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'Finding Easter eggs': Vancouver history teacher compiling local film history on YouTube

The Vancouver skyline is pictured from the air at sunset. (Pete Cline / CTV News Vancouver) The Vancouver skyline is pictured from the air at sunset. (Pete Cline / CTV News Vancouver)
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Like many people, Chris Banks taught himself a new skill when things were locked down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, he's applying that skill – video editing – to a project he's had on his mind for years: a visual history of Vancouver on film.

"Nobody had done it before," he said. "I thought it would be something that people would enjoy."

Banks, a high school history and social studies teacher, has been cutting together compilations of scenes from movies shot in Vancouver and posting them on his YouTube channel

The videos are set to music and intersperse facts about the locations shown in the films with the captured images of bygone eras.

"The idea is kind of like you're learning about the chronology of Vancouver film, but also a little bit about the history of the city as a whole," Banks said.

He said there were "a lot of different factors" that led him to the project, including his interest in movies and local history.

"As a kid, I didn't really realize which films were filmed in Vancouver, so I was rewatching some of them as an adult and noticing all these locations," he said. "I just thought that was cool. Our city's kind of been hidden from us in movies, because it almost always is portrayed as some other city."

Banks also cited the 2003 documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself and Tony Zhou's 2015 video essay Vancouver Never Plays Itself – which touches on that same theme of Vancouver being hidden from the audience on film – as inspirations. 

The compilations Banks posts are less about answering the question of why Vancouver is so often disguised from audiences, and more about compiling and showcasing occasions when it shines through.

"The whole project is basically finding Easter eggs," Banks said, adding that it's difficult to pick a favourite discovery he's made since embarking on the project.

The find most personally relevant to him is easier to pick out. During his research, Banks discovered that the 1980 film Out of the Blue, directed by Dennis Hopper, featured multiple scenes at the Ridge Theatre and bowling alley, which has since been demolished.

"I just found that awesome, because that place that was really close to my heart as a kid – I saw my first movie there – that was captured on film," Banks said.

He said he hopes other long-time Vancouverites see landmarks from their pasts in his videos.

"I hope that people other than lifelong Vancouverites get a kick out of it, but I think primarily the audience is people who maybe grew up here who would remember some of these things that maybe don't exist anymore," Banks said.

With files from CTV News Vancouver's Lisa Steacy 

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