Movies At The Library

Playing at a library near you.

Using the British Film Institute’s Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time List (revised in 2022), the American Film Institute’s Top 100 American Films of All Time list (revised in 2007), and the Toronto International Film Festival’s Canada’s All-time Top Ten List (revised 2015), we will be showing some of the most celebrate films.

Starting in January, we will begin with one film from the 1930s, and each month we will move up one decade. See how the history of film has evolved over time and discover, or revisit, some classics of cinema.

 

January 22: A Night at the Opera (1935)
The Marx Brothers take on high society in this classic comedy. Two lovers who are both in opera are prevented from being together by the man's lack of acceptance as an operatic tenor. Pulling several typical Marx Brothers' stunts, they arrange for the normal tenor to be absent so that the young lover can get his chance. Voted #85 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute. (Film is in black and white)

February 19: Grapes of Wrath (1940)
In this enduring classic, a family of sharecroppers travels westward, driven from their Oklahoma farm by drought, failed crops, and mechanization. But the golden dream of California also fails them. Hungry and exploited, the Joad family and the other displaced families of the Great Depression struggle to survive. An exhilarating story of faith and pride, John Steinbeck's classic has become a motion picture legend.Voted #23 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute. (Film is in black and white)

March 19: The Sound of Music (1965)
Maria had longed to be a nun since she was a young girl, yet when she became old enough discovered that it wasn't at all what she thought. Often in trouble and doing the wrong things, Maria is sent to the house of a retired naval captain, named Captain Von Trapp, to care for his children. Von Trapp was widowed several years before and was left to care for seven 'rowdy' children. The children have run off countless governesses. Maria soon learns that all these children need is a little love to change their attitudes. Set against the backdrop of Nazi occupation of Vienna, Maria teaches the children to sing, and through her, music is brought back into the hearts and home of the Von Trapp family. Voted #40 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute.

April 23: The French Connection (1971)
Based on the exploits of cop Eddie Egan, who cracked a $32 million heroin exchange, this searing portrait of brutal narcotics detective Popeye Doyle won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. Realistic, fast-paced and uncommonly smart, The French Connection is bolstered by stellar performances by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, not to mention William Friedkin's thrilling production. Voted #93 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute.

May 21: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Arkleaves you breathless. Its spirit is straight from the days of those thrilling matinee classics. Harrison Ford is the swashbuckling hero, Indiana Jones, who, with his spunky girlfriend, must battle foes of every shape, size and description to keep the mysterious Lost Ark of the Covenant out of Hitler's hands. Voted #66 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute

June 18: Goodfellas (1990)
Based on Nicholas Pilegg's best-selling book "Wiseguys" and spanning thirty years of Mafia life, this is the story of a young boy, who dreams of becoming a member of the wiseguys. After fulfilling that dream and after much terror and murder, he turns against the men who made him. Considered one of Martin Scorsese’s finest films. Voted #92 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information.  

Location:
Sunday, March 19, 2023 - 2:00pm

The Lost City (2022)

A romantic comedy about a cynical romance novelist (Sandra Bullock) and a romance novel cover model (Channing Tatum) who are forced on a zany quest on a remote tropical island filled with both natural dangers and some menacing henchmen. It is a sort of modern update of Romancing the Stone. The movie is very silly fun.

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information. 

Location:
Sunday, March 26, 2023 - 2:00pm

Explore a world of cinema with NVDPL! We will begin our foreign film series with recommendations from the British Film Institute’s Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time List. These films will be shown in their original language with subtitles in English.

 

January 8: M (Germany, 1931)
remains Fritz Lang’s most universally admired film. His silent epics of intrigue and iniquity had all but invented the crime genre on film, and with M he laid the blueprint for every serial killer film that followed in its wake. Peter Lorre’s creepy, bulging-eyed performance as the killer who can’t help himself quickly attracted the attention of Hollywood, where he made a career playing sinister desperados. The complexity and originality of its structure and the power of its images and sound guarantee it a place in film history. Voted #36 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In German with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

February 5: Rashomon (Japan, 1950)
The word ‘Rashomon’ has passed into the English language to signify a narrative told from various, unreliable viewpoints. In this case, the mystery relates to the murder of a samurai and the assault of his wife in 11th century Japan, events which are relayed in wildly differing versions by those present: the bandit, the wife, a passing woodcutter and the spirit of the dead samurai. This radically non-linear structure, with its profound implications about the fallibility of perspective, impressed judges at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. They awarded Akira Kurosawa’s film the Golden Lion, helping to encourage a broader interest in Japanese film in the west. With its snaking bolero-like score and poetic use of dappled forest light, Rashomon is a work of enduring ambiguity. Voted #24 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Japanese with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

March 5: The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1957)
Ingmar Bergman’s allegory about a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) who plays chess with Death (a white-faced, shrouded figure played by Bengt Ekerot) was a landmark of arthouse cinema in the late 1950s. Taking its title from the Book of Revelation, the film examines the knight’s crisis of faith during a dark period of human history, tackling issues of existential doubt and despair that touched a nerve with audiences living in the aftermath of the horror of war. Filmed in sombre black and white The Seventh Seal convincingly evokes a 14th-century of dread and superstition and abounds with startling apocalyptic imagery, from a black bird on the wing against stormy skies to the final, silhouetted danse macabre on a hilltop. Voted #93 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Swedish with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

April 2: L'Avventura (Italy, 1960)
This provocative story about Italy's idle rich brought director Michaelangelo Antonioni to international attention. Young people on a yachting holiday lose one of their number when they land on a volcanic island. The film showcases the director’s ontrolled use of camera movement and visual composition to dramatise the emotional space between people. Voted #21 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Italian with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

May 7: The Leopard (Italy, 1963)
Against a dramatic nineteenth-century backdrop of radical Italian Nationalism, Luchino Visconti’s masterful epic, The Leopard, follows the Sicilian Prince of Salina and his family as they adjust to the social turbulence of revolutionary times. Adapted from Tomasi di Lampedusas esteemed novel of the same name, this is a tragicomic depiction of a class eclipsed by history.  Starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon, this gorgeous evocation of an era – beautifully photographed, designed and costumed, with a rousing score by Nino Rota – glitters with superb set pieces, culminating in the climactic 45 minute ballroom section where we can see and feel a society in transition. Voted #90 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Italian with English subtitles.)

June 4: Parasite (South Korea, 2019)
Jobless, penniless, and, above all, hopeless, the unmotivated patriarch, and his equally unambitious family—his supportive wife, his cynical twentysomething daughter, and his college-age son—occupy themselves by working for peanuts in their squalid basement-level apartment. Then, by sheer luck, a lucrative business proposition will pave the way for an insidiously subtle scheme, as the son summons up the courage to pose as an English tutor for the teenage daughter of the affluent Park family. Chameleonic in its genres, shapeshifting from social realism to comedy, thriller to dystopia, Bong Joon Ho’s multilayered masterpiece at once pithily sums up the stark evils of class division (which speaks so universally) while also, prism-like, rewarding endless rewatches and reinterpretations. Winner of 6 Academy Awards. Voted #90 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Korean with English subtitles.)



If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information.  

Location:
Sunday, April 2, 2023 - 2:00pm

Join us at Capilano Library to enjoy new releases and other contemporary movies.

 

April 16 Empire of Light
Set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, Empire of Light is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema, from Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes and featuring Olivia Colman and Colin Firth.

April 30 The Whale
A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption. By director Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser.

May 14 Broker
The film follows two brokers who sell orphaned infants, circumventing the bureaucracy of legal adoption, to affluent couples who can't have children of their own. After an infant's mother surprises the duo by returning to ensure her child finds a good home, the three embark on a journey to find the right couple, building an unlikely family of their own. A tender movie that has garnered excellent reviews. In Korean with English subtitles.

May 28 Framing Agnes
The pseudonymous Agnes was a pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender health study conducted at UCLA in the 1960s. Her clever use of the study to gain access to gender-affirming healthcare led to her status as a fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history. In this innovative cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt (No Ordinary Man) uses Agnes's story, along with others unearthed in long-shelved case files, to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed. Through a collaborative practice of re-imagination, an all-star cast of trans performers, artists, and thinkers -- including Angelica Ross (Pose), Jen Richards (Mrs. Fletcher), and Zackary Drucker (Transparent) -- take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage re-enactments, bringing to life ground-breaking artifacts of trans history. This collective reclamation breaks down the myth of isolation among transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information. 

Location:
Sunday, April 16, 2023 - 2:00pm
This award-winning Canadian film is currently only available over streaming, so NVDPL is thrilled to have the opportunity to screen this important and moving film at the library.
 
Two-spirit Mi’kmaw teenager Link is just discovering — and asserting — his sexuality when his already volatile home life goes off the rails. His abusive father explodes after the cops bust Link and his half-brother Travis for stealing scrap metal. When he finds out that his supposedly dead mother may be alive, Link flees with Travis in tow. Sparks fly in a chance encounter with teen drifter Pasmay, who shares Link’s Indigenous roots and offers to help find his mother — but will Link’s (well-founded) mistrust of people ruin his potential new relationship and the group’s mission? Riffing on the road-movie genre, director Bretten Hannam charts Link’s growing self-awareness, which is deeply connected to the (re)discovery of his heritage. The landscape (Annapolis Valley in traditional Mi’kmaq territory) offers succour to Link and Travis — and opens them up to a very different world.  While Link and Travis aren’t free from danger, heartbreak, or disappointment, their lives are increasingly defined by possibility and hope.
 
 
 
If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 
 
Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information. 
 
 
Location:
Wednesday, April 19, 2023 - 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Using the British Film Institute’s Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time List (revised in 2022), the American Film Institute’s Top 100 American Films of All Time list (revised in 2007), and the Toronto International Film Festival’s Canada’s All-time Top Ten List (revised 2015), we will be showing some of the most celebrate films.

Starting in January, we will begin with one film from the 1930s, and each month we will move up one decade. See how the history of film has evolved over time and discover, or revisit, some classics of cinema.

 

January 22: A Night at the Opera (1935)
The Marx Brothers take on high society in this classic comedy. Two lovers who are both in opera are prevented from being together by the man's lack of acceptance as an operatic tenor. Pulling several typical Marx Brothers' stunts, they arrange for the normal tenor to be absent so that the young lover can get his chance. Voted #85 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute. (Film is in black and white)

February 19: Grapes of Wrath (1940)
In this enduring classic, a family of sharecroppers travels westward, driven from their Oklahoma farm by drought, failed crops, and mechanization. But the golden dream of California also fails them. Hungry and exploited, the Joad family and the other displaced families of the Great Depression struggle to survive. An exhilarating story of faith and pride, John Steinbeck's classic has become a motion picture legend.Voted #23 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute. (Film is in black and white)

March 19: The Sound of Music (1965)
Maria had longed to be a nun since she was a young girl, yet when she became old enough discovered that it wasn't at all what she thought. Often in trouble and doing the wrong things, Maria is sent to the house of a retired naval captain, named Captain Von Trapp, to care for his children. Von Trapp was widowed several years before and was left to care for seven 'rowdy' children. The children have run off countless governesses. Maria soon learns that all these children need is a little love to change their attitudes. Set against the backdrop of Nazi occupation of Vienna, Maria teaches the children to sing, and through her, music is brought back into the hearts and home of the Von Trapp family. Voted #40 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute.

April 23: The French Connection (1971)
Based on the exploits of cop Eddie Egan, who cracked a $32 million heroin exchange, this searing portrait of brutal narcotics detective Popeye Doyle won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. Realistic, fast-paced and uncommonly smart, The French Connection is bolstered by stellar performances by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, not to mention William Friedkin's thrilling production. Voted #93 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute.

May 21: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Arkleaves you breathless. Its spirit is straight from the days of those thrilling matinee classics. Harrison Ford is the swashbuckling hero, Indiana Jones, who, with his spunky girlfriend, must battle foes of every shape, size and description to keep the mysterious Lost Ark of the Covenant out of Hitler's hands. Voted #66 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute

June 18: Goodfellas (1990)
Based on Nicholas Pilegg's best-selling book "Wiseguys" and spanning thirty years of Mafia life, this is the story of a young boy, who dreams of becoming a member of the wiseguys. After fulfilling that dream and after much terror and murder, he turns against the men who made him. Considered one of Martin Scorsese’s finest films. Voted #92 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information.  

Location:
Sunday, April 23, 2023 - 2:00pm

Join us at Capilano Library to enjoy new releases and other contemporary movies.

 

April 16 Empire of Light
Set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, Empire of Light is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema, from Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes and featuring Olivia Colman and Colin Firth.

April 30 The Whale
A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption. By director Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser.

May 14 Broker
The film follows two brokers who sell orphaned infants, circumventing the bureaucracy of legal adoption, to affluent couples who can't have children of their own. After an infant's mother surprises the duo by returning to ensure her child finds a good home, the three embark on a journey to find the right couple, building an unlikely family of their own. A tender movie that has garnered excellent reviews. In Korean with English subtitles.

May 28 Framing Agnes
The pseudonymous Agnes was a pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender health study conducted at UCLA in the 1960s. Her clever use of the study to gain access to gender-affirming healthcare led to her status as a fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history. In this innovative cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt (No Ordinary Man) uses Agnes's story, along with others unearthed in long-shelved case files, to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed. Through a collaborative practice of re-imagination, an all-star cast of trans performers, artists, and thinkers -- including Angelica Ross (Pose), Jen Richards (Mrs. Fletcher), and Zackary Drucker (Transparent) -- take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage re-enactments, bringing to life ground-breaking artifacts of trans history. This collective reclamation breaks down the myth of isolation among transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information. 

Location:
Sunday, April 30, 2023 - 2:00pm

Explore a world of cinema with NVDPL! We will begin our foreign film series with recommendations from the British Film Institute’s Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time List. These films will be shown in their original language with subtitles in English.

 

January 8: M (Germany, 1931)
remains Fritz Lang’s most universally admired film. His silent epics of intrigue and iniquity had all but invented the crime genre on film, and with M he laid the blueprint for every serial killer film that followed in its wake. Peter Lorre’s creepy, bulging-eyed performance as the killer who can’t help himself quickly attracted the attention of Hollywood, where he made a career playing sinister desperados. The complexity and originality of its structure and the power of its images and sound guarantee it a place in film history. Voted #36 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In German with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

February 5: Rashomon (Japan, 1950)
The word ‘Rashomon’ has passed into the English language to signify a narrative told from various, unreliable viewpoints. In this case, the mystery relates to the murder of a samurai and the assault of his wife in 11th century Japan, events which are relayed in wildly differing versions by those present: the bandit, the wife, a passing woodcutter and the spirit of the dead samurai. This radically non-linear structure, with its profound implications about the fallibility of perspective, impressed judges at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. They awarded Akira Kurosawa’s film the Golden Lion, helping to encourage a broader interest in Japanese film in the west. With its snaking bolero-like score and poetic use of dappled forest light, Rashomon is a work of enduring ambiguity. Voted #24 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Japanese with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

March 5: The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1957)
Ingmar Bergman’s allegory about a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) who plays chess with Death (a white-faced, shrouded figure played by Bengt Ekerot) was a landmark of arthouse cinema in the late 1950s. Taking its title from the Book of Revelation, the film examines the knight’s crisis of faith during a dark period of human history, tackling issues of existential doubt and despair that touched a nerve with audiences living in the aftermath of the horror of war. Filmed in sombre black and white The Seventh Seal convincingly evokes a 14th-century of dread and superstition and abounds with startling apocalyptic imagery, from a black bird on the wing against stormy skies to the final, silhouetted danse macabre on a hilltop. Voted #93 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Swedish with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

April 2: L'Avventura (Italy, 1960)
This provocative story about Italy's idle rich brought director Michaelangelo Antonioni to international attention. Young people on a yachting holiday lose one of their number when they land on a volcanic island. The film showcases the director’s ontrolled use of camera movement and visual composition to dramatise the emotional space between people. Voted #21 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Italian with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

May 7: The Leopard (Italy, 1963)
Against a dramatic nineteenth-century backdrop of radical Italian Nationalism, Luchino Visconti’s masterful epic, The Leopard, follows the Sicilian Prince of Salina and his family as they adjust to the social turbulence of revolutionary times. Adapted from Tomasi di Lampedusas esteemed novel of the same name, this is a tragicomic depiction of a class eclipsed by history.  Starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon, this gorgeous evocation of an era – beautifully photographed, designed and costumed, with a rousing score by Nino Rota – glitters with superb set pieces, culminating in the climactic 45 minute ballroom section where we can see and feel a society in transition. Voted #90 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Italian with English subtitles.)

June 4: Parasite (South Korea, 2019)
Jobless, penniless, and, above all, hopeless, the unmotivated patriarch, and his equally unambitious family—his supportive wife, his cynical twentysomething daughter, and his college-age son—occupy themselves by working for peanuts in their squalid basement-level apartment. Then, by sheer luck, a lucrative business proposition will pave the way for an insidiously subtle scheme, as the son summons up the courage to pose as an English tutor for the teenage daughter of the affluent Park family. Chameleonic in its genres, shapeshifting from social realism to comedy, thriller to dystopia, Bong Joon Ho’s multilayered masterpiece at once pithily sums up the stark evils of class division (which speaks so universally) while also, prism-like, rewarding endless rewatches and reinterpretations. Winner of 6 Academy Awards. Voted #90 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Korean with English subtitles.)



If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information.  

Location:
Sunday, May 7, 2023 - 2:00pm

Join us at Capilano Library to enjoy new releases and other contemporary movies.

 

April 16 Empire of Light
Set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, Empire of Light is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema, from Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes and featuring Olivia Colman and Colin Firth.

April 30 The Whale
A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption. By director Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser.

May 14 Broker
The film follows two brokers who sell orphaned infants, circumventing the bureaucracy of legal adoption, to affluent couples who can't have children of their own. After an infant's mother surprises the duo by returning to ensure her child finds a good home, the three embark on a journey to find the right couple, building an unlikely family of their own. A tender movie that has garnered excellent reviews. In Korean with English subtitles.

May 28 Framing Agnes
The pseudonymous Agnes was a pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender health study conducted at UCLA in the 1960s. Her clever use of the study to gain access to gender-affirming healthcare led to her status as a fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history. In this innovative cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt (No Ordinary Man) uses Agnes's story, along with others unearthed in long-shelved case files, to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed. Through a collaborative practice of re-imagination, an all-star cast of trans performers, artists, and thinkers -- including Angelica Ross (Pose), Jen Richards (Mrs. Fletcher), and Zackary Drucker (Transparent) -- take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage re-enactments, bringing to life ground-breaking artifacts of trans history. This collective reclamation breaks down the myth of isolation among transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information. 

Location:
Sunday, May 14, 2023 - 2:00pm

Using the British Film Institute’s Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time List (revised in 2022), the American Film Institute’s Top 100 American Films of All Time list (revised in 2007), and the Toronto International Film Festival’s Canada’s All-time Top Ten List (revised 2015), we will be showing some of the most celebrate films.

Starting in January, we will begin with one film from the 1930s, and each month we will move up one decade. See how the history of film has evolved over time and discover, or revisit, some classics of cinema.

 

January 22: A Night at the Opera (1935)
The Marx Brothers take on high society in this classic comedy. Two lovers who are both in opera are prevented from being together by the man's lack of acceptance as an operatic tenor. Pulling several typical Marx Brothers' stunts, they arrange for the normal tenor to be absent so that the young lover can get his chance. Voted #85 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute. (Film is in black and white)

February 19: Grapes of Wrath (1940)
In this enduring classic, a family of sharecroppers travels westward, driven from their Oklahoma farm by drought, failed crops, and mechanization. But the golden dream of California also fails them. Hungry and exploited, the Joad family and the other displaced families of the Great Depression struggle to survive. An exhilarating story of faith and pride, John Steinbeck's classic has become a motion picture legend.Voted #23 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute. (Film is in black and white)

March 19: The Sound of Music (1965)
Maria had longed to be a nun since she was a young girl, yet when she became old enough discovered that it wasn't at all what she thought. Often in trouble and doing the wrong things, Maria is sent to the house of a retired naval captain, named Captain Von Trapp, to care for his children. Von Trapp was widowed several years before and was left to care for seven 'rowdy' children. The children have run off countless governesses. Maria soon learns that all these children need is a little love to change their attitudes. Set against the backdrop of Nazi occupation of Vienna, Maria teaches the children to sing, and through her, music is brought back into the hearts and home of the Von Trapp family. Voted #40 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute.

April 23: The French Connection (1971)
Based on the exploits of cop Eddie Egan, who cracked a $32 million heroin exchange, this searing portrait of brutal narcotics detective Popeye Doyle won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. Realistic, fast-paced and uncommonly smart, The French Connection is bolstered by stellar performances by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, not to mention William Friedkin's thrilling production. Voted #93 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute.

May 21: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Arkleaves you breathless. Its spirit is straight from the days of those thrilling matinee classics. Harrison Ford is the swashbuckling hero, Indiana Jones, who, with his spunky girlfriend, must battle foes of every shape, size and description to keep the mysterious Lost Ark of the Covenant out of Hitler's hands. Voted #66 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute

June 18: Goodfellas (1990)
Based on Nicholas Pilegg's best-selling book "Wiseguys" and spanning thirty years of Mafia life, this is the story of a young boy, who dreams of becoming a member of the wiseguys. After fulfilling that dream and after much terror and murder, he turns against the men who made him. Considered one of Martin Scorsese’s finest films. Voted #92 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information.  

Location:
Sunday, May 21, 2023 - 2:00pm

Join us at Capilano Library to enjoy new releases and other contemporary movies.

 

April 16 Empire of Light
Set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, Empire of Light is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema, from Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes and featuring Olivia Colman and Colin Firth.

April 30 The Whale
A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption. By director Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser.

May 14 Broker
The film follows two brokers who sell orphaned infants, circumventing the bureaucracy of legal adoption, to affluent couples who can't have children of their own. After an infant's mother surprises the duo by returning to ensure her child finds a good home, the three embark on a journey to find the right couple, building an unlikely family of their own. A tender movie that has garnered excellent reviews. In Korean with English subtitles.

May 28 Framing Agnes
The pseudonymous Agnes was a pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender health study conducted at UCLA in the 1960s. Her clever use of the study to gain access to gender-affirming healthcare led to her status as a fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history. In this innovative cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt (No Ordinary Man) uses Agnes's story, along with others unearthed in long-shelved case files, to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed. Through a collaborative practice of re-imagination, an all-star cast of trans performers, artists, and thinkers -- including Angelica Ross (Pose), Jen Richards (Mrs. Fletcher), and Zackary Drucker (Transparent) -- take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage re-enactments, bringing to life ground-breaking artifacts of trans history. This collective reclamation breaks down the myth of isolation among transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information. 

Location:
Sunday, May 28, 2023 - 2:00pm

Explore a world of cinema with NVDPL! We will begin our foreign film series with recommendations from the British Film Institute’s Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time List. These films will be shown in their original language with subtitles in English.

 

January 8: M (Germany, 1931)
remains Fritz Lang’s most universally admired film. His silent epics of intrigue and iniquity had all but invented the crime genre on film, and with M he laid the blueprint for every serial killer film that followed in its wake. Peter Lorre’s creepy, bulging-eyed performance as the killer who can’t help himself quickly attracted the attention of Hollywood, where he made a career playing sinister desperados. The complexity and originality of its structure and the power of its images and sound guarantee it a place in film history. Voted #36 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In German with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

February 5: Rashomon (Japan, 1950)
The word ‘Rashomon’ has passed into the English language to signify a narrative told from various, unreliable viewpoints. In this case, the mystery relates to the murder of a samurai and the assault of his wife in 11th century Japan, events which are relayed in wildly differing versions by those present: the bandit, the wife, a passing woodcutter and the spirit of the dead samurai. This radically non-linear structure, with its profound implications about the fallibility of perspective, impressed judges at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. They awarded Akira Kurosawa’s film the Golden Lion, helping to encourage a broader interest in Japanese film in the west. With its snaking bolero-like score and poetic use of dappled forest light, Rashomon is a work of enduring ambiguity. Voted #24 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Japanese with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

March 5: The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1957)
Ingmar Bergman’s allegory about a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) who plays chess with Death (a white-faced, shrouded figure played by Bengt Ekerot) was a landmark of arthouse cinema in the late 1950s. Taking its title from the Book of Revelation, the film examines the knight’s crisis of faith during a dark period of human history, tackling issues of existential doubt and despair that touched a nerve with audiences living in the aftermath of the horror of war. Filmed in sombre black and white The Seventh Seal convincingly evokes a 14th-century of dread and superstition and abounds with startling apocalyptic imagery, from a black bird on the wing against stormy skies to the final, silhouetted danse macabre on a hilltop. Voted #93 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Swedish with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

April 2: L'Avventura (Italy, 1960)
This provocative story about Italy's idle rich brought director Michaelangelo Antonioni to international attention. Young people on a yachting holiday lose one of their number when they land on a volcanic island. The film showcases the director’s ontrolled use of camera movement and visual composition to dramatise the emotional space between people. Voted #21 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Italian with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

May 7: The Leopard (Italy, 1963)
Against a dramatic nineteenth-century backdrop of radical Italian Nationalism, Luchino Visconti’s masterful epic, The Leopard, follows the Sicilian Prince of Salina and his family as they adjust to the social turbulence of revolutionary times. Adapted from Tomasi di Lampedusas esteemed novel of the same name, this is a tragicomic depiction of a class eclipsed by history.  Starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon, this gorgeous evocation of an era – beautifully photographed, designed and costumed, with a rousing score by Nino Rota – glitters with superb set pieces, culminating in the climactic 45 minute ballroom section where we can see and feel a society in transition. Voted #90 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Italian with English subtitles.)

June 4: Parasite (South Korea, 2019)
Jobless, penniless, and, above all, hopeless, the unmotivated patriarch, and his equally unambitious family—his supportive wife, his cynical twentysomething daughter, and his college-age son—occupy themselves by working for peanuts in their squalid basement-level apartment. Then, by sheer luck, a lucrative business proposition will pave the way for an insidiously subtle scheme, as the son summons up the courage to pose as an English tutor for the teenage daughter of the affluent Park family. Chameleonic in its genres, shapeshifting from social realism to comedy, thriller to dystopia, Bong Joon Ho’s multilayered masterpiece at once pithily sums up the stark evils of class division (which speaks so universally) while also, prism-like, rewarding endless rewatches and reinterpretations. Winner of 6 Academy Awards. Voted #90 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Korean with English subtitles.)



If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information.  

Location:
Sunday, June 4, 2023 - 2:00pm

Using the British Film Institute’s Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time List (revised in 2022), the American Film Institute’s Top 100 American Films of All Time list (revised in 2007), and the Toronto International Film Festival’s Canada’s All-time Top Ten List (revised 2015), we will be showing some of the most celebrate films.

Starting in January, we will begin with one film from the 1930s, and each month we will move up one decade. See how the history of film has evolved over time and discover, or revisit, some classics of cinema.

 

January 22: A Night at the Opera (1935)
The Marx Brothers take on high society in this classic comedy. Two lovers who are both in opera are prevented from being together by the man's lack of acceptance as an operatic tenor. Pulling several typical Marx Brothers' stunts, they arrange for the normal tenor to be absent so that the young lover can get his chance. Voted #85 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute. (Film is in black and white)

February 19: Grapes of Wrath (1940)
In this enduring classic, a family of sharecroppers travels westward, driven from their Oklahoma farm by drought, failed crops, and mechanization. But the golden dream of California also fails them. Hungry and exploited, the Joad family and the other displaced families of the Great Depression struggle to survive. An exhilarating story of faith and pride, John Steinbeck's classic has become a motion picture legend.Voted #23 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute. (Film is in black and white)

March 19: The Sound of Music (1965)
Maria had longed to be a nun since she was a young girl, yet when she became old enough discovered that it wasn't at all what she thought. Often in trouble and doing the wrong things, Maria is sent to the house of a retired naval captain, named Captain Von Trapp, to care for his children. Von Trapp was widowed several years before and was left to care for seven 'rowdy' children. The children have run off countless governesses. Maria soon learns that all these children need is a little love to change their attitudes. Set against the backdrop of Nazi occupation of Vienna, Maria teaches the children to sing, and through her, music is brought back into the hearts and home of the Von Trapp family. Voted #40 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute.

April 23: The French Connection (1971)
Based on the exploits of cop Eddie Egan, who cracked a $32 million heroin exchange, this searing portrait of brutal narcotics detective Popeye Doyle won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. Realistic, fast-paced and uncommonly smart, The French Connection is bolstered by stellar performances by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, not to mention William Friedkin's thrilling production. Voted #93 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute.

May 21: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Arkleaves you breathless. Its spirit is straight from the days of those thrilling matinee classics. Harrison Ford is the swashbuckling hero, Indiana Jones, who, with his spunky girlfriend, must battle foes of every shape, size and description to keep the mysterious Lost Ark of the Covenant out of Hitler's hands. Voted #66 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute

June 18: Goodfellas (1990)
Based on Nicholas Pilegg's best-selling book "Wiseguys" and spanning thirty years of Mafia life, this is the story of a young boy, who dreams of becoming a member of the wiseguys. After fulfilling that dream and after much terror and murder, he turns against the men who made him. Considered one of Martin Scorsese’s finest films. Voted #92 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the American Film Institute

 

If you would like to receive reminders and supplementary materials about upcoming films, please register to be added to an email list for film information. 

Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information.  

Location:
Sunday, June 18, 2023 - 2:00pm