Projectionists draw projectors: an ongoing series.
What is a projectionist? A projectionist, for the purposes of this project, is anyone who knows how to operate any sort of film projector. Some projectionists are professionals. These days, they mostly work at movie theaters, but sometimes they work at more specialized screening rooms like those used for private press screenings or for university film studies classes. Sometimes professional film projectionists are union members – this isn’t the case in Chicago these days (for the most part) but it is in other cities. There are also many amateur projectionists – people who project film as volunteers or as hobbyists. They project film in diverse places: student film societies, their own living rooms and basements, and (once upon a time) classrooms, churches, dentist’s office waiting rooms, and endless other spaces. Traditionally, 16mm and 8mm were the main formats projected by non-professional and amateur projectionists.
What is a projector? A projector, obviously, is a machine that projects film. This includes everything from hulking theatrical 35mm (or 70mm!) projectors to the dinky little Super 8 projector your dad used to show home movies on.
Why this project? Partly because we know a lot of projectionists and it’s fun to have them draw things when you’re all waiting for food at the diner after the show. More seriously – because we want to record some sense of how projectionists relate to the machines that they’ve operated. And because the future of the medium is particularly uncertain these days, we’d also like to record a sense of the skill and affection involved in every level of the trade, and a sense of the extent to which film projection – of all types – permeated cultural life during the 20th and early 21st centuries.
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If you have projected film at any time during your life and would like to contribute a drawing to the project, please mail it to the Chicago Film Society, 1635 E 55th St, Chicago, IL 60615 or just bring it to us at one of our screenings.
Click thumbnails to enlarge! – Or view on Tumblr.
Has projected at: Doc Films
Title: “Anxiety”
Has projected at:
the Grand Theatre 18, Hattiesburg, MS
Other activities: cargocollective.com/meredithk
Has projected at: the Dryden Theatre
“There’s a lot of people here, so don’t fuck up.”
Q: How can you have a projector that does film and digital?
A: That’s the Image Science. A trade secret!
Has projected at:
Pacific Film Archive Library and Film Study Center
Title: “Film Becomes Me”
Has projected at:
the Smith Opera House, Geneva, NY
and the Dryden Theatre
Has projected at:
The Gene Siskel Film Center
The Chicago Underground Film Festival
and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Has projected at:
The Gene Siskel Film Center
Title: “Abstract Projector”
Has projected at:
A/V rooms at Wisconsin high schools, including:
New London High School (1964-1969)
and Mercer High School (1969-1973)
Has projected at:
Strand Theater, Schroon Lake, NY
Paramount Theater, Schroon Lake, NY
Skyline Drive-In, Crown Point, NY
Other activities: The Chatham Film Club
Has projected at:
the Little Theatre
Has projected at:
San Francisco Media Archive/Oddball Film+Video
Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan
Cinema Village, Manhattan
and the streets
Has projected at:
Flagship Cinemas, Derry, NH
Two Boots Pioneer Cinema, Manhattan
Cinema Village, Manhattan
and the NYU Cinema Studies Department
Has projected at:
Cinema Borealis and Cinema Borealis, etc.
Other activities: Full Aperture Systems
Has projected at:
Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles, CA
Artist’s Television Access in San Francisco, CA
and galleries, performance spaces, microcinemas, and living rooms.
ADRIANNE JORGE, Member, IATSE Local 306
Has projected at:
The Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA
The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA
Anthology Film Archives in New York City
The Paramount Center in Boston, MA
…and at Sundance, Tribeca, Doha, Dubai, Traverse City, and many other film festivals.
She writes, “I would like to contribute a couple of technical drawings that I made for my old booth at the Manhattan Film Center in NY, where I worked as Woody Allen’s personal projectionist for six years.
ADRIANNE JORGE, Member, IATSE Local 306
“I was asked by Mr. Allen’s editors to compile and write a manual for the projection booth, in the event that myself or any of my regular substitutes were not available for a screening. These two drawings were meant to illustrate the different threading paths that we were regularly using in the booth at the time. We were running everything changeover on Simplex heads with Atlas bases. The Atlas is very rare these days, as it was originally meant for double system post production projection, where a magnetic reel of dialog track could run simultaneous with the picture reel on the projector. Magnetic sound was abandoned several years ago, for simpler and cheaper digital audio Fostex decks. And now with Mr. Allen’s last two films, 35mm film has been almost completely eliminated from the post production process. So I have these drawings of an extinct and historical system, one that I loved for half a dozen years. I hope they can at least serve an artistic purpose in your collection.”
Kent has submitted a drawing to the project before. This is a more functional drawing, originally intended to show projectionists how to turn on the variable speed motor for projecting silent films at 18fps.
Has projected at:
Gloria Biograf, Copenhagen, Denmark
Has projected at:
the Dryden and Curtis Theatres
AMC Como Mall 8, Cheektowaga, NY
General Cinema, Amherst, NY
Eastern Hills Cinema, Williamsville, NY
Seneca Twin, Lackawanna, NY
and the General Cinema Twin, Lake Mary, FL
Thoughts: “Any good projector would be at that pitch, tucked away high up in the booth of a movie palace.”
Has projected at:
Keene State College Film Society
Has projected at:
Keene State College Film Society
Flagship Cinemas, Derry, NH
and the Little Theatre
Has projected at:
the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA
the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA
and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Has projected at:
the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA
the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA
the Provincetown International Film Festival,
and the Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA
as well as at various small-gauge venues
Title:“Kodascope (Model C)”
Has projected at: Cinebeasts
and the Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival
Other activities: cartoonsonfilm.com
Title: “Norelco DP-70”Other activities: the Lake Street Screening Room
Has projected at:
Doc Films
the Music Box Theatre
Gene Siskel Film Center
and Block Cinema
Other activities: rrlyon.tumblr.com
Has projected at: Doc Films
Thoughts: “Quoting Eric Riggers, ‘The Eastman 16B is the sweetest smelling projector in the world.'”
Has projected at: Doc Films
Other activities: Active in Chicago theater, currently working with About Face and Lifeline
Thoughts: “The projectionist’s view of the projector never changes. No matter what you’re projecting. Also, it’s amazing what absorbing stories in ten-minute increments with ten-minute gaps will do to your brain. And lastly, once you’ve learned to see dots, you can ever unsee them for the rest of your life, and your foot always twitches at the second set.”
Title: “This Old Machine”
Has projected at:
Doc Films
and Facets Cinematheque
Has projected at:
Doc Films
Title: “The Gate”
Has projected: as part of the A/V Squad at Wilton High School and at the Reed College Movie Board, 1964-8
Other activities: Harvard Squirrel Archive
Has projected at:
the Music Box Theatre
Facets Cinematheque
Bank of America Cinema
Laemmle’s Music Hall 3
Laemmle’s Monica 4-plex
Laemmle’s Royal Theatre
Thoughts: “I often think it is like deejaying, in that it actually isn’t that hard most of the time, but one has to constantly fiddle and pretend to do stuff to justify it to yourself or the audience. Also, when I used to work at changeover places, it was hard for me to relax while the film was running. Now that I work at platter houses, it is totally easy to relax. I had to run changeovers the other night, though, and I was really nervous and ill-at-ease for the first few reels. By the third or fourth, though, it was fine and I had a good rhythm. (It being a fun movie didn’t hurt, either.) I still didn’t sit down the whole time, though.”
Has projected at: Doc Films
Other activities: anht.hu
Has projected at:
the Music Box Theatre
Gene Siskel Film Center
and the University of Chicago Film Studies Center
Title: “Upstairs”
Has projected at: [coming soon]
Has projected at:
Gene Siskel Film Center
Has projected at:
Doc Films
Bank of America Cinema
Other activities:
Open Produce.
Has projected at:
Doc Films
the University of Chicago Film Studies Center
Bank of America Cinema
the Little Theatre
the Dryden Theatre
and the Northwest Chicago Film Society.
Has projected at:
Doc Films
Bank of America Cinema
the Genesee Theatre
the Patio Theater
Cinema Borealis
the Music Box Theatre
and the Northwest Chicago Film Society
Title: “Projector at Doc Films”
Has projected at:
Doc Films
the University of Chicago Film Studies Center
the Gene Siskel Film Center
the Patio Theater
Bank of America Cinema
and the Northwest Chicago Film Society.