Friday, May 27, 2016

A projection booth from the past

I was recently asked to help out at a film festival in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. The festival was at the historic Odeum Theatre, which I had never visited before. My duties that night took me up to the projection booth, where I was delighted to find two old projectors, long since out of use. The Odeum rarely shows movies any more, and of course if they do, it's from a digital projector. Stepping into that little room was like stepping into the past, a forgotten place, full of details of the way things were.

It's always nice to find places like this — not everything has been made over so that it fits into the glossy present.

Except, well, I had heard that night that the Odeum had gotten a grant, and the old projectors were going to be sent to a museum and the room renovated. With that in mind, I took my phone and snapped as many pictures as I could so that there would be a record of how the room looked.


(More photos after the jump.)