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List of projection and projectionists in film
It's fun to see ourselves on screen! See also
- List of educational films about film handling and projection
- Peter Knight's Projectionists Anthology
- https://mubi.com/lists/we-make-the-movies-go-films-featuring-projectionists-and-projection-booths
- http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/115874 (Appendix: Films featuring projectionists)
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A Goldberg film can spotted in The Tingler.
Title | Director | Year | Type | Notes |
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Last Action Hero | John McTiernan | 1993 | Featured | |
Road, Movie | Dev Benegal | 2009 | Featured | |
Janji Joni | Joko Anwar | 2005 | Featured | |
Kings of the Road | Wim Wenders | 1976 | Featured | One of the most beautiful films featuring film projection, Kings of the Road follows a projector repairman and his suicidal cohort as they visit various theaters in Eastern Germany. |
Sherlock,Jr. | Buster Keaton | 1924 | Featured | Buster Keaton as a projectionist who falls asleep on the job and enters the frame himself... |
The Projectionist | Harry Hurwitz | 1971 | Featured | |
Cinema Paradiso | Giuseppe Tornatore | 1988 | Featured | |
The Smallest Show on Earth | Basil Dearden | 1957 | Featured | Peter Sellers as a drunk (yet committed!) projectionist working at a struggling theater |
Inglorious Basterds | Quentin Tarantino | 2009 | Featured | |
Goodbye,Dragon Inn | Tsai Ming-liang | 2003 | Featured | |
Projection Instructions | Morgan Fisher | 1976 | Featured | Morgan Fisher's Avant-garde films often touch on film as a medium and projection. A good description of some of his films can be found here |
Night of the Comet | Thom Eberhardt | 1984 | Incidental | a high school girl shacks up in the booth with her projectionist boyfriend, leaving her as one of the sole survivors after a comet eradicates most of humanity. |
Gremlins | Joe Dante | 1984 | Incidental | The gremlins gather in a movie theater to watch Snow White. Chaos ensues! |
The Muppet Movie | James Frawley | 1979 | Incidental | Animal is the projectionist as the Muppets watch a cut of The Muppet Movie. Needless to say, some film frames burn. |
Zodiac | David Fincher | 2007 | Incidental | No actual projection booth scenes, but one of the main suspects in the Zodiac murders case is a projectionist who works in a silent film house named Rick Marshall. Marshall doesn't appear in the film as a character, but there is a scene where Jake Gyllenhaal's character visits the house of a friend of Marshall's ( a silent film organist) and sees his creepy basement film collection. |
Fight Club | David Fincher | 1999 | Incidental | One of the more well known projectionist scenes in film, Brad Pitt's character shows us how cue-marks work and how he spends his time splicing porno frames into regular films. |
Reel Paradise | Steve James | 2005 | Incidental | |
Cinema-Komunisto | Mila Turajlic | 2010 | Featured | A documentary about President of Yugoslavia Josip Tito as told through his personal projectionist. He claims to have screened a film for Tito every single night for over 30 years. |
The Spirit of the Beehive | Víctor Erice | 1973 | Incidental | A traveling cinema comes to a Spanish village and screens Frankenstein |
John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns | John Carpenter | 2005 | Featured | A film collector (and projectionist) dies a gory projector-related death! |
The Tingler | William Castle | 1959 | Featured | Much of the film is set at a movie theater, and there's a significant scene during which a projectionist meets THE TINGLER! Also features an early depiction of LSD ingestion. |
A Useful Life | Federico Veiroj | 2010 | Featured | |
Maurice | Patrick Brice | 2010 | Featured | Short documentary on a Paris porno projectionist. |
Masculin Féminin | Jean-Luc Godard | 1966 | Incidental | Jean-Pierre Leaud yells at the projectionist for messing up the aspect ratio! |
She Was An Acrobat's Daughter | Friz Freleng | 1937 | Incidental | A duck projectionist has some technical issues. |
Stella Days | Thaddeus O'Sullivan | 2011 | Featured | An Irish priest starts a community cinema and feels conflicted. |
Targets | Peter Bogdanovich | 1968 | Incidental | A drive-in movie theater projectionist is shot by a sniper through the projection port! |
Bulletproof Monk | Paul Hunter | 2003 | Featured | |
Hellzapoppin' | H. C. Potter | 1941 | Incidental | |
Clash By Night | Fritz Lang | 1951 | ||
Luke's Movie Muddle | Hal Roach | 1916 | ||
Daddy Longlegs | Josh & Bennie Safdie | 2009 | Featured | A man struggles to watch his two young sons while working as a projectionist in New York City. |
Hugo | Martin Scorsese | 2011 | Featured | |
Contempt | Jean-Luc Godard | 1963 | Incidental | Watch an angry Jack Palance smack a pile of film cans out of the hands of a very dejected looking projectionist. |
Mother Goose | Ray Harryhausen | 1946 | Featured | A goose projectionist! |
Persona | Ingmar Bergman | 1966 | Incidental | Film opens with beautiful images of film running through a projector. See here |
A Muslim Childhood | Moumen Smihi | 2005 | Incidental | The cinema plays a formative role in the life of a teenage boy growing up in Tangier. One brief shot of a projectionist (and turret). |
Cléo from 5 to 7 | Agnès Varda | 1962 | Featured | Cléo and her friend Dorothée deliver a print to Dorothée's boyfriend Raoul, a projectionist at a Paris cinema. They all watch a short film (starring Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina) from the booth. |
Man of Iron | Andrzej Wajda | 1981 | Featured | Long scene in a very well decorated projection booth about 35mins in. |
"24 Frames Per Century" | Athina Rachel Tsangari | 2013 | Featured | Tsangari's short film was made to commemorate the 70th Venice International Film Festival and features two projectors facing the sea and speaking to each other. |
The Death Kiss | Edward L. Marin | 1932 | Featured | |
Matinee | Joe Dante | 1993 | Featured | Climax ends in the projection booth, John Goodman operates a third projector from behind the screen. |
Anguish | Bigas Luna | 1987 | Incidental | A killer in the booth! |
The Other Side Of The Wind | Orson Wells | 2018 | Featured | Excellent projectionist & booth moments throughout |
Porn Theatre (also: "Glowing Eyes", "La chatte à deux têtes" | Jacques Nolot | 2002 | Featured | |
Desperately Seeking Susan | Susan Seidelman | 1985 | Featured | Aidan Quinn plays a projectionist, two scenes are shot in the booth (the now closed Bleeker Street Theater in New York City). Also some criminals break into Aidan's apartment and dump all his reels of film on the floor! |
This Way Please | Robert Florey | 1937 | Featured | A musical comedy set in a movie theater, features a musical number and a fight scene both in the projection booth. |
Coming Up Roses | Stephen Bayly | 1986 | Featured | When the cinema where they work closes the projectionist and concessionaire attempt to start a mushroom growing business in the auditorium. Set and filmed in Wales. |
Dead End Drive-In | Brian Trenchard-Smith | 1986 | Incidental | Set at a dystopian drive-in where no one can leave. Trenchard-Smith's films are seen on the screen, one very brief projection booth scene, and the manager walks around carrying Goldberg cans in several scenes. |