The Prop House Film

Paul Wong (2024)
3:30min, film, no sound

Director Paul Wong
Cinematographer & Editor Christian Yves Jones
Commissioned by MPCAS
Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen/grunt gallery

Using drone and Steadicam cinematography the filmmaker takes us into the magic wonderland of Mount Pleasant Furniture (MPF) two warehouses, a labyrinth of 35,000sqf crammed with furnishings, objects of art, paintings, textiles, sculpture, figurines. MPF is a family owned business that has served the Vancouver film and television industry over the past 40 years. The Prop House Film offers an opportunity to celebrate and explore this extraordinary collection of one million objects with the public for the first time. Secreted behind a closed door, this hidden gem is known only to film directors, production designers and artists.

The film opens with a drone view of downtown Vancouver and the Mountains. The camera drops down to reveal a group of people sitting on the rooftop garden of the MPF building. The film cuts to interior views of a massive space filled with office furniture, courtrooms and religious relics from different eras. The camera sweeps past grand chandeliers, we dissolve into a room of classical landscape paintings, ornate lamps, and objects d’ art. We climb stairs lined with early 20th century black and white photographic portraits and then enter into area of telecommunications equipment, hundreds of dialup telephones, vintage radios, television sets, typewriters etc. A small selection of 250 titles from the thousands of film, television, and artists projects that have used MPF appear as a scrolling Star Wars style graphic throughout the film.

The Prop House Film gives us a peek into a local business that will soon disappear in Mount Pleasant. Gentrification of the area has made it unaffordable to remain operating in this urban core.

The Prop House Film will be shown on the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen May 17, 2024 to May 18, 2025, located at the southwest corner of Kingsway and Broadway. This film is also being featured as part of the art exhibition The Prop House: Collection of One Million Objects at Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver May 17- August 18, 2024. This exhibition includes that work of 9 artists installations responding to the Mount Pleasant Furniture Collection.