Filmmaker and Modern Culture and Media doctoral candidate Paige Sarlin GS presented her documentary "The Last Slide Projector" Wednesday night at a nearly full Cable Car Cinema. The documentary and two abstract short films comprised Magic Lantern Screening Series' first presentation of 2008, "The Projector Show," celebrating the technologies - often overlooked and undervalued - that have long enabled the sharing of art.
In 2004, Eastman Kodak announced its decision to discontinue the manufacturing of carousel-style slide projectors. This was an occurrence that probably went unnoticed by most. In the present-day digital world, it is easy to forget the less-efficient devices that were once a staple of art history classrooms and living rooms everywhere. But this is not the case for Sarlin, whose documentary chronicles the history of the slide projector and the production of the last of these in Rochester, N.Y.
Sarlin's film is a "personal meditation on the idea of technological progress and the impulse toward nostalgia that loss and endings often inspire," the description states.
The film begins at the end, with an amusing image of a slide projector elevated over two long poles balanced on four crates. The projector, like a coffin, is topped with a bouquet of flowers. Accompanied by a poetic voice-over narration, this image characterizes the restrained humor that Sarlin frequently infuses throughout the film.
Sarlin then takes the viewers back to the invention of the magic lantern - the predecessor of the modern slide projector - and describes the shift from this straight-tray model to the "robust and reliable" carousel-style model. In Sarlin's eyes, the carousel-style projector did more than just project slides. As the narration recounts, this device "brought people together in real time and real space." It offered art to those who couldn't travel, captured embarrassing family moments and saw history unfold.
The film alternates between the use of different technologies and media. At times, it takes the form of a photographic slide show, accompanied by the rhythmic whirl and click of the round projector. As Sarlin finishes narrating the history of the apparatus, the film shifts to digitally videotaped interviews of Kodak employees, engineers and other people who were in some way involved with the production of the last machine.
Through the story of the slide projector, Sarlin describes the evolution of American manufacturing and consumer culture. She includes old Kodak commercials, which show a man vigorously emphasizing the quality and novelty of the product. The simplicity of the commercial contrasts with the flashy ads on most TV screens today; so it's not surprising that the outdated commercial caused the audience to laugh.
Marking the move from a manufacturing-based economy to one of knowledge and innovation, Sarlin explains in the narration, the film shows the last slide projector coming off the assembly line. The documentary is a celebration of a past that is quickly disappearing, but Sarlin's sincere tone and creative compilation of images avoids slipping into cliched nostalgia.
"The Last Slide Projector" will also be screened on March 13 at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City.
The event also included a screening of Jeanne Liotta's 10-minute film "Dervish Machine." Spaced out by enumerated figures, the short film combines written words projected onto the screen with images of body movements. One figure portrays a nude body moving face to face with a skeleton, while another accompanies the phrase "lift me up" with a close-up of a person's pointed feet, seemingly struggling to rise into the air.
The second short film, Alan Berliner's "Patent Pending," features a roll of film being reeled throughout its entire duration of 11 minutes. As the camera's shutter speed varies, the reel seems to change dimension, appearing at some moments flatter and at others thicker. The speed has an effect on the holes of the reel as well, which become more fluid as the film progresses, and finally return to their original shape when the roll of film ends.
