ackner, Horacio Bach, Kyle Bowman, Gabi Dao, Michael Demers, Gail Franko, Jeff Halladay, Alan Kollins, Martin Lohmann, Lynn Martin, Vincent Oat, Matthew Shields, Lora Tanaka, Vanessa Turner, Harry Wong Office: Jo B., Betty-Lou Phillips Education: Michael van den Bos, Tash King, Akiko Sakai Archive: Charlotte Cavalié And a special thanks to all our spares!

Chair: Jim Bindon Vice Chair: David Legault Treasurer: Elizabeth Collyer Secretary: Lynda Jane Members: Moshe Mastai, Erin Mussolum, Wynford Owen, Tim Reeve, Eric Wyness

theCinematheque.ca

facebook.com/theCinematheque

Published six times a year with a bi-monthly circulation of 10–15,000. Printed by Van Press Printers.

ADVERTISING To advertise in this Program Guide or in our theatre before screenings, please email advertising@theCinematheque.ca or call 604.688.8202.

SUPPORT The Cinematheque is a charitable not-forprofit arts society. We rely on financial support from public and private sources. Donations are gratefully accepted — a tax receipt will be issued for all donations of $50 or more. To make a donation or for more information, please call our administration office at 604.688.8202.

The Cinematheque gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the following agencies:

@theCinematheque