From ‘Blade Runner’ to ‘Groundhog Day’ the Flashback Film Fest brings classics and fan-favourites back to the silver screen
Supplied - Courtesy of Cineplex What: The Flashback Film Festival
When: February 3 – 9
Where: Scotiabank Theatre @ West Edmonton Mall
Tickets: $7.99 – General Admission, $6.99 – Any 5 or more, $69.99 – Any 17 or more https://www.cineplex.com/Events/FBFF
In today’s world of sequels, prequels, and reboots, it’s often easy to forget about the original films that inspired them. The Flashback Film Fest aims to remind movie-goers of these iconic films. As Brad LaDouceur, Vice President of Event Cinema at Cineplex, describes, the festival is “a one-week celebration of great fan-favourite films, movies that movie lovers want to see back on the big screen.”
The Flashback Film Fest brings back digitally remastered versions of popular blockbusters and cult movies to the big screen in Cineplex theatres across the country. The annual festival is being presented this year in Edmonton at West Edmonton Mall’s Scotiabank Theatre and runs from February 3 to 9. The program of classic films range from Jurassic Park to Blade Runner to Fargo and Pulp Fiction, among others.
In deciding the film program to be featured every year, LaDouceur encourages movie fans to voice their thoughts and requests through social media during the festival. The #FBFF hashtag, for example, allows him and those behind the scenes at Cineplex at the end of the festival to rank the requested films for future programs.
“We (take the fan information) back to our studio partners to say ‘Here’s what fans are looking for’ and look to see if they’ve been remastered for digital cinema,” he says. “And then, next year, we start to curate and meet. It takes about two months to get the right list together.”
LaDouceur goes on to explain the origins of this cult film festival, which started more than 40 years ago. According to him, the concept was modelled after the Ontario Place Cinesphere 70mm Film Festival where people would visit to see, what would become, today’s classic films. “You could go down there and see Apocalypse Now,” he recalls. But when that theatre closed down, and films started being converted from film to digital, things changed.
“Digital was becoming a thing, and people had to realize that digital was a part of the new cinema experience,” says LaDouceur. “(That’s when) the studios were starting to create these great digital prints of classic films.”
Despite its history, the festival was rebranded this year, renamed from the Great Digital Film Fest to the Flashback Film Fest. LaDouceur explains that despite the rebranding, the festival remains all about the films fans want to see.
“We’ve rebranded at the same time as the decision to open up the genres, so that we’re inserting more comedy because of more people chiming in ‘I want to see this’ on Flashback or Great Digital,” he says. “We used this opportunity of rebranding to include more genres of film.”
LaDouceur hopes the festival will allow moviegoers to share in the experience of movie-going and discover, or rediscover, their favourite movies brought back to the big screen.
“I think (Flashback) is all about the experience of moviegoing,” he says. “People have a sense that going to the movies is all about big, epic Hollywood pictures, and for a lot of people, they never got the opportunity to see The Princess Bride on the big screen or see Groundhog Day with an audience full of people laughing along. We think it’s a part of movie-going in general, that you get to celebrate classics.”
