In spring and fall, bookended by Hollywood blockbusters, a few nights are set aside for the Cinematheque Series when Powell River’s Patricia Theatre shows movies that are not the stuff Hollywood usually pumps out.
The spring series of films is now showing on Wednesday and Thursday nights, with an added matinee on Thursday. This is the 11th year of the series.
Serious, longtime filmgoers such as Dennis and Kay Bremner, who have been attending the series since its beginnings, say they are grateful the Patricia’s administrator/co-owner Ann Nelson continues to show films that are not mainstream.
“Sometimes we get films at Cinematheque that are not from Hollywood, are world films and it’s nice to see a variety of films come to the community,” said Dennis.
Before Nelson took over screening what she calls “art house” movies, they were originally shown in town by the disbanded Malaspina Film Society one Sunday a month for seven months of the year. The Cinematheque series is now a fundraiser for Friends of the Historic Patricia Theatre.
Film connoisseur and former member of the Malaspina Film Society Wendy Twomey said the series and the Patricia are vital to the community, and both weighed heavily in her decision to move here from Victoria.
“My big concern moving to Powell River was not the low employment or anything else, it was that there was only one movie theatre,” said Twomey. “I was pretty worried about moving here. I looked at two things, the library and the movie theatre, before I moved here.”
If Nelson did not have Cinematheque Series, Twomey said she would be on the ferry going over to Comox or Nanaimo, Victoria or Vancouver to see the featured films.
Since the first movie shown, Mad Hot Ballroom in 2005, the curation of the series over the years has become an intuitive selection of films, according to Nelson.
She said she looks for diversity. It could be a human story, a showcase for an actor, a director’s visionary vehicle or a topic.
“I’m constantly grazing through Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, the Roger Ebert website and any site that I think reliably comes up with interesting suggestions,” said Nelson. “When there’s a big film festival, I look at what they have found all over the world. I make little notes to myself about what looks interesting.”
Twomey said she is disappointed that she has not seen many young people interested in Cinematheque Series in Powell River, compared to when she used to borrow other people’s identification and go to movies when she was too young to be admitted into theatres.
Unlike her generation that goes into a theatre knowing something about what the film is about, she said today’s younger filmgoers don’t pay attention to movies that might be on the Cinematheque list.
“The people who go to those films are people who grew up when I grew up and remember the great movies of the ’70s, and so they read reviews and pay attention to movies,” she said.
Once they are exposed to films that are not mainstream Hollywood blockbusters, young people are often surprised by what they see, according to Twomey.
“I used to try to push black and white films on young people,” she said. “I would lend them a DVD of Some Like It Hot or Roman Holiday and they’d bring it back the next day and say, ‘I turned it on and it was in black and white, but I decided to give it 15 minutes and I just loved it.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you’d be the first person in history that didn’t like Some Like It Hot.’”
Cinematheque Series’ next feature is the French film L’avenir (Things to Come), which plays March 8 and 9. Isabelle Huppert stars as a philosophy teacher whose life is shaken by the death of her mother, being fired from her job and dealing with a husband who is cheating on her. The series runs until April 27.
