As Movie Theaters Remain Shut, A Shadow Looms over the Prospects for Film Preservation
Theaters across New York City have been dark since March last year and have seen no activity except for some movement in one corner — the projection room. Projectionists, even some that were furloughed, are returning to maintain the upkeep of the traditional film projectors.
Since there is no going back from digital projection which became the industry norm some 20 years ago, film projectors and their parts are no longer manufactured. This has emphasized the importance of preserving these machines so that the few art house cinemas and museums in New York that still project 35 mm reels, can continue to do so.
Being put on furlough due to the pandemic has brought in new challenges for projectionists, who want to preserve the culture of watching movies on film for as long as the audience for it exists.
According to Fred Hatt, the senior-most projectionist at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), watching films on old media is like having a time machine. “I feel like when projecting films, I’m reviving the past,” he said. “These old films bring the past to life like nothing else.”
MoMA is a space that believes in preserving film and routinely schedules film screenings that require the revving of the film projector. “They have this valuable collection of films and they really need people who won’t mess those up. A lot of the younger people don’t know it,” Hatt said.
Genevieve Havemayer-King, co-chair of the Association of Moving Image Archives, is one of the few young people who is dedicated to the craft of film restoration. She routinely works with organizations like Anthology Film Archives and Mono No Aware, which conduct workshops for people interested in the art and science of film preservation.
The few places in the city that utilized film projectors quickly moved to a virtual platform to continue their year-round film programming, with no plans of reopening in-person screenings till at least fall 2021.
“The pandemic doesn’t help,” Havemayer-King said. “It’s made a lot of my archival work feel a little bit futile. We hope that the world isn’t going to end and we can one day watch all these films that we’re preserving.”
Since theaters in the city shut in March last year, they’ve suffered huge financial losses and have threatened to put some of them out of business. As a result, many projectionists were furloughed.
“They can’t afford to pay somebody to come in for even four hours every month,” said Havemayer-King.
With theaters set to open in New York with limited capacity from March 3, projection rooms with digital projectors are getting ready to showcase the latest Disney movie. However there is still no re-opening date in sight for theaters that run on film, extending the uncertainty around the prospects of film restoration.
Hatt thinks that film is here to stay and especially at MoMA, it’s not going to go away. “They own so much film and they want to keep it. They’re committed as an arts institution to preserving that stuff and to showing things in as close to the original format as possible,” said Hatt, who goes to an empty theater at MoMA twice a week to work on the maintenance of one of the few remaining film projectors in New York City.