The dying art of 35mm cinema: How the Ambler Theater is keeping ‘one of the closest things we have to magic’ alive

...In the upper bowels of the Ambler Theater, Jesse Crooks squats on the ground. Using a combination of muscle memory, meticulous attention to detail and on-the-fly dexterity, he carefully threads a strip of celluloid film through a projector.

“One of the most important things when you’re threading a projector is to make sure it does not touch the ground,” Crooks said.

For over a century, the formula for cinema magic remained the same: a trained projectionist, a 35-millimeter film reel and a projector. But now, thousands of feet of celluloid film strips have been replaced with an electronic file — nearly obliterating the role of a trained projectionist....

Via@jeffw@lemmy.world