Thirty-one years after creating the Jasper Film Club, Chris Garnham is stepping aside and making room for 鈥渘ew blood.鈥�
鈥淚鈥檓 not angry or disappointed, in fact I鈥檓 really excited about where the film club can go because there鈥檚 new people and new blood and new imagination and now the sky is the limit,鈥� he said.
鈥淔or the last several years, call it three or four, I鈥檝e been feeling that I might be in the way of the growth and development of the club, so the film club and the exec are currently going through the rights of succession, trying to make sure that not only does it continue, but it can grow without me.
Since the club鈥檚 start in 1982, the intent has been to bring movies to town that the community wouldn鈥檛 otherwise see at the Chaba Theatre.
At first those films were played at the activity centre.
鈥淲arren Waxer and I, and our wives, started the Jasper Film Club and what we did was shlep a screen from the high school to the [activity centre], set up the chairs, sell coffee and popcorn, charge not nearly enough money and showed 35 millimetre films.鈥�
That went on for about three years. But then a recent invention kept people at home, where they could watch movies from the comfort of their own sofa.
鈥淭he home VCR just did us in, and with good reason,鈥� said Garnham. 鈥淲e were showing old movies that were coming out like crazy on VHS.
鈥淪o that was the end of that iteration of the film club.鈥�
Things remained fairly quiet during the 90s, with Garnham and Waxer acting as resident cinema experts in town, but not showing films.
鈥淲e thought of ourselves as kind of the go-to guys for movies. We could supply expertise and/or the projectors for the town,鈥� he said referring to the 35 millimetre projectors the club purchased in the 80s.
It wasn鈥檛 until 2001 that the club came back in force.
It was that year Dwain Wacko, owner of Chaba Theatre, introduced Garnham to The Circuit, an organization affiliated with the Toronto International Film Festival.
鈥淭he Circuit was created with two goals in mind. One: to get short-run films into smaller communities across Canada; and two: to help promote and distribute Canadian films in Canada.
鈥淭his allowed for small towns like Jasper to bring in that which they couldn鈥檛 otherwise see.鈥�
So in 2001, the film club was brought back to life, showing films at the theatre once a month during the winter months.
鈥淲e had never killed off the actual club. We created it legally back at the start and just made the minimum effort to keep everything legal,鈥� so with some administrative work and a lot of research, short-run films were back in Jasper.
The film club has continued this way, bringing in seven films that run once a month from October to April.
鈥淲e shoot for the first Thursday of each of those months, but sometimes Christmas and sometimes Easter gets in the way,鈥� said Garnham.
The first film of the season, Much Ado About Nothing, will air Oct. 3.
Nicole Veerman
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