films that explode
reflections on managing a nitrate film festival and the unpredictability of life
Technology can be both liberating and oppressive, depending on how it is used.
Adam Curtis
"Film that explodes", this is what the famous film preservationist, Henri Langlois dubbed Nitrate film. For those who do not know— nitrate is a type of film stock which was used pre-1950s. It was incredibly flammable. It was largely the only film stock used before 1948, the year that Kodak debuted "safety film", an acetate film base which was far, far less dangerous. One of the only places you can see nitrate film in the world is at the theater I am currently managing.
night(s) of the jet engine
Nitrate is composed of the chemical nitrocellulose (which is also where the term "celluloid" comes from, therefore modern polyester film is actually not celluloid), this is the same chemical used to make gun-cotton, a replacement for gun-powder. The chemical fire it causes is so intense that it continues to burn under water. In film preservation circles, one of the most famous videos of nitrate burning has the title “night of the jet engine”. This is due to the way “the output of burning gases accelerates to almost a 'thrust effect' (similar to a jet or rocket engine) turned upwards”.
Again, there are only a handful of places in the world which can legally screen nitrate films and the Dryden is one of them. The risks are not just a gimmick. There is real danger, which means the festival is full of heightened emotions and intensity. The Nitrate Picture at the Dryden absolutely consumed every waking hour I had. I mentioned in a previous post that I had begun work as a movie theater manager of the Dryden. Every year we put on the Nitrate Picture Show and as the person who "runs" the theater, I also had to, in some sense, "run" the festival.
Not alone of course-- so much work went into preparation, projection, the introductory lectures, the merch, and so on. But not less than a month after beginning this new job I found myself as the point person for an entire international film festival. Not to mention it was the busiest year for NPS yet-- the theater seats 500 and we sold 483 passes. Every screening was packed. I want to reflect briefly on what it was like to manage such a unique and tense event and offer thoughts on how to approach such an event if you find yourself in a similar situation.
In terms of normal film festivals, NPS is a freakish niche of a festival. But in terms of film festivals focused on screening rare, historic prints, NPS is one-of-a-kind. The fact that we are screening prints which may not ever be screened again excites people and brings out the quirkiest and most obsessive of film fans alongside film preservation's leading voices, such as the former head of the Library of Congress' film division. It is a time for the film history super-nerds of the world to brush shoulders with people who play an active role in preserving that very history. But if you've ever managed a large event such as this then you know that it is a type of contained explosion.
The prints are rare, damaged, and in the process of shrinking (all film shrinks eventually). These prints are incredibly difficult to project without tearing. And whatever the cause, if a nitrate film stops in the projector, it may cause a fire. This would destroy all of the Dryden's historical equipment if not mortally wound the projectionists. Despite this, the film nonetheless has a schedule. The listed starting time is when audiences expect to see the film and when the lecturers intend to start their talk. But for the purpose of caution and safety, projectionists are nearly always asking for more time to make sure everything goes off without a hitch. While those in charge are anxious to begin the event. And the audience grows restless, demanding their money's worth. In this insanely tense situation, I was the one who had to manage communication between all the aforementioned parties. Being this connecting point is insanely stressful. Not to mention I was expected to be there for the entire festival. This meant 15 hour shifts. Like I said, every waking hour was dedicated to the festival.
The selection of films was a fascinating smorgasbord. We played everything from a historic PSA on Syphilis to one of the most acclaimed Danish films of all time. Despite the fact that I was not able to watch a significant portion of any film besides the final one, it was fascinating to gauge the audience's reactions. It is truly a special feeling when one sees a packed theater erupt into laughter over jokes recorded a century-or-so ago.
I myself began watching early films around the time that I was an intern for the BendFilm festival, back in 2019. I was amazed by the enduring hilarity of Chaplin's and Keaton's slapstick comedies. I was awed by the ingenious visual complexity of films like Haxan and Joan of Arc. And then there were, of course, the sets. The sets of Intolerance will stun any viewer. It made one realize that silent film was not simply cinema's warming up period, but an entire mode of artistic creation all its own. Intolerance embodies all the best and worst qualities of filmmaking at the time. It was a true epic, a film which tried to say everything but ends up saying little more than nothing. That epic which captures all the highs and lows of the silent era happened to be the film which kicked off the festival this year.
I have had the opportunity to deepen my appreciation for silent film while studying (and now working) at the George Eastman Museum. The experience of viewing silent film at the proper frame rate, on a 35mm print, with live accompaniment truly brings the films back to life.
Then, of course, there is the nitrate. Hardcore film enthusiasts will insist to you that it looks better. That it has a special sparkle to it or that the contrast is richer or the colors more beautiful. I must say that I cannot accept this thesis in such a radical form. Nitrate looks beautiful-- but it is simply different, not better. In reality, much of such subtle qualities have much to do with the actual practice of film printing. Those anonymous Kodak workers may have worked more intently on the "timing" of one film and then much less on the next. It is simply the way things are. If you want a beautiful print you must be able to see it to recognize if it is especially beautiful. For those who are not in a financial place to make a pilgrimage out to Rochester, do not fret too much. Nitrate prints are not so dazzlingly beautiful that they render all other cinematic experiences irrelevant. The better reason to view nitrate film is that you will be getting closer to the release prints-- close to the experience that the original audiences actually had. The color and image quality of such films is capable of being retained quite well. In terms of color, last year they screened an absolutely stunning print of Wizard of Oz and this year they followed it up with Meet Me in St. Louis. Technicolor on a well-preserved release print is truly something to behold-- partially because it is uniquely beautiful and partially because modern restorations of such films oversaturate these technicolor films. The land of Oz did not appear to audiences in the 1930s as a technicolor-rainbow candyland. It was a kingdom of beautiful shades of beige and golden oranges. These tones were what the Technicolor process emphasized, and they are precisely what is repressed in the flagrant and decadent studio restorations.
The only film I had the opportunity to see a substantial portion of was Dreyer's legendary Day of Wrath. The print was absolutely stunning. The darkness of shadows on film simply cannot be recreated digitally, because the film is literally blocking the light to the screen. This is what makes black and white prints so beautiful. The blacks are not projected light but the lack of it.
The film festival was an overall amazing experience. I want to also briefly share a story about something that happened after the festival ended which just goes to show how unpredictable life can be.
the unpredictability of life
After working at a film festival where at any point something could go wrong and a massive disaster could occur but doesn't due to care and rigor, I experienced to what extent recklessness can affect other people's lives.
My wife and I were getting ready for bed, ready for a deep slumber following the intensity of the festival when we heard the sound of a massive crash. I knew immediately that it was the sound of a car scraping across the asphalt. My wife and I rushed outside and I was the first person on the scene. A truck had flipped on its side, its contents spilled across the road, and the three people inside were being crushed into the drivers seat window. When I arrived at the scene I saw an arm sticking out of the window and heard voices screaming for help. I pulled the man out of the window which had crashed against the ground and could immediately tell he was intoxicated. He clearly had adrenaline flowing through him along with some combination of other drugs and he immediately climbed to the top of the flipped car in order to open the passenger seat door. The women were screaming that gas was leaking while a car smashed into the back of the truck.
I carried one of the women out of the car. She kept screaming that her leg was broken and that she was dying. As she was coming down emotionally, police arrived on the scene. Very quickly these victims of the accident turned towards defending themselves. They all claimed a car hit them and caused them to flip while witnesses claimed the driver did this on his own. Everyone observing could tell they were intoxicated. The driver mentioned he was on coke.
The driver and the woman I carried out, who turned out to be his girlfriend, soon came up to the crowd of bystanders and asked us if we had a blunt. Everyone was shocked at the audacity of such a request. When we pushed back on this both of them argued with us that it was legal and that it didn't matter if they smoked in front of the cops. It was bizarre that such a cataclysmic and life threatening event did not snap them into lucidity. The woman thanked me for helping her and called me "the greatest American".
The situation quickly turned bizarre. The sympathetic bystanders turned into jeering hecklers, ridiculing the driver. The driver, in turn, kept picking fights with the police. It is disheartening to realize that due to the fact that the passengers had miraculously maintained no injuries (the car had no airbags) neither them nor the bystanders seemed to take the situation seriously. Nobody seemed to try to learn from this mistake. The crowd of people began talking about the locally infamous Instagram page, rocgonemad. I checked the account later and found that somebody had filmed me arriving at the scene. It is incredibly bizarre to see that page making light of the incident with the caption "Go Bills!" and ironically placed music over the footage. I feared that I would be one of the last people this man trapped in the car would see before he died, and not 24 hours later it had been turned into a type of farce. You can see the video here.
When at Nitrate Picture Show, jokes about fires abound. It can be easy not to take the idea of films killing people seriously. Yet only 2 years ago Serge Bromberg, artistic director of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival was sent to prison due to a nitrate film induced fire which killed two.
Life at any moment can turn into a legitimate crisis. It is important to prepare for such events (I am grateful for my first responder training from long ago!) and to not immediately make light of them. We use humor to cope with tragedy. I get that. But humor can also enable tragedy. If anyone tried to stop that man from driving his truck that night, he probably responded with a joke. Humor can create a sense of normalcy where it shouldn't exist.
The audiences at NPS laughed uproariously at the syphilis PSA. But why? Because it is no longer an issue? No. Because we have given it a wash of normalcy of normalization. In fact, syphilis, at the moment, is getting worse. The cases have had a 937 percent increase in the past decade.
I am not simply trying to be a miserly moralizer. I just simply don’t understand if people realize that making tragedy into comedy can be legitimately counterproductive. Making a fool of this intoxicated driver makes the situation out to be farcical. But three people could have easily died. Do not laugh it off. Do not shrug it off. There are plenty of other things in life to laugh about. There were even aspects of this situation which are worthy of laughing about if only to relieve the physical pain. But do not laugh at a drunken man who was nearly a killer. He ridiculed his own miraculous survival. The crowd ridiculed the idea that anything morally serious had transpired. It could have been a moment where we all looked death in the face and were grateful for another day to live.
“The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.” Ernest Becker
It was as if the mere mention of that fateful instagram webpage made the whole event unreal for the spectators. As if it carried no real substance because it had been captured on video and would therefore become a spectacle which will appear in people’s feeds to remind them of how crazy their city is. On social media platforms, such pages reassure people that everyday life is much less stable than they want to admit. But its effect, in reality, is a normalization, or "hypernormalization,” of a violence in a society where depths of despair are becoming increasingly common. The jolt out of simplified, curated social media reality only ends up reinforcing the retreat back into it. And the function of the instagram story in real life reassures everyone that this event is absurd. But it is not. It is simply what happens when a human being uses drugs and then operates machinery— it was on some level a suicidal venture.
lessons learned
There are quite a few things I wish I could have done differently. Here's some reflections on that. I don't know if this will be useful to anyone but myself a year from now.
The first big lesson learned from this experience is that if you have such demanding work hours combined with a constant inability to talk to anyone outside of work-- you have to warn those close to you. Of course my wife was well aware and so were my parents. But I failed to warn some of my close friends who may have expected communication between us to continue as per usual. This caused some missed connections with those close to me, and even some legitimate hurt feelings. One should treat such an event almost as one treats going on a long flight to another continent. I have to tell them I won't be available, that I am not deliberately neglecting our friendship, and that I need support to get through it. I was telling a friend of mine about the insane work schedule those 4 days and he said that if I would have told him and their friend group ahead of time that they could have brought me meals to support me. Such a thing had never occurred to me. Unless deliberately told otherwise, I assumed everything that needed to get done was my responsibility-- including finding time to eat. If other responsibilities overrided my time to eat. I often skipped meals. This was a bad idea.
But this is mostly due to the fact that I did not know exactly what was going to be expected of me for this festival. Which brings me to my next point: one should insist on the exact designation of their responsibilities before such an event. When you're in such a position as manager, any responsibility can suddenly become yours by default. If you don't know what precisely you are expected to do or what tasks can be reassigned to others, you will be quite literally running around the entire time. But it is tough to know which things that will need to get done for the festival need designated positions. This points to the importance of documentation.
Finally, things should never be rushed. Like I said earlier, even if the print is rare and dangerous to project, film festivals always have a schedule they are trying to maintain. It can be a matter of mere minutes that determined whether or not a film screening will have an issue. An extra 10 minutes of the audience waiting for the film can begin can mean that they won't have to endure waiting 20 minutes in the middle of the film where the projectionists have to adjust the film to ensure it doesn't tighten and snap.
In regards to the crash— there is a simple lesson to be learned. Don’t make light of people who need help. It may convince them they don’t need it.
Wow. That's the only thing I can say in response.