Vancouver: An old-fashioned groundbreaking Jan. 22 kicked off construction on what will become the new-age nerve centre for domestic film and television producers in Vancouver.

The $5-million Vancouver International Film Centre, located at 1181 Seymour Street at Davie Street in downtown Vancouver between two 188-unit condominium towers marketed as Brava!, will be a three-storey cinema and office complex designed to headquarter the Vancouver International Film Festival (operated by the Greater Vancouver International Film Society). The facility is near the Pacific Cinematheque, the new Scotiabank Dance Centre and the multiplex theatres on Granville Street.

The 14,000-square-foot VIFC, designed by Vancouver-based Hewitt & Kwasnicky Architects, will feature a 170-seat theatre, a multipurpose gallery, a production editing room, meeting rooms, production company office space, screening rooms, a lobby-area concession and a three-storey glass atrium. It is scheduled to open in fall 2004.

Through the City of Vancouver’s amenity bonus program that rewards developers for building community assets without taxpayer dollars, Amacon Group and Onni Group are building the film complex in exchange for the right to build larger condos on site than would otherwise be allowed. The developers will also prepay 20 years of the centre’s operating costs.

‘The City and Amacon-Onni have given a tremendous gift to the people of Vancouver,’ says VIFF director Alan Franey. ‘The Film Centre will marry the art of film with emerging new technology, and will allow us to broaden our public cultural and educational mandate. I envision this magnificent space will become the hub of Vancouver’s filmmaking and film-going community.’

Franey says the VIFC could host educational and political roundtables and collaborate with other arts groups in Vancouver in the presentation of hybrid work involving projected moving images.

‘The most important thing that we’re doing here is ensuring a cultural presence in the downtown core,’ says Sue Harvey, Vancouver’s senior social and cultural planner. ‘Too often, these organizations don’t own their own spaces and are drummed out of the downtown and marginalized.’

Jane MacDonald, director of communications and corporate affairs at VIFF, has also launched a $2-million, VIFC-specific capital campaign to outfit the facility with the latest equipment. Donations, she says, will come from government, corporations and VIFF members.

The 22nd VIFF, which has an annual budget of $2.5 million, runs Sept. 25 to Oct. 10.

-www.viff.org