Pacific Cinémathèque is a not-for-profit Canadian film society and centre established in 1972. The mandate of the organization is to further the understanding of film and moving images in both Canadian and international contexts, foster critical media literacy, and advance cinema as art and a vital means of communication.

Pacific Cinémathèque is located at 1131 Howe Street in Vancouver, BC, where it operates a 194-seat cinema with film programming throughout the year, maintains the Film Reference Library and West Coast Film Archive, and offers unique educational programs.

Activities

Cinema

Pacific Cinémathèque presents more than 500 curated film exhibitions annually including director and national retrospectives, exclusive first runs, documentary and independent films. It also has a well-established reputation as a festival venue, as host to the Vancouver International Film Festival, Latin American Film Festival and other festivals.

Pacific Cinémathèque Program Guide

Pacific Cinémathèque publishes a free bi-monthly program guide featuring notes and showtimes for curated film programming and events.

Education Department

Pacific Cinémathèque's Education Department offers a range of education initiatives, in particular to support the teaching of film and media studies in schools, including producing a series of 25 study guides for educators. Each summer, the organization's Summer Visions Film Institute holds three sessions of two-week filmmaking camps for youth aged 14–19.

Film Reference Library

The library at Pacific Cinémathèque holds more than 2,400 books organized by Director, Actor, Theory, History, Genre, Aesthetics, Criticism and other categories; more than 150 different periodical collections, including CinemaScope

CinemaScope

CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...

, Film Comment

Film Comment

Film Comment is an arts and culture magazine published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, of which it is the official publication. Film Comment features critical reviews and in-depth analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world...

, Sight & Sound

Sight & Sound

Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...

, Cahiers du cinéma

Cahiers du cinéma

Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...

, Reel West and Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

; and more than 7,500 film stills, sorted by director and film. In addition the library collections include film-related encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, and catalogues. International film festival brochures as well as the archive of all the program guides of the Cinémathèque since 1973, are also part of the library holdings.

West Coast Film Archive

Pacific Cinematheque's West Coast Film Archive has an extensive selection of 16mm and 35mm prints. The collection primarily consists of independent filmmaking from Western Canada and National Film Board of Canada films.

Other Activities

Pacific Cinémathèque produces a Monograph Series on Western Canadian media artists: featuring a wide range of film-, video- and media-makers that have made significant contributions to either defining, expanding, or subverting the boundaries of Western Canadian cinema.