A Teeny Tiny Theatre and a Big Love of Cinema

Look for the fourth window from the alley.

If you’re strolling the east side of Woodland Drive on the north side of Venables Street, you can’t miss it. The windows that belong to the old warehouse have been boarded up and painted over, but right in the middle of that fourth one is an eye-catching curiosity.

It’s a teeny, tiny model of Vancouver’s first Pantages Theatre. Produced on a 1:55 scale, it features a beautiful brick façade, movie posters in miniature and flashing bulbs that invite you over for a closer look.

In gold letters at the very top: EAST VAN VODVILLE CINEMA. Beneath it is a glowing marquee announcing what’s playing, which, at the moment, is clips of cats that span two centuries of cinema. Under that are three little slots. Just hit the play button and peek through them.

You are looking into the Pantages, with seats, balconies and an actual screen on which to watch the show.

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“I think this is true for everybody: it’s been a really rough couple of years,” said Janet Mader, one half of the duo that created the mini cinema. “We wanted to make something that was about pure love and positivity.”

The theatre had a soft launch in June, playing clips from fantastical classics like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the ouvré of Georges Méliès. Then came the grand opening in early November and participation in the Eastside Culture Crawl, featuring local works.

As for the latest run of nine cat videos, on view are everything from 1900’s La Petite Fille et Son Chat, The Cassandra Cat of the Czechoslovak New Wave, to samplings from Studio Ghibli to A Cat in Paris, the most recent entry from 2010.

Why only clips?

“It’s kind of like The Princess Bride, that sort of shtick about this being the ‘good parts’ version of the giant story,” said David Bynoe, the duo’s other half.

“What’s a good experience for people that’ll last three to five minutes because they’re going to be hunched over in the rain? That’s what we try to do, just find little bits that are the amazing part of the movie; that also has the secondary benefit of hopefully allowing us to fall under fair dealing under the Copyright Act.”

Handcrafted high-tech

Bynoe and Mader are practical special effects technicians who have worked on film and TV productions, and many of the selections show off the best of their business, from elaborate puppeteering to flames and smoke.

They possess an incredibly wide skillset, which came into use for their passion project of a mini cinema. It required 3D modelling and printing as well as some old-fashioned sculpting and sanding. The installation also called for some tinkering with hardware and software: a seven-inch HDMI screen, a MOSFET to control the dimmable theatre lights and a video player on a single-board computer called a Raspberry Pi.

The cinema is on the outside of the Vancouver Hack Space; both Bynoe and Mader are based there. It is a volunteer-run non-profit workshop where members share tools, equipment, space and knowledge.

With origins in 1990s Berlin, the “hackerspace” model has been taking root in cities around the world. They’ve also been called “makerspaces” and “fab labs.” While some digital workers can plunk down anywhere with their laptops, this unique type of co-working space is for the likes of artists, scientists and tech workers who require a heavier duty set-up.

It’s a money-saving resource for those who need expensive gadgets but can’t justify the cost of their own welder or drill press. At the Vancouver Hack Space, members get 24-hour access to the space and all that it offers for a monthly fee of $75.

For individuals who rent workshop space in a shrinking supply of industrial buildings to do their projects, the Hack Space is a haven. Bynoe and Mader, for example, were “demovicted” from their previous workshop in Olympic Village several years ago. They’ve been members of the Hack Space since 2016 and 2018, respectively.

“It was very serendipitous that we had these skills and the resources within the Hack Space to be able to make this happen,” said Mader.

It’s the perfect home for the theatre, showing off a rare community in the pricey city where artists of all stripes have found refuge, not to mention having a collection of handy members on hand to step in if anything goes wrong. Plus, round-the-clock security.

Workers who happened to be around at 3 a.m. once heard the sound of someone turning on the mini cinema to catch a screening.

The duo could not have been more delighted.

A ‘Vodville’ history

“I love miniatures, I love history,” said Bynoe, who had always wanted to build a theatre.

He had a few inspirations for making one that actually worked.

There was the Peephole Cinema in San Francisco, which an artist installed in an alley to play old silent films.

There was also capitalist inspiration from the time Bynoe worked for a real estate company in Calgary that sent out electronic brochures by mail, each containing a battery, four buttons and a seven-inch LCD screen on which advertisements would play. “They’re just e-waste when you’re done using them,” said Bynoe.

There was a smaller project he had embarked on for the Hack Space’s beer fridge. He constructed a rig to play a clip of an old movie that featured a Bavarian drinking song every time the door was opened.

But the task of creating a miniature version of the Pantages in elaborate, historically accurate detail took him and Mader a full year.

The Vancouver theatre was one of many in Alexander Pantages’ empire that dotted the West Coast of Canada and the United States. The grand, ornate space was built in 1907 by the same architect as the Orpheum. It was one of many entertainment venues in this older part of Vancouver before Granville Street became the new “Theatre Row.”

The Pantages served as a vaudeville theatre for about two decades before it was converted into a movie theatre. Over the years, it had a number of different owners. By the time it closed in 1994, it was a Chinese-language movie theatre called Sung Sing.

A non-profit called the Pantages Preservation Society purchased the site in 1999, hoping to revitalize it as a performing arts space, but could not come up with the money to restore it.

The Vancouver Sun toured the theatre during those vacant years. Even then, it held magic from an older time as the neighbourhood was left to decline. According to a 2004 article: “The interior of the theatre is a bit rough, with some water damage from a leaky roof and lots of peeling paint. All the seats have been removed. But the grandeur of the vaudeville palace is easy to see in the soaring proscenium arch that frames a stage and the ornate golden decorative work on the walls.”

The theatre was eventually demolished in 2011 and was replaced by a controversial mixed-use condo and social housing development called Sequel 138.

Bynoe and Mader happen to live in a building with a lot of elderly residents. When they completed the project, they showed it to one longtime Vancouverite who recognized it right away.

“She used to sneak into the back door!” said Bynoe, who later learned from reading a history book that doing so was a common experience for many Pantages theatre-goers.

In this way, visitors of the mini cinema, peering through the peepholes in the back, are experiencing the old Pantages just like kids from the old days who didn’t buy a ticket.

Before you point out that “Vodville” is misspelled, it’s intentional. There is a photo of the theatre from 1933 that shows the incorrect spelling, perhaps an effort to save money on the giant letters.

“VOD” is also a perfect acronym for “video on demand.”

“It was too good to pass up,” said Bynoe.

Anti-algorithm analog

After the cinema’s opening, the duo has invited the community to email them in case of any bug reports. There was mostly love — nothing major, with the exception of one amusing query.

“My favourite was this email with the subject ‘Accessibility request,’” said Mader. “It was just a picture of these two little girls.”

They were too short and were on their tiptoes trying to reach the peepholes. Thanks to the Hack Space’s multitalented crew, members of the wood shop had spare wood slices that they quickly turned into a stepping stool.

“I appreciate the trust of people letting their five-year-olds down the block to just watch something, so we don’t want to betray that,” said Bynoe. “We don’t want jump scares; cartoon violence is fine. But at the same time, we don’t have to do things focused at kids, because kids don’t like stuff that’s focused at them.”

“I was expecting that the kids would not be into the five-minute abstract art film stuff,” said Mader. “But no, it was pretty regular that we have a kid who wants to watch the entire thing and the next one.”

Unlike the cinema, it’s safe to say that TikTok won’t be introducing kids to the satirical comedies of the Czechoslovak New Wave anytime soon. In this age of mass content and social media feeds, the cinema’s old-school approach flies in the face of putting what we watch in the hands of algorithms.

“You show 1908 Charlie Chaplin clips on here — which is the era before they really figured out film language, so they were basically doing mine — and adults more or less will watch a couple seconds of it,” said Bynoe. “But the kid will watch the entire thing in tandem, because it’s all gestures and facial expressions. So they’re looking for different things.”

The cinema is admirably low-tech, with a single play button that you can push again to skip to the next clip.

While Bynoe and Mader are obviously film buffs who won’t run out of favourites to include in the programming, they want their cinema to be a thing of the community.

Local filmmakers with shorts to show are welcome to reach out. So are guest curators who want a crack at crafting a line-up.

That goes for the physical space too. The theatre has 200 seats to fill, if anyone wants to create a figurine. Just ask for the seat dimensions. So far, the duo have created Totoro, Nosferatu and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, who can be spotted in the audience.

There have been no vandals so far. It’s something Bynoe and Mader have been asked about, considering they’ve created such a beautiful thing on a public street near a number of bars and breweries.

The fact that the cinema is free might have something to do with it, as there isn’t a cache of coins to steal from. If there is someone angry who hates the films being shown and has an idea for something better, there’s an open invitation. “Tell us about it,” they say.

Aside from conversations with cinemagoers and casual observation, there is no metadata being collected of who is watching what films and when.

“With so much of this world, we are pressured into optimizing everything all the time,” said Mader.

“We’re creating something where you can throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. It’s sort of precious in this way.”

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The East Van Vodville Cinema is located on the side of the Vancouver Hack Space at 1601 Venables St., facing Woodland Drive. You can learn more about the cinema’s latest programming from their Instagram, @littlefreecinema. The Vancouver Hack Space is hosting an open house on Saturday, Dec. 7. Get more details on their website.