The Cinematheque

“It’s just a whambang speedy little parcel … An entertaining and rapid-action film.”

Bert., Variety (1937)

“Man Fighting Man … While a Forest Fire Flames!” B.C.’s first film boom was the ​“quota quickies” era of the 1930s, when protectionist legislation in the U.K. dictated that a percentage of movies on U.K. screens be produced in Britain or the Empire; Hollywood studios rushed into B.C. to make low-budget films for the British market. Kenneth Bishop of Victoria was the most prolific producer of quota quickies, and oversaw this brisk actioner, set in Vancouver Island’s forest industry. Corrigan (William Gargan), a tenderfoot lumberjack, finds himself caught up in a dangerous rivalry between competing lumber camps, and falls in love with June (Molly Lamont), his boss’s daughter. The great location photography includes a scene set against an actual forest fire.

Print courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

preceded by

Herring Hunt
Canada 1953
Julian Biggs
11 min. DCP

B.C.’s herring fishery is profiled in this beautifully-made NFB production, influenced by the British Documentary Movement, and featuring a method-acting Bruno Gerussi (The Beachcombers) in his first screen role. Ostensibly a documentary, it received an Oscar nomination for Best Short Subject (One Reel).

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Mudflats Living
Canada 1972
Robert Fresco, Kris Paterson
29 min. DCP

This fascinating time capsule documents a significant and seminal chapter in the history of Vancouver’s counterculture: the anti-establishment community of artists, hippies, and squatters who lived in the Maplewood Mudflats of Dollarton in North Vancouver in the early 1970s. The local mayor opposed the community and sought to develop the land; the legacy of the group has been influential in the thought and work of some of Vancouver’s pioneering conceptual artists.

Introduced by Colin Browne, Vancouver filmmaker, poet, scholar, and Professor Emeritus at SFU