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Going, Going...

Barrie Patterson

The rapid disappearance of celluloid appears to be a fact.

Clinging to the place it's had in most people's lives - all their lives - can be
seen as head in the sand. However there is another significant development.
The shift to digital is the loss of film projectors - from the multiplexes, from the
specialist outlets, even from the IMAX venues. Most boxes are too cramped to
accommodate both systems.
In the U.S. this has meant that the companies handling vintage movie prints
have been dumping their stock, because it doesn't pay them to warehouse
these any more. If you're an admirer of Casablanca or Singing in the Rain, no
big deal. New digital files, which may even be better than the film copies (and
may not), have been made and circulated. However if you are a Warren
William fan or a follower of Henri Decoin, tough luck. No one is interested in
spending the money on transferring their efforts.

Related to this is the inability to handle earlier projection systems.
Occasionally and at great expense to tax payers some place, rare film does
make its way to our shores. However the odds of it hitting the screen in a
meaningful form are slim. After the film funding bureaucracy wiped out our
local NFT all those years back, the skills needed in running vintage film shows
evaporated.
The venues where you might get these here, Randwick Ritz, The Chauvel,
Dendy Quays became repeat offenders. Just from my own movie going
experience, recently the Golden Koala event ran the Chinese 1.85 (ratio) film
The Sun Beaten Path stretched in `scope, the way the Silent Film Festival
aired a used-to-be-standard-screen Abel Gance movie. We got squat shape
Tibetans and froggy costume movie actors waddling across the screen for
hours on end. The Polish Film Festival offered Pola Negri in the rare Mania,
Die Gesghichte einer Zigarettenarbeiterin cropped to wide screen and the
Sydney Film Festival (!) ran the Japanese Season of the Sun the same way -
everybody's head cut off by the top of the screen. The overseas panelists at
their presentation on projection were alarmingly familiar with such problems.
I'm still waiting to hear back from the festival's new director about that. Let's
not hold our breath.
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