The Cinematheque

This series represents a small path through variations on the theme of witches, featuring works by celebrated auteurs, as well as cult classics, each adding their singular twist on the lore.

For this series, The Cinematheque has chosen to go slightly outside the canon of regularly screened Lubitsch films, paying special attention to works that attest to the full range of the director’s skill.

It’s the Small File Media Festival’s fifth anniversary! We’re partnering with The Cinematheque once again to raise awareness about the environmental impact of streaming media.

With the support of Swiss Films and the Consulate General of Switzerland in Vancouver, The Cinematheque is honoured to welcome Fabrice Aragno for a two-night engagement as the culmination to our year-spanning “JLG Forever” series.

Film noir returns to The Cinematheque this summer for another lucifugous season of hard-bitten American crime fiction from arguably Hollywood’s most distinctive—and inarguably most misanthropic—chapter of moviemaking.

Occasioned by the theatrical release of Last Summer (2023), Breillat’s first picture in a decade, “All True Artists Are Hated” surveys a feather-ruffling career, including new restorations, as well as 35mm presentations, of rarely screened works.

While film noir is often considered an American phenomenon, it never would have existed without the émigré directors that entered Hollywood during that classic period. This noir sidebar explores the way that influence can run both ways.

Part of the exhibition HOHOL (Hang Out Hang Out Lang) at grunt gallery. Curated by Patrick Cruz and Christian Vistan.

With Jost passing through the Pacific Northwest, we take the opportunity to screen two of his finest features made in the region: The Bed You Sleep In (1993) and Blue Strait (2014). Jost will join us for both films in the evening’s double bill.

This series is a showcase of works where filmmakers have not only dealt with the extreme possibilities of foregrounded music, but taken seriously film’s capacity to connect with traditions that, in some cases, predate cinema itself.

“Are You Lonesome Tonight?” marks The Cinematheque’s first Edward Yang retrospective in 25 years, and comprises all seven theatrical features made by the director, including the long unavailable A Confucian Confusion (1994) and Mahjong (1996).

This year’s edition includes a spotlight on Yorgos Lanthimos, new restorations from the Greek Film Archive and American Genre Film Archive, and standout works by Costa-Gavras, John Cassavetes, and Sofia Exarchou.

The Cinematheque has plucked four gems from this year’s historic touring exhibition, each produced during Shimizu’s brilliant (and neglected) postwar career after he left Shochiku and formed his own independent studio, Hachinosu Eiga.

The Cinematheque is proud to present the genesis of Triet’s fiction filmmaking career, with all three films screening in Vancouver for the first time.

Following their world premieres in Montreal last year, The Cinematheque presents new digital restorations of Larry Kent’s three groundbreaking made-in-Vancouver movies.

The Cinematheque is excited to present the simultaneous theatrical runs of Coma and The Beast as Vancouver premieres.

The Cinematheque presents a selection showcasing Jacques Rivette’s key collaborations with the actor Bulle Ogier, from her film acting debut in L’amour fou (1969) to perhaps her finest moments in The Gang of Four (1989).

Spanning nearly a century of cinema, the films in this series touch on issues that continue to shape Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora: technology, demographic generations, political revolution, and war.

The Cinematheque is proud to present the theatrical first run of Aviles’s Tótem, and the overdue Vancouver presentation of her debut feature The Chambermaid.

In celebration of Black History Month, The Cinematheque is partnering with the Vulnerable Media Lab and the Department of Latin American Studies at UBC to present an evening of newly restored films by Sara Gómez.

For this year’s “Essential Big Screen” lineup, we’ve decided to sprinkle in three patrons’ picks too good to delay any longer. A medley of must-see classics—featuring works by Malick, Ozu, Hu, and Sirk—round out the remaining program.

This Tarkovsky retrospective, our first since 2012, showcases all seven features made by the visionary artist.

This three-week engagement with Michael Snow's films presents his epochal Wavelength, followed by a selection of more rarely screened but no less revelatory works.

Our perennial showcase of contemporary European cinema returns this fall for another best-of-both-worlds hybrid edition!

The Cinematheque is excited to present three masterful films by Somai following their re-introduction to North American audiences at Japan Society’s retrospective in New York earlier this year.

This Halloween season, The Cinematheque salutes the epic reign of the kaiju king with a monster-sized, all-ages Godzilla marathon drawn from the earliest and most influential chapter of the indomitable (and delightfully eccentric) movie franchise.

The groundbreaking films of Senegalese writer and director Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007) form a body of work that stands in grand opposition to conformity, unafraid of contradictions, censors, or the scandals of colonialism.

The Small File Media Festival returns for its fourth iteration! We are delighted to partner with The Cinematheque to present over sixty jewel-like works from across the globe.

A prelude to the upcoming 2023 Small-File Media Festival, this retrospective explores the affective power of experimental ecomedia through a curated selection of green and artful small films.

Georgia has certainly more than made its mark on world cinema, as seen in this series of ten programs that starts at the end of the silent era and culminates with two 2022 releases.

This August, wrap yourself in the nocturnal embrace of The Cinematheque’s annual film noir season, our routine deep-dive into that deliriously dark and fertile period of hardboiled, high-body-count American cinema.

William Carroll has selected six representative films across Suzuki’s career. We’ve added six more. Only three overlap with our previous retrospective, all the better to appreciate how Suzuki could reconfigure his modernism across genres and eras.

To answer the question, “What is the image or what are the images before us?,” we need the opportunity to actually see them, to show films—our films, our films from our community—that are hard to see, except at an institution like The Cinematheque.

“I See a Darkness” presents György Fehér’s tremendous first film, never before released in North America, alongside Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies, one of the milestones of modern cinema. Both arrive in stunning new restorations.

Following Les Films du losange’s historic acquisition and remastering of the director’s entire library, The Cinematheque is honoured to present the complete works of Jean Eustache, a miracle by any measure.

The Cinematheque is delighted to present Rosetta and The Son, newly restored, in a series-addendum program that also includes the brothers’ much-lauded latest, Tori and Lokita.

Walker’s films are acts of transformative re-creation informed by the time spent behind cameras and within games, knowing that from both these positions a small and nimble cinema can chart its own course.

Lee is a director of generous yet uncompromising films and a politically and intellectually fearless figure in Korean culture. The Cinematheque is proud to present a complete retrospective of Lee’s feature films.

Comprising eight features and two shorts, “Moving Mountains” is the first Canadian retrospective of Armenian cinema’s volatile trajectory from the ideologically oriented silent period to the post-Soviet era of creative diversity and experimentation.

Highlights of this year include a 35mm presentation of Elia Kazan’s epic America America; a new restoration of Theo Angelopoulos's Reconstruction; several award-winners from last year's Hellenic Film Awards; and a tribute to Olympia Dukakis.

The Cinematheque is delighted to bring this retrospective, which showcases all of Ermacora and Johnson’s solo and collaborative documentary shorts, as well as their 2022 feature Anyox, home.

Through a series of public screenings, panel talks, and discussions, “Cinema Thinks the World” aims to explore the ways in which global cinema represents and helps us to think about the world. Presented with the Public Humanities Hub at UBC.

Chan Centre Connects film screenings at The Cinematheque are curated to accompany performances in the Chan Centre Presents series at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC.

Cinephilic Vancouverites, heed our call! Guy Maddin, legendary Winnipeg auteur and the world’s foremost reanimator of cinema’s dead and buried past, is coming to The Cinematheque in the twilight days of January.

The Cinematheque is proud to present a rare three-film primer on Suwa's incisive (and woefully underseen) cinema, featuring a sampling of his seminal early works made in Japan.

Finally available in new restorations, Roemer’s films are the kind of cinema rare in any age: alive to the historical moments in which they were made, but built out of the elemental material that lasts.

“The Hong Kong crime drama was jolted to new life with the release of the Infernal Affairs trilogy, a bracing, explosively stylish critical and commercial triumph that introduced a dazzling level of narrative and thematic complexity to the genre.”

“Resnais 100” showcases films from the first and most influential chapter of the iconic director’s career, including brand-new restorations of his formative documentaries and his scarcely screened, politically piercing La guerre est finie.

By turns sad, funny, tender, and agonizingly true to life—yet always sympathetic to the Sisyphean struggles of its ordinary heroes—the bittersweet cinema of writer-director Mike Leigh is showcased in this retrospective.

Acclaimed and accomplished new films from Iran are in the spotlight in this showcase presented by The Cinematheque in partnership with the Phoenix Cultural Centre of Toronto and Pacific United Productions.

While the bulk of our birthday cake was served in August (our month of incorporation), some of the best pieces were saved for this “Fifty / Fifty” series.

Europe without the jet lag! After a two-year hiatus as an in-theatre festival, the European Union Film Festival returns for a special hybrid edition that brings the latest in European cinema to your screen and, at last, ours too!

This Halloween season, hold onto your guts as The Cinematheque serves up four body-horror classics by the godfather of the subgenre, plus a pay-nothing screening of his newest “new flesh” think piece, Crimes of the Future (2022).

Wayne Wang is having a moment. Again.

VIFF 2022's spectacular roster includes some of the best cinema from around the globe.

“Pioneers of Queer Cinema” is an attempt to recover some American queer films that are now little-known, and many rarely ever seen at all, and put them in conversation with works now deemed classics.

As we look back on a half-century of “essential cinema”—a fluid, shapeshifting term if ever there was—we wish to celebrate those Cinematheque programmers of yore who nourished generations of cinephiles still tumbling through our doors.

After a two-year COVID-era hiatus, we are pleased to reboot our series “The Image Before Us: A History of Film in British Columbia” with a sixth season.

This year marks The Cinematheque’s 50th lap around the sun. What better way to celebrate our joyous jubilee than by plummeting mug-first into the nihilistic, nocturnal underworld of film noir!

Although it’s come and gone, September 2021 marked the beginning of the 20th year of Frames of Mind as a monthly event at The Cinematheque.

The empathetic, fiercely independent film practice of partners Janis Cole and Holly Dale, iconic figures in the pantheon of Canadian documentary, is celebrated in this program of newly restored feminist landmarks by the Genie Award-winning duo.

Polish master Krzysztof Kieślowski's celebrated “Three Colours Trilogy,” based on the three colours of the French flag and their symbolic representation of the French Revolution’s ideals, screens here in brilliant new digital restorations.

This summer, bow down to “King” Kon Satoshi at our mind-bending retrospective devoted to his awesome anime films.

In conjunction with National Indigenous Peoples Day 2022, The Cinematheque is proud to present an exhibition of Inuktitut-language film works by Isuma, the trailblazing studio and media arts collective that introduced Inuit cinema to the world.

The formidable acting career of Tanaka Kinuyo (1909–1973) has long overshadowed her pioneering status as a film director—Japan’s first (and for a long time, only) female filmmaker of the postwar period.

The Hellenic Canadian Congress of B.C. and The Cinematheque present the first Vancouver Greek Film Festival, an in-person event hosted at The Cinematheque.

This spring, The Cinematheque remembers Monica Vitti with a tribute program of canonical Antonioni masterworks, each featuring an indelible lead performance by the late, beloved arthouse icon.

One of Hungary’s preeminent filmmakers, Márta Mészáros has created a distinctive body of deeply personal, deeply political works in a trailblazing career spanning more than six decades.

In December, The Cinematheque marked the centennial of Satyajit Ray with a presentation of his acclaimed Apu Trilogy. We continue our tribute to master Ray with two more celebrated works, both among his very finest achievements.

A meticulous, perfectionist film artist whose funny-sad visionary work has been described as “slapstick Ingmar Bergman” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice), Swedish director Roy Andersson is one of the 21st century’s most revered filmmakers.

This series collects Scottish auteur Lynne Ramsay's four extraordinary feature-length films to date, as well as a number of essential award-winning Ramsay shorts we would be remiss (if not irresponsible) to exclude.

2021 marked the centennial of the birth of Satyajit Ray, the great Bengali writer-director who introduced Indian cinema to the world. To celebrate, the three films in Ray's Apu Trilogy screen here in their 2015 restorations.

A major retrospective featuring many of the German titan’s most iconic, enigmatic, and ecstatic feats of narrative and documentary filmmaking. Welcome, one and all, to Herzog season.

In celebration of the 100th birthday of beloved Japanese actress Hara Setsuko, The Cinematheque and the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre present Ozu Yasujiro's cycle of immortal masterworks informally named after Hara's onscreen counterparts.

“Family Matters,” The Cinematheque’s first-ever retrospective honouring Japanese eminence Kore-eda Hirokazu, showcases the finest of the filmmaker’s signature family portraits.

New restorations of the first three features from trailblazing African-American filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles are showcased in our tribute to this important pioneer.

Europe without the jet lag! Experience films from across the European Union in this second online edition of the EUFF.

A curated confection of high-art horror films for Halloween to satiate your cinephilic sweet teeth and, oh heck, scare the living bejesus out of you too! ’Tis the season of terror, no?

With over 110 feature films, 75+ shorts, talks and conferences there is a lot to discover at VIFF 2021.

Vancouver’s most popular (and pessimistic) summer film series is back! Join us for 17 nights of downbeat, doom-laden, deliriously stylish cinema, as The Cinematheque once again celebrates the sleazy, sordid glories of classic American film noir.

The Cinematheque celebrates the centennial of one of cinema’s boldest and most beloved maestros with an extensive retrospective, featuring many new restorations.

Occasioned by a digital restoration of Sweetgrass, the film that first signaled the Ivy League collective’s arthouse ambitions, The Cinematheque presents a trio of the Sensory Ethnography Lab’s most indispensable and acclaimed documentaries.

The Cinematheque marks the 20th anniversary of In the Mood for Love with a career-spanning retrospective devoted to Hong Kong’s best-loved auteur, featuring many brand-new 4K restorations.

Free virtual program! To mark the 2021 edition of NIPD, The Cinematheque has partnered with the National Film Board of Canada to present a free virtual program dedicated to the trailblazing work of the NFB’s first all-Indigenous film unit.

The Cinematheque and the Polish Cultural Institute New York mark the centennial of Polish literary icon and science-fiction master Stanisław Lem (1921–2006).

The Cinematheque reopens for in-person screenings with a trio of cinema’s greatest masterworks!

Free virtual series! Conceived in 2020 as a means of engaging with the wider film community during the COVID-19 pandemic, “Monographs” is a series of video essays on Asian cinema, commissioned by the Asian Film Archive (AFA) in Singapore.

Prolific French writer-director Eric Rohmer, at perhaps his most engaging and exploratory, spins delicately crafted tales of chance encounters and romantic roundelays in this quartet of seasonally-set comedies.

The Cinematheque is pleased to mark National Canadian Film Day 2021 with two free virtual programs of exceptional Canadian cinema.

Toronto-based production and distribution company Medium Density Fibreboard Films — better known by its acronym MDFF — is at the crest of a new wave in English-Canadian cinema.

From November 13 to 29, join us (virtually) for the first-ever Canada-wide European Union Film Festival, featuring 27 recent films from 27 EU member states.

There’ll be nightmare fuel aplenty, dear scream seekers, as The Cinematheque serves up a J-horror primer this Halloween featuring five benchmark blood-curdlers from the land of high-art horror, Japan.

Fillip and The Cinematheque are pleased to present “Penny Slinger: Exorcisms,” a weeklong virtual series focusing on the film work of visionary British artist Penny Slinger.

Occasioned by the North American release of Greek Weird Wave flag-bearer Yorgos Lanthimos’s first solo feature, the scarcely seen Kinetta, The Cinematheque presents a trio of the Oscar-nominated director’s earliest homegrown efforts.

A formal innovator, feminist, film surrealist, and political gadfly, Věra Chytilová (1929–2014) was a central and singular figure in Czech cinema.

To accompany the Vancouver release of Young Ahmed, The Cinematheque proudly presents a retrospective dedicated to the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, cinema’s high priests of social realism.

From September 24 – October 7, film lovers province-wide will enjoy over 100 feature films and events showcasing exciting, groundbreaking and provocative cinema and creators from around the globe.

“Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers 2020” is a celebration of emerging French and Francophone voices in cinema, organized by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in New York.

This cruel COVID summer got you down in the dumps? Well, doll, we’ve got the antidote! Join us as the sordid, sleazy, cynical world of Film Noir comes crawling out from under a dirty rock for its annual place in The Cinematheque sun!

Man, myth, legend, dragon — Bruce Lee is the greatest action star that ever was. This summer, feast your eyes on a fistful of the kung-fu king's most iconic films at The Cinematheque!

The singular career of the prolific director and occasional actor Juraj Herz, a master of the offbeat and the macabre, is without parallel in the context of the cinema emerging from Czechoslovakia starting in the mid-1960s.

Renowned preservation work is spotlighted in this biennial festival, featuring superb new restorations of time-honoured classics, nearly lost masterworks, neglected treasures, and rediscovered rarities spanning more than a century of film history.

As part of the (at-home) 2020 edition of NIPD, The Cinematheque has partnered with the National Film Board of Canada to present a trio of vital works by Cree filmmaker and educator Tasha Hubbard.

The Cinematheque is pleased to mark National Canadian Film Day, a one-day, coast-to-coast-to-coast celebration designed to bring Canadians together to watch Canadian films.

Perhaps the most acclaimed Hungarian director of his generation, István Szabó became a major international filmmaker in the 1980s with a series of elaborate, ambitious, and accessible historical works.

The Cinematheque is pleased to present a major retrospective — career-spanning and near-complete — devoted to the films of Agnès Varda, one of cinema's paramount female artists.

The top films of the 2010s, as selected by The Cinematheque’s film curators.

The Cinematheque joins with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Griffin Art Projects in presenting this film and lecture series organized in conjunction with two current art exhibitions.

The Cinematheque wishes you the very best of the festive season with a special selection of must-see, much-loved film classics, all best enjoyed on the big screen.

The Cinematheque is delighted to welcome acclaimed American independent filmmaker Sean Baker in person for a program celebrating his three most recent features.

The singular cinema of the Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016), one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the past three decades, is celebrated with this near-comprehensive retrospective.

Europe without the jet lag! The Cinematheque’s annual European Union Film Festival spotlights acclaimed new and recent films from across greater Europe.

Outstanding titles from Hot Docs screen in the Crave Hot Docs Showcase.

This Samhain season, till the fields of British folk horror with a program exploring the lineage and enduring legacy of this most unholy horror subgenre.

Elaine May, a gifted comic performer, successful screenwriter, and perfectionist filmmaker, was one of the only women directing features in Hollywood in the 1970s and ’80s.

This year’s celebration of classic American cinema’s most depraved and downbeat film movement showcases ten hard-boiled treasures, each an important noir essential or a ripe-for-rediscovery rarity.

Running in parallel with Film Noir 2019, The Cinematheque presents its first ever retrospective on Jean-Pierre Melville, master of French noir.

From Lem (Stanisław) to LEM (Lunar Excursion Module, Apollo’s moon lander), things get a little spacey at The Cinematheque this July!

Superior cinematic poetry is conjured out of lowly pulp dreams in this eclectic program of masterful films.

These fifty years on, let us be moonstruck anew at an accomplishment as daringly difficult and dangerous as it was dauntingly expensive.

The ten films in this series—ranging from magic-realist fables to bloody Viking epics, sardonic deadpan comedies to hard-boiled Nordic noirs—offer a snapshot survey of the Icelandic film industry's remarkable evolution from the ’80s to today.

Featuring five imported 35mm prints on loan from the Institut Français in Paris, this select Claire Denis retrospective is the largest presented by The Cinematheque to date.

To mark the 2019 edition of NIPD, The Cinematheque is delighted to showcase two exceptional documentaries by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, an award-winning, Vancouver-based filmmaker/actor of Blackfoot and Sámi heritage.

The EUSFF features three lively programs of short films from European Union member states, each showcasing works in a variety of genres and styles, including drama, documentary, and animation.

Lurid, low-budget treasures from the fringes of the Dream Factory are on display in this program of newly restored features, most dating from Hollywood’s more permissive pre-Code era, and all produced on Hollywood’s so-called Poverty Row.

At year five, we recognize that a history of the “images before us” is in a constant state of revision. While we continue to honour important local legacies, our cinema culture continues to evolve.

A nomadic film artist whose work evades easy classification, Italian-Canadian director (and SFU instructor) Simone Rapisarda Casanova has received international plaudits for his poetic and principled brand of “meta-documentary.”

Join us for a special selection of much-loved classics, all films of sensational beauty, all best appreciated on the big screen. Happy holidays and happy viewing!

The Cinematheque joins film institutions around the world in celebrating the 2018 centenary of Ingmar Bergman, one of the cinema’s pantheon talents and, arguably, one of the 20th century’s most important artists.

These works are lasting testaments to Vigo’s status as a film artist of rare genius, and have inspired generations of filmmakers in France and elsewhere—including, significantly, the major talents of French poetic realism and the French New Wave.

The Cinematheque’s annual celebration of new cinema from the European Union is proudly presented; this year’s festival showcases entries from 26 EU members.

With Korine’s long-awaited The Beach Bum finally set for release in 2019, The Cinematheque is proud to present a complete retrospective of Harmony Korine’s corrosive, cult-adored cinema, the first of its kind in Canada.

This Halloween, feast your eyeballs—and, with scores by Ennio Morricone and prog-rockers Goblin, eardrums!—on a trio of lurid 1970s “spaghetti slashers” from the maestro of by-the-bucket blood spillage, all screening in brilliant 4K restorations.

There are blonde dames and soft-headed saps galore in The Cinematheque’s annual season of Film Noir, a celebration of one of the American cinema’s richest and most creative (and most jaded and cynical) periods.

The stylish methods and fatalistic moods of noir, and of German Expressionism, noir’s stylistic antecedent, are much in evidence in early Bergman movies such as It Rains on Our Love and A Ship to India—and, before that, in Torment.

The Cinematheque is pleased to present a major retrospective (the first ever offered in Vancouver) of the works of Czech animation master Jiří Trnka (1912-1969).

On the heels of major career surveys in New York and Toronto, The Cinematheque presents a select retrospective of Philippe Garrel’s sublime, scandalously-underseen cinema.

Highlights from the most recent edition of the festival, featuring glorious new 35mm restorations of important classics, nearly-lost masterworks, neglected treasures, and rediscovered rarities, now make their sole Canadian stop at The Cinematheque.

To coincide with the Vancouver premiere of Zama, Martel’s first long-form film in nearly a decade, The Cinematheque presents a mid-career retrospective of the director’s fiercely original body of work.

The cinema of Croatia is spotlighted in series of three films, two by female directors.

This mini-retrospective features four shot-in-colour gems: three newly-subtitled classics starring acting-and-singing heartthrob Ishihara Yujiro and a restored 35mm print of a film Inoue made using the rare Konicolor process.

The Cinematheque is pleased to mark National Canadian Film Day, a one-day, coast-to-coast-to-coast celebration designed to bring Canadians together to watch Canadian films.

Our fourth season of “The Image Before Us: A History of Film in British Columbia” continues to draw inspiration from The Image Before Us (1986), written and directed by poet, scholar, and filmmaker Colin Browne.

Contemporary French directors have consistently been singled out for praise by the international press in the last few years. The Young French Cinema program is one of the most convenient entry points to their works.

Centre A and The Cinematheque, with support from SFU David Lam Centre and SFU Department of Humanities, welcome renowned Vietnamese-born artist, writer, and scholar Trinh T. Minh-ha for a special two-night program of her acclaimed film work.

On the occasion of his 90th birthday this year (salut, Nic!), The Cinematheque presents a select retrospective of Roeg’s daring, dangerous, censors-be-damned films.

The year’s best Canadian films are in the spotlight in The Cinematheque’s annual presentation of the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival.

The Cinematheque celebrates the festival season with a special selection of much-loved classics, all works of affecting beauty, all must-sees on the big screen! Happy holidays and happy viewing!

This program of four series outliers features three of Rohmer’s dazzling and daring historical literary adaptations, plus a playful, oft-neglected comedy about modern life.

An afternoon film program for children and their families.

This Soviet Film Vanguard sidebar is comprised of 16mm prints from The Cinematheque Archive.

This 100th anniversary program is built around the opportunity to view lesser-known but important titles that, in the aggregate, demonstrate the breadth of this influential and transformative cinematic movement.