Daily Archives: April 14, 2007

Brand upon the Brain

April 14, 2007 By in Festivals, Modern silents

Brand upon the Brain

The silent film continues as a valid art form, particularly in the hands of the Canadian Guy Maddin, who has made silent film his natural mode of expression. His latest film is Brand upon the Brain, which is playing (with live music ensemble) at the San Francisco International Film Festival on May 7. The festival site describes it:

The semiautobiographical Brand upon the Brain! mines the rich territories of director Guy Maddin’s youth and spins them into a delirious fantasy of familial discontent. At the edge of the sea stands a lighthouse, once the location of an orphanage. There, some years ago, lived Guy and Sis, a brother and sister under the constant observation of their mother yet entirely ignored by their father, an ingenious inventor. When Wendy Hale, amateur harpist and half of twin detective team the Lightbulb Kids, arrives to investigate a mysterious regenerative nectar harvested from the orphans, things grow ever more complicated. A love triangle becomes a quadrangle when Wendy masquerades as her brother Chance and goes in search of clues. A fever dream of Freudian impulses and horror show theatrics, Maddin devours 100 years of film history whole and, like the ersatz Guy’s painting of the lighthouse, covers the screen with a 12-chapter outpouring of his various obsessions.

There’s a trailer for the film on the festival site which gives a good flavour of Maddin’s distinctive style and take on cinema history.

How to Run a Picture Theatre – part 5

April 14, 2007 By in Cinemas, Projection 2 Comments

I’m running this series taken from the 1910 [correction – probably 1912] publication How to Run a Picture Theatre, which eventually I’ll put up all together in a new Texts section. Anyway, having taken care of the exterior, foyer and auditorium, now you need to think about your projectionist. Note the fire precautions, but also the need to install a stereopticon, or lantern slide projector, for advertisements, in-house announcements and sing-a-long slides:

The Operating Chamber. The operating chamber is, of course, subject to very stringent regulations by the authorities which appear in an index to this work …

There should be three traps, one each for the projector, the stereopticon, and the look-out in preference to a larger trap permitting all three. If two machines are used, the number of traps is increased …

A bucket of sand and a wet blanket must always be kept in the operating room for fire extinguishing purposes …

Allow reasonably ample room and make the operator comfortable. A high stool with a comfortable back is a necessity rather than a luxury. If the chair induces the operator to loaf, get rid of the operator, but retain the chair …

It is best to provide two machines, using them alternately, and then if one breaks down, there is a second to run on, until the other is repaired. The assistant operator, too, is always handy in rewinding the films, because if there is only one operator who has to divide his time between projecting and rewinding, both tasks will suffer.

Next up, choosing your staff.