The Image Before Us

This film uses archival footage, much of it rare, to illustrate how a city's image can be constructed with selective use of film images. Filmmaker Colin Browne scoured archives throughout North America to find footage about Vancouver. What he found was an amazing collection of promotional films which featured this city as a playground for well-heeled travellers and a bustling city for eager investors. The Image Before Us is not about Vancouver but about representation, about how an image that represents one thing may well be serving another. Ordinary people at home or at work are rarely shown. These films deceive by concentrating on the rich, frolicking in the city's beauty spots, while concealing the daily realities of the majority of its citizens. A fascinating study of media manipulation.