Why watch Film on Film? | Little White Lies

Why watch Film on Film?

01 Jun 2023

Words by Lillian Crawford

Two figures, a woman in a fur coat and a man in a hat and coat, standing in an interior setting with a clock on the wall.
Two figures, a woman in a fur coat and a man in a hat and coat, standing in an interior setting with a clock on the wall.
The BFI’s first annu­al Film on Film fes­ti­val aims to cel­e­brate and edu­cate on the won­ders of cel­lu­loid, from nitrate and 35mm to 3D.

In the age of dig­i­tal cin­e­ma pro­jec­tion, the major­i­ty of audi­ences pay lit­tle heed to how the film is get­ting onto the screen in front of them – it is sim­ply there. But why go to see a film in the cin­e­ma when most films are already avail­able on the inter­net? That’s where Film on Film, a new fes­ti­val at the BFI South­bank, comes in. The title itself announces it as a tool to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between film (the con­tent of the images we see pro­ject­ed) and film (the phys­i­cal frames them­selves). We’re talk­ing cel­lu­loid with sprock­et holes, tan­gi­ble objects passed down through the generations.

But most of these cel­lu­loid prints have been locked away for decades, whether in the BFI Nation­al Archive in Berkham­st­ed or a sep­a­rate stor­age site in Gay­don, War­wick­shire. The expe­ri­ence of see­ing films on film is a rare one today, a lux­u­ry, some­thing which most peo­ple are unable to repli­cate in their homes. For cinephiles like me who were raised in the dig­i­tal age, this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see films in a new way. For oth­ers like Robin Bak­er, head cura­tor of the BFI Nation­al Archive and pro­gramme direc­tor of the BFI Film on Film Fes­ti­val, this a return to the ways in which he watched films for sev­er­al decades.

My work as an his­to­ri­an, focus­ing on post-war British cin­emago­ing, requires me to imag­ine what it would have been like to sit in a mid-cen­tu­ry pic­ture­house with­out hav­ing been there. Apart from see­ing cin­e­mas cap­tured in films like Brief Encounter (1945), or lov­ing­ly recre­at­ed in The Long Day Clos­es (1992) and Den­nis Potter’s Lip­stick On Your Col­lar (1993), I rely on first-hand accounts in the archive.

I tell Bak­er this as we sit down to chat about the fes­ti­val. But before I get too excit­ed about Bak­er tak­ing us on a jour­ney back to my favourite era of cin­e­ma his­to­ry, he says, I was very clear that we didn’t want to do a her­itage expe­ri­ence. There’s nobody dressed up in 1940s ush­erettes out­fits.” So don’t expect any wurl­itzers, choc ices, ren­di­tions of the Nation­al Anthem, or lax smok­ing laws – Film on Film is about ground­ing film in the present, and tak­ing stock of pro­jec­tion as expe­ri­ence in and of itself.

For those who haven’t seen films in this way before, I ask Bak­er what we should be look­ing out for from the moment the lights go down and the cur­tains open. The image will move slight­ly,” he says. You’ll hear the pro­jec­tor. You will watch reel changes, or see and hear reel changes hap­pen. You’ll see the flick­er caused by the shut­ter open­ing.” These are all things in the 21st cen­tu­ry which we have been taught to view as imper­fec­tions, to bemoan the slight­est speck on the screen. But this is what makes these cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ences special.

The prints them­selves, like pages lay­ered with mar­gin­a­lia or graf­fi­tied walls, are palimpses­ts – they bear the phys­i­cal mark­ings of time in ways dig­i­tal cin­e­ma nev­er will. These are films as objects, beheld by a lim­it­ed num­ber of real peo­ple before us. It cre­ates a sense of con­nec­tion across time between pro­jec­tions. Reflect­ing on this idea, Bak­er agrees and tells me that he was an archae­ol­o­gist before he worked in film. I always think of that emo­tion­al charge I had when I was exca­vat­ing, and I’d dig some­thing out, real­is­ing that I was the first per­son to touch it in centuries.”

The same can be said of the films being screened for the fes­ti­val. While the films them­selves have been seen many times since, orig­i­nal prints haven’t been pub­licly screened for decades. Film on Film opens on 8 June with a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion of an orig­i­nal 1945 release nitrate print of Mil­dred Pierce direct­ed by Michael Cur­tiz. It’s a film many cineast­es will have watched mul­ti­ple times over the years, but very few alive today will have seen the first version.

Two women, one in a black jacket and the other in a patterned dress, standing together in a black and white image.

Bak­er says that he showed it to his nieces, aged 12 and 17, last Christ­mas and they loved it, but it is a total­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence to watch the nitrate. It sets your mind imag­in­ing as to who the pro­jec­tion­ist was, and who was sit­ting in that audi­ence. Women wear­ing clothes not dis­sim­i­lar from the cos­tumes of Joan Craw­ford in the film itself. They were deal­ing with a con­tem­po­rary expe­ri­ence, and the arte­fact con­nects you to that audience.”

A film to which his­tor­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of cel­lu­loid prints is inher­ent is The Afterlight by Char­lie Shack­le­ton, being screened on 10 June. The work con­sists of frag­ments from film his­to­ry, show­ing actors from across time and space who are all now deceased. The print has been designed to slow­ly dete­ri­o­rate with each screen­ing, chang­ing every time it is projected.

I asked Shack­le­ton what the film’s inclu­sion in the fes­ti­val means to him. For me that’s always been the draw of cel­lu­loid: the chance to encounter a film through a mate­r­i­al object with a mate­r­i­al his­to­ry, and feel that strange sense of com­mu­nion with every audi­ence that came before you, and those yet to come,” he says. Because The Afterlight exists as a sin­gle print, the effect is mag­ni­fied. To see the film is to encounter the same arte­fact as every­one who’s ever seen it, and every­one who ever will – and to know that your screen­ing is leav­ing a trace, lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive, that will indeli­bly mark the expe­ri­ence going forward.”

Shack­le­ton will be demon­strat­ing how he pre­pares the print for pro­jec­tion in the foy­er before­hand, and the fes­ti­val includes a pletho­ra of work­shops and talks on the nature of film. The impor­tant thing to remem­ber, accord­ing to Bak­er, is that there is a very skilled human being or sev­er­al human beings in the pro­jec­tion booth putting on a show for you. There’s an ele­ment of dan­ger to these screen­ings, like going to the the­atre. It will nev­er be the same. It could go wrong. Things do go wrong very often. It is cin­e­ma as live event.”

We all have sto­ries, even now, of faulty pro­jec­tors and dis­as­trous screen­ings. Although noth­ing shown in a mod­ern mul­ti­plex is quite as dan­ger­ous as some of the prints being trans­port­ed to BFI South­bank for the fes­ti­val. We’ve been work­ing for months and months to make sure that we are nitrate ready,” Bak­er says. We’re the only pub­lic cen­tre in the UK able to show nitrate to an audi­ence. So we have done every bit of test­ing from fire sup­pres­sion through to check­ing absolute­ly every­thing works to evac­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures.” It’s worth not­ing that nitrate, with its unique coloura­tion and phys­i­cal prop­er­ties, hasn’t been seen in pub­lic in the UK for over a decade.

In addi­tion to four nitrate screen­ings, includ­ing the old­est print ever pro­ject­ed to a UK cin­e­ma audi­ence, the 91-year-old Ser­vice for Ladies (1932) direct­ed by Alexan­der Kor­da, Film on Film includes a smat­ter­ing of rar­i­ties hand­picked by the BFI’s cura­to­r­i­al team, a cel­e­bra­tion of the cen­te­nary of 16mm, debuts for some new­ly pro­duced 35mm prints of clas­sics includ­ing Mal­colm X and Morvern Callar, and a selec­tion of 3D shorts and features.

I won­der how many viable prints there are in the archive to keep the fes­ti­val going. Bak­er smiles, and tells me, We’re going to keep going, I’d say, for at least the rest of my life­time, and includ­ing the rest of my younger col­leagues’ life­times as well.” Per­haps in 50 years you’ll see one of these prints again at the BFI, and see the marks of a screen­ing you attend­ed in 2023. Isn’t it romantic?

The first edi­tion of the BFI Film on Film Fes­ti­val runs from June 811 at BFI Southbank.

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