Celluloid Heroes

I start the projector. Dust fills my nostrils as the reels move for the first time in who knows how long. I feed the film into the small slot, almost without thinking. It has been decades since I last threaded a projector, but it seems as if it were mere days instead of years. The film goes down and around, past a blinding projector bulb and out again onto a spool freely spinning at the back. I am mesmerized by the smell of the warm projector and the hypnotic clicking of the film as it passes over the sprockets of the movie projector.

Around the room, colored lights flicker and chase each other across the make-shift screen. The film shudders and shakes as uneven splices pass over the sprockets, but still the film moves along, from reel to reel. Images of people I used to know or resemble, showing life from a certain viewpoint with no pretense of objectivity. No synthesized drama, only the reality of the time, simply proudly completely presented.

The people on the screen do act like we did in everyday life. They act is if the camera is there, rather than act to deny its existence, egotistical and haphazard. An essential record of our past, they are among the most authoritative documentation of times gone by, the times in between the drama, where life is simply lived.

I see images from the past. It seems hard to believe that I was ever that young, with no or little idea of what was coming in life. But it’s not the future we’re looking at…it’s the past, warm and fuzzy, good memories and laughter. Maybe not at all as we remember it, but here it is, in celluloid, preserved for more years than I care to remember.

And then it ends. A white fuzzy rectangle of light appears. Dust and cat hair pass over the rectangle or stubbornly cling to the edge of the light. Clack clack clack clack clack clack. The plastic reel, full of memories, continues to roll as the end of the film flaps against it.

May we reflect upon the past with a clarity of vision that only age and wisdom can provide.