Remember the last time you went to the movies? Sure you do-the kids yammering behind you, the fountain pop-infused popcorn stuck to the bottom of your shoes, the shell-shock after 20 minutes of obscenely loud commercials, the regret after spending $14 and two hours watching things blow up from different angles.
There is an alternative-meet Cinematheque Ontario, the year-round division of the Toronto International Film Festival Group that seems to have systematically remedied all that we hate about going to the movies. Originally founded as the Ontario Film Institute by Gerald Pratley in 1968, its current incarnation under the TIFFG banner was established in 1990. There’s no popcorn, no trailers, no one under 18, and-most importantly-no crappy movies.
But despite showing almost 400 films per year, a reputable 16-year history, over 3100 dedicated members, and its high-profile mothership, Cinematheque is still one of Toronto’s best-kept secrets.
I’m hoping this will change eventually when the public starts responding, when people start taking more risks,” says Andréa Picard, an assistant programmer and researcher at Cinematheque.
“I think what makes Cinematheque different,” Picard continues, “is the film quality. We have access to a film archive that other cinematheques don’t.”
Offering everything from tributes to cinema’s great idols like James Dean and Liv Ullman, auteur retrospectives featuring the likes of Godard, Fellini, and Kurosawa, rarities from Canadian and international cinema, as well as workshops, guest curators, and post-screening Q&As, Cinematheque is a veritable refuge for misfit film, its creators, and its admirers.
Great care is taken to show bodies of work from a single filmmaker-recent programmes have included queer activist filmmaker Derek Jarman, Japanese master Mikio Naruse, and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle.
“There’s a fundamental educational aspect in having an entire retrospective,” Picard offers.
At last year’s presentation of the works of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, audiences were equally bewildered by his surrealist scrapbook Mysterious Object at Noon one night as they were entertained by his transvestite secret agent musical The Adventures of Iron Pussy the next.
But for all the perks it offers, Cinematheque is not without its obstacles. Picard laments: “The problem increasingly that I’m encountering is that the international market does not see Canada as a very important film market, which is really ironic because the Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most important film festivals in the world.”
She had to contend with Canada’s international identity complex while trying to secure the rights to Theo Angelopoulos’ The Weeping Meadow.
“They’re not going to release the film here be because they don’t think they’re going to make enough money. So what I’m having to do is go to New Yorker Films (the New York City-based art house film distributor) and I’ll have to secure the print from them, and we have to pay for that print,” Picard explains.
For all the attention it garners during those ten days in September, Cinematheque’s affiliation with the high-profile film festival can also work against it.
“People see TIFFG as a glamourous organization with lots of money, which we’re not. People always expect us to bring in filmmakers, which we can’t. We have a set budget for that,” Picard notes.
Cinematheque also isn’t invincible to the recent and much-ballyhooed box-office slump.
“We are somewhat attributing it to the DVD boom,” Picard says. She cites The Criterion Collection as their main competitor, as Criterion has been steadily siphoning the cinephile audience. But she goes on to explain that the popular DVD distributors can actually help them with their work: “When they restore a film, they produce a clean new print which then becomes available for us to screen.”
With no $8 boxes of popcorn to sell or ad revenue to draw from, Cinematheque relies on government grants, sponsorship, membership fees, and ticket sales to survive. This may explain a recent spate of high-profiling screenings, like the long-lost Michelangelo Antonioni road movie The Passenger, and the classic of Indian cinema, Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy, which sold out last weekend.
Currently housed in Jackman Hall at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cinematheque is experiencing an identity crisis of its own.
“Some people think we’re part of the AGO,” Picard says. But that will soon change. Picard is optimistic about Cinematheque’s future. “We’re always looking back and we’re always looking ahead,” she says.
One thing that the Cinematheque staff is certainly looking forward to is the 2008 completion of Festival Centre. The nearly $200-million endeavour (including endowment and operational funds) would see the construction of a permanent home for the Toronto International Film Festival Group and all its divisions, including Cinematheque Ontario. It would be a stable headquarters for audiences wanting to watch, discuss, and ponder the most profound and peculiar offerings from the world of cinema.
“We will have our own home. We’ll have more flexibility because we’ll have five screens there. We’re going to be more integrated. You can do a whole day at Festival Centre, going from the film reference library to a workshop and then to Cinematheque,” Picard explains.
A movie house where film education is a priority? Where subtitles aren’t a liabilty? And where, even if the rest of the audience is as perplexed as you are, all commentary is politely left until after the credits roll?
“There’s nothing like seeing a movie on the big screen,” Picard says, but she likely means there’s nothing quite like seeing a movie at Cinematheque.
For more about Cinematheque Ontario and its screenings, visit e.bell.ca/filmfest/cinematheque.
