Video: 35mm Monsters, a new short film by director Remington Smith
, is incredibly simple. It’s about a projectionist who threads the 35mm trailer for The Monster Squad in a movie theatre. That’s it. But in that simplicity, there’s so much to be said.
Image: Vimeo
Smith’s film revels in nostalgia not just for The Monster Squad, which turned 30 this year, but 35mm projection, too — an art unto itself that has become an endangered species at your local cinema.
“I had just been hired to teach film production at my alma mater and in the first week of teaching I also found out the 35mm projectors I worked with in undergrad were going to be dismantled,” Smith writes in a press release. “They didn’t know when, so I just had to start filming.”
“I wanted to share with [the kids] what it was like to touch movies, to assemble this magic with your hands. So when I found out the projectors were being dismantled it forced me to finally make this project.”
And it was maybe by fate that Smith, who first theatrical memory was seeing The Monster Squad, had recently purchased the trailer on eBay as a novelty. He put two and two together and the result is 35mm Monsters, a simple little film about preserving and remembering the past.
[Vimeo]