Awards season may be in full swing, but don’t overlook all the film festivals and series headed our way. After all, it’s the perfect time of year to hibernate in a cavernous movie theatre until spring. And festivals provide a community-building, communal moviegoing experience that’ll break you out of your home-entertainment cocoon. Pick your pleasure with this rundown of what’s coming up.

Chaplin!
to February 11; Pacific Cinémathí¨que, 1131 Howe Street; www.cinematheque.bc.ca
This expansive retrospective is already under way, but there are still numerous opportunities left to revisit the most iconic silver-screen comedian of them all, Charlie Chaplin. This exhibition features new 35mm prints of shorts and features, including one of his best-known works, Modern Times (1936), and his first talkie, The Great Dictator (1940). You can also find Chaplin sharing the Limelight (1952) with fellow silent-film comic Buster Keaton and courting controversy in Monsieur Verdoux (1947), in which the mustachioed Tramp transformed into a serial killer. Rounding things out is Chaplin’s swan song as a leading man in A King in New York (1957).

Virgin Radio Vancouver’s Fake Film Festival
January 28; Five Sixty, 560 Seymour Street; vancouver.virginradio.ca
Too busy to watch a whole movie? Check out Virgin Radio Vancouver’s website for 60-second knockoffs of flicks like Inception, Twilight, and Jurassic Park made by British Columbian contestants. Then find out who the 10 finalists are at a Hollywood-themed wrap party at nightclub Five Sixty, where the top dog will snap up $10,000 in cash.

From Ecstasy To Rapture: 50 Years Of The Other Spanish Cinema
February 2 and 9, Pacific Cinémathí¨que, www.cinematheque.bc.ca
Does “Spanish experimental cinema” automatically make you think Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali? If so, perhaps it’s time to broaden your knowledge of Spain’s cinematic avant-garde. This touring exhibition of animation, self-portraits, cameraless techniques, the performing arts, and psychedelic oddities from the 1950s onward will blow your mind en español.

World Community Film Festival
February 11 to 13, Langara College, www.codevfilmfest.org
It’s year 10 of this socially and environmentally conscious festival that supplies that rarest of resources: hope. With more than 40 documentaries to choose from, such as Dirt! The Movie, and a Social Justice Bazaar with fair-trade goods and activist organizations, there’s an abundance of ways to become engaged in world issues ranging from the local-food movement to Middle Eastern nonviolent activism.

Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival
February 11 to 19, various venues, www.vimff.org
They’ll be coming round the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival when they come (yeehaw). And who are they? Why, world-class skiers, climbers, mountain bikers, environmental activists, and more from Canada, the U.S., and Germany, who will appear as guest speakers at the 14th annual edition. That’s in addition to 36 films about adventures that transpire everywhere from Siberia and Greenland to the Congo River.

Rendez-vous Du Cinema Quebecois Et Francophone
February 17 to 27; Jules-Verne School Auditorium, 5445 Baillie Street; www.rendez-vousvancouver.com
The 17th edition of this annual showcase promises a whopping 50 films to choose from. On the masculin side, there’s a Quebec drama about three dysfunctional male family members (A l’origine d’un cri) and Patric Jean’s documentary La Domination masculine (Male Domination). For a féminin take, there’s a biopic about Mozart’s sister (Nannerl, la soeur de Mozart) and a drama about a female Montreal photographer (Tromper le silence). And, of course, the twain shall meet in L’Arnacoeur (Heart Breaker). Ooh la la, indeed.

Canada's Top Ten 2010
February 18 to 24, Pacific Cinémathí¨que, www.cinematheque.bc.ca
This Canuck celluloid celebration presents the 10 best features and 10 most stellar shorts our nation produced last year. There’s everything from Bruce McDonald’s female-rocker drama (Trigger) to Catherine Martin’s solemn study of grief (Mourning for Anna) to Lixin Fan’s assiduous documentation of Chinese migrant workers (Last Train Home). Don’t forget to check out the shorts program, which includes Vancouver director Ann Marie Fleming’s emotionally complex animated short “I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors”.

Vancouver Women In Film Festival
March 4 to 6; Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street; www.womeninfilm.ca
To paraphrase Destiny’s Child: all the women who are independent filmmakers, throw your hands up for this event! With five features (including the opening film Black Field) and more than 40 short films, a digital-media forum, an aboriginal showcase, panel discussions, networking opportunities, pitch sessions, and plenty more, the sixth annual VWIFF will keep your schedule humming along right up to a special short-film showcase on International Women’s Day (March 8).

KinoFest 2011
March 8 to 12, Vancity Theatre and Pacific Cinémathí¨que, www.kinofilmvancouver.blogspot.com
Who else is coming? The Russians, of course—more specifically, rock star and director Igor Garik Sukachev and his House of the Sun lead Svetlana Ivanova, Inadequate People director Roman Karimov, and Minors Under 16”¦ producer Valery Todorovsky, who will grace KinoFest’s inaugural run. A mix of features and documentaries provides a slice of historical and contemporary Russian life that goes far beyond vodka and caviar.

Also upcoming: information wasn’t yet available about the Kurdish Film Festival, tentatively scheduled for February 12 and 13 at the Vancity Theatre. Full details also weren’t available by deadline for the Port Moody Canadian Film Festival, but it’s scheduled to run March 10 to 13 at the Inlet Theatre (100 Newport Drive, Port Moody) with six features from the Great White North.