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Nanaimo’s Hub City Cinema Society re-brands as CineCentral Filmmakers Society

Name change comes as part of regional filmmakers’ group’s new five-year plan
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Hub City Cinema Society president Zachary Tannar announced last week that his group has changed its name to the CineCentral Filmmakers Society. (Photo courtesy Zachary Tannar/Graphic courtesy Moe Akbar)

On the Hub City Cinema Society’s seventh birthday, the local non-profit filmmakers’ organization announced it was changing its name and unveiled its new logo.

On May 22, HCCS became the CineCentral Filmmakers Society. Society president Zachary Tannar said that name change is part of the group’s recently established five-year strategic plan and explained there were a few reasons behind the switch.

“When we came up with that name it felt like a good name. What we really wanted to do was to be a hub for the Island and for a long time it was good,” he said of the original moniker. “But then we’ve now been an organization for seven years and over the past couple years I’ve been really starting to see little issues with the old name.”

Tannar said he was concerned the ‘Hub City’ part could get confused with other local groups and businesses that use that Nanaimo nickname – right across from the HCCS studio is Hub City Cycles – but the “spark” the made him re-evaluate the name was the fact that the group is no longer Nanaimo-centric.

“We were having members on a board who were in Qualicum, Parksville and Ladysmith, so not just in Nanaimo. And that was what made me really go, ‘Huh,’ and realize that we are more than just the Hub City now,” Tannar said. “At the very least we’re central Island so I felt like it would be very valuable for us to expand our brand to represent that and hopefully that will allow us to grow more as an organization.”

He said the HCCS team went through “like 100 different names” before deciding on CineCentral, which Tannar said retains the identity of being a central location for filmmakers. Also, with the ‘Cine’ prefix Tannar said CineCentral joins Victoria’s CineVic and Vancouver’s Cineworks as “the ‘Cine’ trio of non-profit film societies in British Columbia.” He said he hopes to do more work with those organizations in the future.

For a logo, Tannar turned to local designer Moe Akbar, who combined the upside-down raindrop used to denote location on online maps with a spout-like camera lens to create CineCentral’s new emblem.

“It’s a logo that really represents who we are,” Tannar said. “Saying, ‘This is where we make films.’”

SEE RELATED: Hub City Cinema Society marks five years nurturing local filmmakers



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