The Cinematheque

“Since January 1, 2024, we’ve served an incredible 7,864 bags of popcorn, that’s 6,088,782 individual popcorn kernels (we counted). We’re so grateful for your support and can’t wait to keep serving up your favourite snack. All the best in 2025!”
—Linton

“Every year, the Learning & Outreach team produces over 100 student films with filmmakers of all ages and abilities. In 2024, we built a number of exciting new partnerships and brought accessible filmmaking programs to youth in Metro Vancouver and across British Columbia. In October, L&O facilitators Thea Loo and Chelsea Birks travelled to 100 Mile House for a five-day filmmaking workshop at Peter Skene Ogden Secondary. Inspired by the season, students made four spooky short films featuring monstrous dogs and cats, a serial killing teacher, and a ghost with killer moves. Our summer Cinelab students had the opportunity to collaborate with composers taking part in a parallel Film Scoring workshop at the VSO School of Music, who worked with the filmmakers to create eight original scores. (Note that we are running another workshop in collaboration with the VSO School of Music in February 2025!) Many of our programs this year had real social impacts, including a documentary project with the Trek Outdoor Education program: students worked with the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City initiative to produce films promoting local climate action. L&O also ran several programs with adults, including two Small File Filmmaking workshops promoting eco-friendly media practices—all participating filmmakers had the chance to see their work on The Cinematheque’s big screen at the 2024 Small File Media Festival! Finally, we worked with the AESHA project and PACE society to facilitate a community-produced documentary project highlighting the diversity of sex workers and the positive impacts of art-making. In addition to these exciting new programs, we continued our work with longstanding partners including Point Grey Secondary, UBC Camps, St’a7mes School, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, Cache Creek Elementary, Sea to Sky Alternative School, Sir Charles Tupper Secondary, and more!”
—Chelsea, Thea, and Sam

“Summing up The Cinematheque’s year of programming is an impossible feat. By the time the calendar flips to 2025, we’ll have screened over 400 films (421, by my count) across dozens of curated programs, spanning silent to sound to stereoscopic to you name it. To single out some would be to factor out others—and I’m all too aware that, while the lionized classics may pack the house, it’s those sparsely attended movies that sometimes change your life.

So, in lieu of playing favourites, I’ll offer this: on behalf of our 2024 programmers (in-house, guest, and recurring), thank you for spending time with the films that meant something special to us.”
—Shaun

“I’m pleased to announce that in early 2025 we will be replacing our front end speakers behind the screen with brand new units that will be bi-amped for more accurate and pleasant sound with new amplifiers to power them. Not only will this mean better audio, it’s also replacing decades old critical equipment that would be very difficult to swap out should they fail in place. Music to everyone’s ears hopefully and a big thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for stepping up and assisting with this project.”
—Al

“Among many highlights of 2024, here are three that continue to stand out for me:

Seeing Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day for the first time with a sold-out audience. A stunning, memorable cinematic experience that I will never forget.

Fabrice Aragno so generously sharing his personal memories and reflections on his relationship and final days with Jean-Luc Godard. A very special evening.

Our Häxan live-score screening. The restored film, alongside Noah Franche-Nolan and Meredith Bates’ performance, was eerie perfection.”
—Kate

“How to sum up a year that has culminated in the production of six program guides (with a total of 60,000 copies distributed by our tireless volunteers); 52 issues of Cinemail (sign up on our website!); 193 lobby posters (you’ve bought many of them); countless more theatre slides (see them in the pre-roll); a million Instagram posts, and the addition of a Letterboxd account (follow us here); a bazillion print ads with our wonderful arts industry colleagues (how could we get the word out without you?); and an endless outpouring of support from you, the viewing public. What more is there to say? What a year!”
—Gerilee