The Marie Dressler Foundation was established in 1989 to restore and preserve the house where Marie Dressler is believed to have been born. The Foundation, led by Bob Amsbury and Bill Patchett, raised about $400,000 to buy and repair the building, which now houses the Marie Dressler Museum and Cobourg's Tourism and Community Development Departments.

Having restored the building, the Foundation convened a committee to organize a festival of Marie Dressler films to show the community why Dressler occupies a unique place in film history. The festival has continued in the following years and now shows films featuring Dressler's contemporaries. More on Marie Dressler. The Vintage Film Festival continues to be organized by a sub-committee of the Marie Dressler Foundation as a fund-raising event.   Apart from keeping the memory of Marie Dressler alive, the Foundation provides scholarships  to Students in West Northumberland who are planning further education in the arts. Go to the separate site for Marie Dressler and the Foundation for more details.

Festival costs are not covered by ticket revenue - continued funding depends on the generous support of our Sponsors.

Capitol Theatre - VFF Festival 2006The Festival is held every year on the last weekend of October and we show a variety of films generally made before 1959. Usually, one film features Ms. Dressler, but others range from very old, silent films starring Mary Pickford, Erich von Stroheim or Douglas Fairbanks, to talkies and musicals. For a list of all films shown to date, click here.

This year, the entire Festival will be at Port Hope's Historic Capitol Theatre starting on Friday with a bonus film followed by a Reception. (Venue location map here).

For more on previous festivals, see our news page. See the program page for information on the movies to be shown this year. Tickets for the coming season go on sale each year in early summer.

Contact

Mailing List

If you'd like to join our mailing list, we'll keep you informed of news and updates about our program. This mailing list is used strictly for updating you on the Vintage Film Festival and will not be made available to anyone else. Either send us an e-mail (above) or sign yourself up on the positive confirmation mailing list system available here.

2017 Committee

Role		Volunteer
	Chair  Volunteers	Cathie Houston
	Promotion and Publicity Chair	Ros  Pigeau
	Film Program	Terry Foord
	Reception	Lynn Hardy
	Treasurer	Leslie Benson
	Tickets	Rick Miller
	Recording Secretary  Web site	John Draper
	Corresponding Secretary	Leslie Benson
	Printed Program Chair	Tom Cruikshank
	Fundraising Chair	Cathie Houston
	Brown Bag Lunch Speaker Chair	Michael Hanlon

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