Anthony Garcia He has been working in the projection booth of Filmoteca de Catalunya’s different offices in Barcelona for 41 years. We can say that he is the last mechanic without nostalgia.. Man gently placing rolls of celluloid onto projectors and making sure that the light beam reflecting off the white screen in the living room is correct. Like the hero of ‘Cinema Paradiso’, but real. Thousands of chemical-backed films have passed through his hands, and recently digital files to reflect both classic and modern films. He started as a projectionist at Filmoteca in November 1981 and will retire on March 10. Is it the end of an era?
García recalls that he started at a very young age, at the age of 14, “at home, with my father, he was running a small film library at the German Institute, designing projects, organizing events and exhibitions.” He was apprenticed to professional cinema at the age of 17 in the room he owned at the time. Spanish movie library on merchants street From Barcelona, near the Cathedral.
Before and after completing his military service, he showed some minor cycles at the Fundació Miró, such as the one dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini in a program run in partnership with the film library. He also spent one season at the Atlántida cinema in Sant Andreu and collaborated with Drag Màgic, a film cooperative founded in 1971, by showing films in Catalonia.
“They offered me to be the director of the booth here” when delegating with the Spanish film library, and There has never been another projectionist in the Catalan cinema.. He was at the Padró cinema, the Travessera de Gràcia theater, then in Aquitania and finally at Raval headquarters.
The question arises by itself. Do you like ‘Cinema Paradiso’?, Giuseppe Tornatore’s film focused on the relationship between a boy fascinated by the cinema and the machinist of the town hall? “Yes, of course. It captures the old projection system, the carbon arc flashlight, working with nitrates very well…”. García says, “We used carbon lamps throughout the entire scene in the Travessera room. The light is provided by the projectionist, not the camera. You control the height and shift of the mirror to give the screen the best possible illumination.”
Projection problems? A lot, especially in black and white movies. “Working with black and white celluloid is much more difficult than working with colour,” says García. “Depending on how you project it, there were areas that could appear bluish or brown because the light from the flashlight was affected by the positive of the print. It wasn’t that obvious with color.”
The romantic idea circulates that the projectionists cut out frames from the movies and hide them. “I didn’t, but I’m keeping a photo from the very reddish magnetic print of ‘2001 A Space Odyssey. The magnetic sound prints are unusual because they have different perforations.” Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey was the first full movie that our hero in the darkroom showed at a school in Barcelona’s Tres Torres district. He did it with his older brother, but that trade soon changed and he devoted himself to engineering.
The arrival of digital
After decades of working with photochemical support, It has come digital with its pros and cons. “It happens on the way to the Raval room. We thought the photochemical would take a few more years.” But it wasn’t. “Not long after the ‘main directors’ informed us that they would no longer be making 35mm copies of their films,” García explains. Disadvantages? “Cartridge load,” says García quickly.. “You need to upload it to the projector’s server. It’s a very slow process. If the movie takes two hours, you need to spend two hours loading it to the hard disk. Then the verification is more complicated. On the contrary, copy it on a 35mm, you don’t need to try, the preparation is more intuitive, You can quickly see the status, subtitles, music”.
Few filmmakers today have the opportunity and the right to shoot on 35 or 70 mm celluloid. Just Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan and a few others. For García, “digital cinema is like watching a painting, it’s very hygienic and artificial. Instead, the film slides on the photochemical backing, with small, imperceptible movements as the light heats the frame.”
After the sessions of laying, preparing and showing the most diverse films, which ones do you have the greatest memories of? “Many of John Ford’s, film noir, ‘The Asphalt Forest’, the photographic quality of Ingmar Bergman’s films, Chaplin’s, the more classic the better, but also ‘2001’, ‘Alien’, ‘Blade runner’” .