The Vancouver International Film Festival launches tonight, and the centerpiece won’t be a movie, but the “luxurious, state-of-the-art, 175-seat theatre” that is making its debut at the festival this week. “In addition to providing practical opportunities for year-round programming as well as working space for filmmakers, a film archive and artistic partnerships, the centre is important symbolically in that it gives cultural and physical prominence to the serious type of cinema the society offers.”