Friday May 30 | 7:00 pm | Vancity Theatre [Advanced Tickets SOLD OUT - Rush Tickets only at door]

Curated by Graham Peat

As B.C. marks a century and a half as a province, it is just over 100 years since the first film of our city was made. Most of the early films were made to promote the city to visitors, and there is little record of our daily lives. But there were rare portraits made by insiders, those who lived and worked in the city, in small film societies or with the newly spawned television film crews. Three finely-crafted short works take the unique vision of each team of artists to reflect a time that shaped Vancouver—the post-war boom years from the 1940s to the 1960s—and reveal a city that is almost unrecognizable to us today.

Curator's Biography

Graham Peat is the co-owner of Videomatica, Vancouver’s best-known source for movies on DVD. He also hosts and programs film events throughout the year and is the co-author of Show It In Public, a guide book and website resource for showing films in public. He is a member of the AV B.C. Film Heritage board and is passionate about old celluloid.

In the Daytime

Directors: Stan Fox & Peter Varley, Canada, 1949, 22 minutes (16mm)

Perhaps the first poetic portrait of our city, In the Daytime is an ode to post-war Vancouver (which goes unnamed, adding to its mystery). Morning mist over the city’s west side burns off and the bustling populace arise in full pursuit of a weekend day of leisure, via trolley buses, streetcars, ferry boats to Indian Arm and canoes on Lost Lagoon. They stroll Chinatown and our original downtown at Main and Hastings for lunch in a diner or a drink via the gender-separated entrances to beer parlours. The eclectic scenario plays over original pre-beat poetry and a dramatic score.

Stan Fox has spent his long career in the realms of film and television. He has been a film editor, cameraman, director, producer, executive producer, film teacher, script reader, television network program director, network program buyer and film festival programmer.

Summer Afternoon

Director: Ron Kelly, Canada, 1956, 28 minutes

A delightful record of an inner city that no longer exists, Summer Afternoon follows two boys as they explore Chinatown and inner False Creek, a floating shanty town of boats and squatters under the old Georgia Viaduct, long since drained and paved; morphing into condos, Expos and Costco. The vibrant street life of a racially mixed but nurturing community is just blocks away from Skid Row, yet we want to believe this picture of innocence, painted with only intimate black and white cinematography and original music.

Ron Kelly began his career with the CBC film unit, directing many short features between 1955 and 1964, when he left for the NFB. He directed the feature King of the Grizzlies in 1970 and later nature programs for Disney.

Strange Grey Day This

Director: Maurice Embra, Canada, 1966, 28 minutes

Strange Grey Day This is a portrait of the artist-poet bill bisset as he existed and struggled to find his niche in the post-beat era. Just on the cusp of the counterculture explosion, Vancouver is his palette—rainy, grey and not terribly pretty. Bisset takes us through the slick city streets, over the old wooden Cambie Street Bridge to his studio, where outside he is hounded by neighbourhood kids who call him a “beatnik.” He is, as always, uniquely insightful in his outsider observations.

Maurice Embra made independent programs for the CBC in the 1960s. He was a news cameraman in Vietnam and Cambodia during wartime, and later formed JEM Productions in Vancouver to produce television programs.

Read the essay: City Beats: Lost Vancouver from the '40s to the '60s

Heritage Vancouver Society works with our community to "Create a Future for Heritage" by preserving and celebrating Vancouver’s heritage structures as public works of art and living connections with our past.