Vancouver Public Library offers over 300 cinematic classics with new streaming service

Here's some pretty amazing news: the world's greatest film classics are now accessible online with your Vancouver library card.

As an expansion of their digital offerings, the Vancouver Public Library recently launched a streaming service that offers over 300 titles from the Criterion Collection, a video-distribution service that specializes in seminal and groundbreaking classic and contemporary cinematic works.

If you've been putting off watching renowned titles like François Truffaut's The 400 Blows or Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, now you have one less excuse to do so. At your fingertips are films from international auteurs like Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Jane Campion, Jean Renoir, Akira Kurosawa, and countless others.

You can browse by directors' names or by collections, such as Eastern European and Russian Cinema, French New Wave, Japanese Cinema, International Silent Cinema, and Art Cinema of the 1980s and 1990s. There are cult classics like David Lynch's Eraserhead  and Paul Bartels' Eating Raoul to even fairly recent releases such as the 2012 documentary Liv & Ingmar or the 1994 basketball documentary Hoop Dreams.

Any current web browser will work. Users must be Vancouver residents and have a VPL card to log in with.

To check it out, visit the VPL website.