Two projectionist inside the booth: Midnight Sun Film Festival, June 2017

• Guys with the movie projectors, MSFF2017 Guys with the movie projectors, MSFF2017
• Projector at MSFF2017 Projector at MSFF2017
• Projector - 2 Projector - 2
• Projector - 3 Projector - 3
• Projectionist at MSFF2017 Projectionist at MSFF2017
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Watching movies is now so easy, even from my cell phone. Just a click, it's now fast, perfect.
Last June I went to the Midnight Sun Film Festivall in Lapland: four nightless days,155 movies, 28,000 moviegoers. 
Being an accredited photographer for the festival, I was allowed to move around freely into the screening halls. I took photos in one of these during a presentation by Spanish director Carlos Saura, followed by one of his movies. In the darkness of the theater, when the movie started, something caught my attention: the little spot of light opposite to the audience. This tiny light making visible dust in the air was the movie itself, or better, light translated into a movie. I walked in that direction to take a look, asked permission to the projectionists and they let me in.
The booth was a small room full of film reels, odd equipment on the tables, two guys, the lightning professionals, busy with those instruments, and two huge projectors. I found myself behind the scenes, in a microworld recalling Tornatore 's Cinema Paradiso: I was the child, fascinated by all that intrigue of celluloid films inside the projectors, the small light in the glass and the image projected on the big screen.

I was told these were Russian projectors made before World War II: almost indestructible, just needing good maintenance, all spare pieces still available. A movie is distributed on several (4-5) reels, and two projectors are used, with the so called "changeover system" (this two-reel system was used almost universally for movie theaters before the advent of the single-reel system in order to be able to show feature-length films). As the reel being shown approaches its end, "red dots" appear in the upper right of a projector (see third photo, Projector - 2), meaning 'almost at the end': the first one that appears will turn on the second projector, while the second dot starts the second projector. This timing allows the projectionists to carry on the changeover, so that the audience is unaware of the manipulations.

Each time a changeover was successfully completed, the guys had a beer: 'mission accomplished'. The reel was then removed from the projector, rewound and reinserted into its box.
My original feeling that pressing a button was enough for starting a movie projection was terribly wrong. I began asking questions and the guys explained their work with patience, they were really passionate about it. We chatted until one of them realized that the film was almost over and the following one had not yet been plugged into the second projector. 
Then a race against time began. The celluloid path is a complicated one and sometimes the film is wrapped and locked. The movie was stopped, the theater was in total darkness for 20", 40", one minute and then the light was back. A short interruption due to a human error. Somebody could have complained. It may sound trivial, but aren't these mistakes, this human handling making cinema alive again in a somewhat perfect techno age?