Clandestine back sheds

I stepped into another private world this week. It was just a two car garage somewhere in the northern suburbs of Melbourne; just a collection of old films; just a peak through the smudgy window of a projectionists long held passion for the movies. At first glance this collection of 35mm prints looks pretty hap hazedly stacked but I did notice that everything was on plastic spools and I was told everything got wound regularly; both practices helping to prevent chemical deterioration for both Nitrate and Acetate film stock.

My host is unusual in that he is of an age where he remembers the days when film collectors were hunted down and raided for having film prints. Of course now with rampant digital piracy film collectors are seen by studios as rather quaint - even passé by comparison. But many of his trading comrades still live paranoid and fearful lives; unable to forget. My host knows that he’s not about to have heavy men in sun glasses and ear pieces banging on his front door but he would also rather I didn’t say his name, where he lives or the title of the Disney animation he has the only known 35mm print of. So I wont.

The more of these private stock piles I’ve been lucky enough to see; the more tantalising it becomes to ponder the lost or important films that still undoubtedly exist out there in back sheds, car ports and under peoples beds. Every collector has a treasure; a rare or special print that they have bonded with above all others. Maybe it was a film that represented a golden time in their live’s or it typifies the memory of a past loved one. The danger here is that the deeper the passion, the more inscrutable the reasons become for not wanting to part with it; even in death. Yep, that’s right. People have taken rare film elements to their graves rather than passing them onto archives.

Through making this documentary I’ve come to realise that this clandestine community is much bigger than even it’s timidly withdrawn members care to admit and for every print passed onto an archive after a death there are many others that just get thrown into the rubbish by ignorant or uncaring family’s. So as we approach the twilight years of possibly the last generation of film collectors; there is a lot at stake.

Big thanks to Con Filippidis who has joined our plucky little band, filling in for my usual partner in crime; Joanne Donahoe-Beckwith currently shooting on secret location somewhere in Australia’s vastness.