The Médiathèque holds the document collections and also provides access to the Cinémathèque’s other collections.
It was Guy-L. Coté who founded the Cinémathèque québécoise, back in 1963. In addition to being a filmmaker and film buff, Côté was also a book lover. Realizing the importance of written materials as the memory of cinema, over his lifetime he amassed a collection that now forms the basis of the Cinémathèque’s documentation holdings, making it one of the largest film reference libraries in America.
Guy-L. Coté passed away on September 12, 1994. In 1997, to pay tribute to this remarkable man, the Cinémathèque’s Documentation Centre was renamed the Médiathèque Guy-L.-Coté.
At the Médiathèque, documents on cinema, television, video and new media from all periods are available for consultation. An important function of this section is to catalogue periodicals on these different audiovisual fields and index the articles in the database for research purposes. The Médiathèque also makes it possible to view certain audiovisual works and access information about our collections.
The Médiathèque is supported by the Quebec ministère de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition féminine.
The online collections interface allows users to search the Cinémathèque’s abundant specialized collections.
Opening Hours
Tuesday to Friday from 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M.
Access to new documents can not be done in 30 minutes before closing.
Books
The multi-language collection of books and monographs contains almost 45 000 highly varied items: essays, biographies and film studies; catalogues and programs; promotional and technical documents; studies of the television and film industries; press reviews; reference works; and several other kinds of documents dedicated to the moving image.
Periodicals
The periodicals collection includes an impressive array of more than 6000 journals and magazines in a variety of languages from around the world that touch on all aspects of film art, television and video. The Cinémathèque subscribes to more than 200 publications, available for consultation.
Press kits
Over the years, the Médiathèque has assembled a unique collection comprising more than 135 000 press clippings about local and international filmmakers, actors, films, TV shows, events and topics. Each week, the Médiathèque compiles hundreds of new articles on film and television from newspapers published in Quebec, Canada and around the world, integrating them into existing dossiers or creating new dossiers. The result is an outstanding documentary fonds dedicated to the moving image.
Videos for viewing
Médiathèque users have onsite access to more than 8000 titles on videocassette or DVD for viewing. The video catalogue essentially covers most of the documentary and narrative works produced in Quebec, several film classics, and a number of notable contemporary international films, as well as a major fonds of TV shows from Radio-Canada.
Specialized collections
The basic collection is supplemented by a number of rare and specialized collections. These include the following, among others:
- The Daniel Langlois Foundation Collection of the Cinémathèque québécoise;
- A collection of rare or no-longer-in-print periodicals, available on microfilm (Close-Up, Canadian Moving Picture Digest, Variety, Biograph, etc.);
- Original scripts of foreign films;
- he GRAFICS fonds on cinema’s early years;
- Rare books from the pre-cinema period to the early years of the movies (1895-1914).
