The works of Yaletown Productions Inc. are the City of Vancouver Archives’ latest and largest moving-image acquisition.

Yaletown Productions produced many works in Vancouver from the 1970s to 1990s. The donation included 181 television video reels and video tape cassettes, 112 film reels, 15 audio reels, 200 photographs and three metres of textual records. The film work features movies, training and educational productions, corporate and promotional films, documentaries, commercials, and tourism films about the city, Expo 86, and British Columbia.

With the film industry playing a prominent role in Vancouver’s economy, the acquisition helps retain an important piece of the city’s history, and documents how the city has grown and changed so much over a few decades.

Vancouver Archives hosts a sold-out special screening of “Celebrating Yaletown Productions” on November 6. The screening highlights the company’s films and the career of its co-founder Mike Collier. The Yaletown records, including over 300 hours of final productions and raw footage, are now available for research at the Archives at 1150 Chestnut Street in Vanier Park. Starting November 7, some Vancouver-related footage will be available online, with most of the remainder available online in early 2012 with the release of a new Archives database.

The film is the culmination of six months of work by Archives’ staff to arrange, describe and preserve the records and digitize the film and video elements. The project was made possible by the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Grants Program and the participation of the Government of Canada.

Visit vancouver.ca/archives for more information and watch a preview here: