Peter Flynn’s enlightening documentary film Film is dead. Long Live Film! screens at the 2024 New Jersey International Film Festival on opening day Friday, May 31. Here is the interview I conducted with Peter over the internet:
Nigrin: Your feature length documentary film Film is Dead. Long Live Film! focuses on motion picture film collectors. Tell us a bit about the history behind making this film.
Flynn: In 2016, I released a documentary called THE DYING OF THE LIGHT. It was about the demise of analog film projection in the wake of the widespread conversion to digital in the early- to mid-2010s. I really wanted to look at what was being lost and the goal was to capture as much of that 120-year-old tradition of handling and projecting photochemical film before it was gone forever. And I was lucky. I met a great many old school projectionists and was able to record much of that culture which is now all but gone. (Today less than 2% of US screens run film.) But I felt I’d only told half the story. I had told the story of what was lost . . . but not the story of what was being saved and passed on. So that’s what led me to the world of private film collecting.
Nigrin: Your film is pretty exhaustive in finding collectors and having them talk about the method to their collecting madness. How did you find these folks and how long did it take to collect all these interviews and make this film?
Flynn: Film collectors are not very dissimilar from film projectionists. They’re a small, rarified group and make up a fairly informal community, or sub-culture. Everyone knows everyone. So, you make contact with one collector and that collector connects you to another and so on. And that was largely how the film making process progressed. And it’s a wonderful way to go about making a film. It really impresses upon you the connective tissue between people and you find yourself focusing on people whose stories overlap with other people in your film, and you really are able to tap into the bigger sense of community.
Nigrin: Your film also educates the viewer on the different types of film and their history, but I find it interesting that you let some of the collectors recount the history rather than have a narrator do that. Is this something you planned to do from the outset?
Flynn: There is something fundamentally condescending in the use of narration in documentary filmmaking. I understand why filmmakers do it—and I’ve done it myself in the past—it’s a relatively easy, efficacious way to concisely and dramatically convey information. And sometimes, of course, its necessary as in the case of wildlife films or with certain historical topics. But when your subjects are living and able to communicate for themselves, who am I to talk over them, what gives me the right to tell their story for them? I can help translate what they say and feel into cinematic terms, underscore it with images and sounds, but I don’t feel comfortable substituting my own voice for theirs.
And the same applies to the practice of bringing in outside experts, people who sit behind bookcases and provide commentary on a world they’re not fundamentally a part of. It’s just another layer of artifice and convention removing us from the reality we’re trying to experience. So where possible, I let people communicate their own ideas and emotions and stay as truthfully as I can in their world.
Nigrin: You also focus on how many of these collectors see themselves as preservationists of history, not just obsessed hoarders of moving images. Was that a predominant feeling these collectors had?
Flynn: The idea of preserving and passing on films, film equipment, and the knowledge of how to properly handle and project film, was not always so pressing as it is now, I think. Had I made this film 20 or 30 years ago most collectors would have been focused on building their collections. It would have been a film about the thrill of the hunt, the search for lost treasures. But collectors are aging, films are decaying—20 years ago most collectors had no knowledge of vinegar syndrome—and digital has really rendered the film image obsolete. So, the need to pass this material on, to pass on the knowledge and passion for it, to keep it alive for future generations is more keenly felt, I think. It was certainly forefront in the minds of the people I interviewed. So that naturally became the main theme of the film.
Nigrin: Are there any memorable stories while you made this film or any other info about your film you would like to relay to us?
Flynn: I set out to make a documentary about how beautiful, how interesting, and how valuable photochemical film is, but I realized while making it that people are more beautiful, more interesting, and more valuable. And ultimately, I think, it became a film about people: people who love film, not always wisely perhaps, but too well; and, more importantly, people whose efforts saved so much of our motion picture heritage.
And so what I’m walking away with are the many friendships I’ve made over the course of working on this film . . . and the bittersweet memories of those people I met and befriended who now are no longer with us. My friend Lou DiCrescenzo, who donated thousands of reels of film to the Library of Congress, and who passed away in January, used to say: “I save this stuff not for today’s generations—because I don’t think people care enough about it now—but for people 200 or 300 years in the future.” And, of course, some future archivist will open a can and find Lou’s name on the leader of the film inside. I like to think that my film will last that long, so that that archivist may watch it and know who Lou was.
Film is Dead. Long Live Film! screens at the 2024 New Jersey International Film Festival on Friday, May 31, 2024 – Online for 24 Hours on this day and In-Person at 7:00PM in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ. Film is Dead. Long Live Film! Director Peter Flynn will be on hand to do a Q+A after the In-Person screening! For more info and tickets go here.
The Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center, in association with the Rutgers University Program in Cinema Studies, presents the 2024 New Jersey International Film Festival which marks its 29th Anniversary. The NJIFF competition will be taking place on the Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between May 31 - June 9, 2024 and will be a hybrid one with online as well as in-person screenings at Rutgers University. All the films will be available virtually via Video on Demand for 24 hours on their show date. VOD start times are at 12 Midnight Eastern USA. Each General Admission Ticket or Festival Pass purchased is good for both the virtual and the in-person screenings. The in-person screenings will be held in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ beginning at 5PM or 7PM on their show date. Note: The Screenings on June 1 will be in Milledoler Hall #100/ Rutgers University, 520 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ.
Plus, The NJIFF is very proud to announce that acclaimed singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler will be in concert on Saturday, June 15 in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ at 7PM. General Admission Ticket=$15 Per Program; Festival All Access Pass=$120; In-Person Only Student Ticket=$10 Per Program.; General Admission Marissa Nadler Concert Ticket=$25. For more info go here: https://2024newjerseyinternationalfilmfestival.eventive.org/welcome
