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There were too many to choose from.

So we didn’t.

It’s that time of year, and boy, are there ever a lot of old Christmas and seasonal movies! Here are 29 of our favourite scenes.

We’d love for this list to grow year after year, so if your favourite isn’t on the list, please send us a message, and we’ll do our best to put it on next year.

vodvilleEV@gmail.com

@littlefreecinema on Insta & Bluesky

YULETIDE CAROLS CHAOS

  1. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) “One More Sleep ‘til Christmas”
  2. Elf (2003) “You sit on a throne of lies!”
  3. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) “What does it mean?”
  4. National Lampoon’s Christmas vacation (1989) Sledding scene
  5. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) Christmas tree shopping
  6. Father Christmas (1991) Santa Claus vanlife.
  7. Pelíšky (Cosy Dens) (1999) the bathroom scene.
  8. Christmas at Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (1988) k. d. Lang guest stars
  9. The Night Before Christmas (1905) vintage Christmas
  10. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) “Making Christmas”
  11. Hogfather (2006) Miracle on Turnwise Broadway
  12. Tři oříšky pro Popelku (Three Wishes for Cinderella) (1973) snowball scene
  13. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) Marley & Marley
  14. Elf (2003) Snowball fight
  15. Father Christmas (1991) Snowman dance
  16. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (1966) Noisemakers
  17. Christmas at Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (1988) Grace Jones guest stars
  18. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) “Feels like Christmas”
  19. Tři oříšky pro Popelku (Three Wishes for Cinderella) (1973) the ball
  20. He-Man & She-Ra A Christmas Special (1985) Skeletor learns the true meaning of Christmas
  21. The Wind in The Willows (1983) Mr Toad’s wild ride.
  22. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) Your uber eats order is here.
  23. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) The Island of Misfit Toys
  24. Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas (Community S2) (2010) That’s What Christmas is For
  25. Bylo nás pet (There Were Five of Us) (1994) Sledding
  26. Pelíšky (Cosy Dens) (1999) 370 cm Kodiak bear
  27. Hogfather (2006) bogeyman, GNU Pterry
  28. Santa Claus (1898) No, not a typo, this one’s OLD
  29. Die Hard (1988) You know we had to. Merry Christmas.

P.S. Its up for till Middayish on the 31st, sorry for the late talk update.

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Previously at the East Van VODVILLE

Click here for the latest show.

24 from ‘24
We’ve had 17 theme weeks since we soft launched the theatre way back at the end of June. In case you missed them, here are some of our favourite clips, plus a few “new” ones from the folder of misfit clips that finally get to fulfill their Vodville destiny (marked with * )

Happy New Year friends, and thanks for all the love and support. Here’s to much more to come!

  1. Le Grand Amour (1969) - remember to rotate your mattress for optimum road handling [4:46]
  2. The Mark of Zorro (1920) - rooftop chase buckles all the swashes [4:15]
  3. *Everything Is Rhythm (1936) - a pianist with a tiny man [3:24]
  4. Le Voyage à travers l’impossible (1904) - we all live in a cutaway submarine [3:06]
  5. Every Day’s a Holiday (1937) - Mae West in a two story sequin gown [4:41]
  6. Girl Shy (1924) - speeding streetcar shenanigans [3:59]
  7. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - Catbus. [2:44]
  8. Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992) - I went to a kaiju fight and an opera broke out [4:04]
  9. Metropolis (1927) - The transformation scene is too perfect for a snarky comment. No notes. [3:00]
  10. House Hippo PSA (1999) - very real nature documentary [1:01]
  11. La Petite Fille et Son Chat (1900) - OG cat video [0:55]
  12. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) - your tale must be at least this tall to ride the cannon ball [2:33]
  13. Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - run away! run away! [0:31]
  14. Ultraman, episode 14 (1966) - kiester rocket hand puppets [2:41]
  15. The Battle of the Century (1927) - The pie fight to end all pie fights. [3:42]
  16. Pom Poko (1994) - when your fright parade is a surprise hit [3:17]
  17. Christmas in July (1940) - there is no limit to mankind’s ingenuity (in beds!) [1:20]
  18. The Girl on a Broomstick (1972) - Czech New Wave Harry Potter [1:31]
  19. *Seven Chances (1925) - The Bachelor was more sporting in 1925. [2:18]
  20. Invention for Destruction (1958) - the 24 FPS news cycle [2:16]
  21. As Long as You’ve Got Your Health (1966) - this spray does everything! [4:26]
  22. *Every Day’s a Holiday (1937) - Women in butterfly costumes swinging from the rafters? That’s our kind of party. [1:45]
  23. *Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) - the cartoon crossover only a highly trained team of attack lawyers could pull off [2:40]
  24. Limelight (1952) - the slapstick crossover only a highly trained pair of attack vaudevillians could pull off [3:18]
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Previously at the East Van VODVILLE

Click here for the latest show.

This week, we’re proud to present four beautiful short films by a local artist.

Jackie Dives is a multi-disciplinary artist working within photography, video, performance, and installation. She uses both auto-ethnography and collaborative storytelling to address themes of social justice, trauma, grief, identity and community.

Her work has been recognized by the Canada Council for the Arts, the B.C. Arts Council, and the Digital Publishing Awards, and has been exhibited and screened internationally including in venues such as the Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver), Gallery Gachet (Vancouver), and the Maysles Documentary Center (New York). Her clients include The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, The Washington Post and The Guardian, among others.

Four Films by JACKIE DIVES

Bonnie Says (2020) is a short autobiographical film I made during the first lockdown of the Covid 19 pandemic while living alone (with my cat, Kitten). I photographed the grief, anxiety, mundanity, and also the humour of life on both digital and analog cameras. The audio for the film was recorded from my balcony during the 7 o’clock cheer.

Tall Tree (2022) is a short film about the experience of travelling alone as a woman. It was created using a super 8 camera, a camcorder, and audio recordings sent in from women who answered a call out for stories about travelling solo.

Buttertubs Drive (2022) is a collection of clips made in the wake of my father’s death from an accidental drug overdose. The clips were filmed using a super 8 camera and camcorder, and filmed while I was at an artist residency in Duncan, B.C., driving around Vancouver Island visiting places my father and I went together when I was a child.

Garden Party (2020) is a micro film created during an artist residency in Mexico City, and is a meditation on aging as a woman.

jackiedives.com
Insta: @jackiedivesphoto
jackiedives.bsky.social

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Previously at the East Van VODVILLE

Click here for the latest show.

We’re so glad to have you as neighbours.:sparkling_heart:

Fear not, we’re not going to make a habit of turning this thing into a political soap box.*

But with all that’s happening, here are some films that feel especially relevant right now.

None of this is new. None of this is undefeatable.

Please be kind to one another and know that we love and appreciate you all.

  • We’re still figuring out what our role is in the neighbourhood. Are we a delightful escape from the noise? A platform for discussion and activism? All of the above and more? We’d love to hear your input as we navigate that balance.

You can reach us at vodvilleEV@gmail.com

Subject to strong feedback one way or another, we are planning to keep this show up until Wednesday. until Friday.

Good Neighbours

  • First up, we have the La Marseillaise scene from 1942s’ Casablanca. Set in the titular Vichy (the puppet regime, not the sunscreen) controlled city, many of the actors and extras in this scene were European exiles and refugees who fled Nazi Germany.
  • Set around a loudmouth peddling simple answers, outright lies, and convenient scapegoats, we present a scene from the 1943 US Army propaganda film Don’t be a Sucker.
  • Yeah, we know, nobody loves a dream ballet, but this one is special, and it stars Charlie Chaplin! It’s the bouncing globe from the 1940 satire, The Great Dictator.
  • We have Radio Raheem’s love/hate speech from Spike Lee’s 1989’s Do the Right Thing speaking on taking a considered response to the cycle of violence.
  • By very popular request, here is Chaplin’s passionate final speech from The Great Dictator.
  • Finally, we’re serving up three juicy slices of Canadian Bacon, from 1995. How are 30 year old jokes this on the nose? There are only so many ways to divide people, while the ways to connect are infinite.
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Previously at the East Van VODVILLE

Click here for the latest show.

This week, A selection of film scenes from 1929!

On January 1, all films published 95 years ago lose their copyrighted restrictions and enter the public domain. This year, the crop of 1929 can now be freely used to display, remix, and build upon. In the USA.

Due to a legal Gordian Knot involving the Bern Convention, a series of treaties, and the “rule of the shorter term” being exempted for works from the USA and Mexico. Public domain American films may still be copyrighted here, specifically if, (due to CUSMA, 2020) the “authors” (and it’s legally a bit vague who all this is for a motion picture) of the work died after 1971. It’s a mess.

Result: a 20 year public domain hiatus in Canada, with no new works entering public domain until 2042. So unless that changes, we at the Vodville look forward to celebrating a real public domain day in Canada with you then.

THAT SAID, we get around all this by exercising our rights as granted by the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act (1985). Here’s some non-substantial portions of possibly still copyrighted films presented non-commercially, and for educational and/or critical purposes.

Public Domain Day 2025: Films of 1929 if you‘re American

  • First up, we have Auld Lang Syne from Jungle Rhythm, an early Mickey Mouse film animated by the man behind the mouse himself, Ub Iwerks
  • 1929 was the last year the major studios produced silent films, talkies were in, and the previous sound on disc process (yup, actual vinyl records synced to a film projector) was being supplanted by a variety of ways to get the sound onto the film itself. Here we present Finding His Voice, a helpful animated explainer about how Western Electric pulled this trick off.
  • Now that sound was in, the studios needed content, and why make new when you can recycle the works of many famous musicians and Vaudeville entertainers (some graced the stage of Vancouver’s First Pantages Theatre). Here we have a scene by George Burns, and the writer and brains of the outfit, Gracie Allen from their famous bit, Lambchops.
  • While Hollywood was recycling, the Soviets were innovating, here we present a city scene from the experimental documentary Man with a Movie Camera, directed by Dziga Vertov. No script, no actors, just city life in Russia in the 1920’s.
  • Getting back to Hollywood Vaudevillians, it’s the shirt song from the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts. Laundry day at our house just got more musical.
  • Proof positive that unintelligible announcements for transit systems are at least a century old tradition, we have Laurel and Hardy in Berth Marks
  • Gabbo GABBO GABBO! ahem, The Great Gabbo, is a film about a ventriloquist and his dummy. It’s great, but those bits were creepy, so here’s the for sure not strange Web of Love song instead.
  • The Walt Disney company is famously litigious when it comes to copyright, but we like living dangerously, so here’s a titch over 10% of Wild Waves. Singing seals, animated by Ub Iwerks, music by Carl Stalling (who died in 1972)
  • Back to The Cocoanuts for an expertly played cash register and bike horn.
  • We finish up with the Carousel Scene from Man with a Movie Camera, (the whole movie is flat out amazing by the way).
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