The Box

Last Thursday I got the privilege to watch the two films at the arts centre from the projection room, or the projection box.

Adam is 21 and has been a projectionist for 4 years while he is studying environmental science. He says that he must have seen more than 400 movies; some were even quite rare as he was working at an arts cinema in the place he was born.

The heat and the noise from the two CINEMECCANICA machines didn’t make it really comfortable to watch the movie, but it is a rather magical place. The amount of gadgets and small reels of film with trailers and advertisements that are stored on the shelves bears the atmosphere of a workshop where the projectionist gives the final polish to the piece of art. I laughed just by seeing the commercials from Orange mobile phone in the size and colours of slides.

Being a projectionist is a lonely job, no wonder that Adam talked almost non stop about every little step and functionality that he operated during the screening. You don’t get contact with the public apart from some hand waves at the beginning or at the end of the film, but on an old cinema like the Arts Centre there are a lot of things to do besides keeping track to the automation and memorising the lines of the characters in the movies. The film comes in reels of 20 minutes long and it has to be spliced onto two big reels that will be installed in each of the machines. The comercials, trailers, and each of the pieces of the film, have to be so perfectly spliced to the point of creating a perfect ring when bent. In the meanwhile, Adam explains what to do when changing from Large Screen to Cinemascope, changing the lens and adjusting the frame to fine cut the edges of the film, and shows the tiny sinusiodal lines of the soundtrack on the 35mm film.

I guess the great fun comes when, after the film is set and runing for half way though, one of the big reels finishes and the other has to start running. There is a small black circle that appears for less that half a second at the top right corner of the screen, and five seconds later another comes that gives the signal for the projectionist to switch machines. It is great! You focus your eyes without blinking on the screen, and although the characters keep doing their lives on the stage, you only want to know about the one important corner. Then, Adam makes a swift move and you can the machines doing a lot of noise and until the first reel of film finishes leading the loose end of the film to wave in the air for a couple of seconds. Now it is time to take the reel off and rewind it all way to the beginning, all done by hand!

I saw two films in there. The first, "The Ballad of Jack and Rose", was nice for the photography but the second one was absolutely amazing. “Shooting dogs” is an extremely sad and true story about the genocide in Ruanda. Although I felt quite detached from the experience of watching the movie, as I seemed to be watching the movie of the movie, I could perfectly imagine the shock it would have been to see it from inside the cinema room instead.

Once in a while Adam talks with a lot of respect about Bob, the senior projectionist, who has done that job for more than fifty years. Basically, he takes that responsibility like he was caring for someone very dear to him. His favourite film is “Cine Paradiso” which is probably my favourite film as well. Someone else tells me - “Bob is 70 but he looks like 50, alcohol and the movies have kept him preserved”. I give a big laugh and hope you all keep going. For us it is just a fantastic experience.