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Gone are the days when every movie theater in the country was equipped to project film. With the rise of digital cinema, movies are now cheaper and easier to produce, distribute, and exhibit than ever before.
But what about those theaters that can’t afford to purchase digital projectors? What about those filmmakers who cherish the physical dimension of film and its inimitable impact on the visual quality of a movie? And what about the potential loss of the medium so central to the history of cinema: the very material on which movies were produced and projected for the first century of the form’s existence?
The Treasures from the Yale Film Archive, a monthly screening series that highlights the breadth and depth of the archive’s film collection, seeks to restore and preserve for New Haven audiences the movie-going experience these films were originally intended to impart.
“For all of the films [in this series], and for the vast majority of what we have in our collection, film is the medium on which these movies were created,” said Brian Meacham in a recent interview on WNHH’s “Deep Focus.” Meacham works at the Yale Film Study Center as the archive and special collections manager, helping to catalog, preserve, and present select films from the archive’s collection of around 5,000 35mm and 16mm prints.
“And for us, it’s just extremely important to maintain and to reveal to subsequent viewers the way in which these films were originally presented to audiences. It’s a revolution to have film history at your fingertips with DVDs and streaming services, but those are sort of simulations of the way those films were originally shot and presented. To be able to screen film on film is an experience that should continue because that is the actual, original way in which these films were created and presented, and that’s the way the directors intended them to be seen.”
Starting in June 2014 with a screening of David O. Russell’s Three Kings, and proceeding from there with roughly one screening per month, including Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo, Jane Campion’s The Piano, and Michael Roemer’s Nothing but a Man, the Treasures from the Yale Film Archive series embodies a core principle held by many film archives: that the acquisition and protection of films must go hand-in-hand with an active sharing of those films with the general public.
“There’s sort of a mantra [among film archivists],” Meacham explained, “that preservation without access isn’t preservation. It just isn’t worth doing. Access is a key component to the work of a film archive, and a lot of film archives have very robust screening schedules.”
To listen to the complete conversation with Meacham, as well as a discussion of each of the four films scheduled for the series this fall, click on the audio above or find the episode in iTunes or on any podcast app under “WNHH Community Radio.” The second half of the episode includes a lively review of The Diary of a Teenage Girl, a new coming-of-age picture about a 15-year-old girl wrestling with sexuality and adulthood in mid-70s San Francisco.
Below is a complete schedule for this fall’s screenings in the Treasures from the Yale Film Archive series.
Being John Malkovich (1999) – Friday, September 18, 7pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Princess Mononoke (1997) – Sunday, October 11, 2pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
The Train (1964) – Sunday, November 8, 2pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Within Our Gates (1920) – with live musical accompaniment, Friday, December 11, 7pm at the Whitney Humanities Center