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Wednesday night, for those who don't like the politics, is Classics night. Tao
Yue, a projection subdirector, is readying tonight's movie, Wong-Kar Wai's
In the Mood for Love.
It turns out that Yue, a sophomore who has been with LSC
since his third week at MIT, chose to project
In the Mood for Love because he
wanted to watch it. "I like showing older films," he says, commenting that he
thinks film was better in the days of de Sica and Storraro. Yue is also a
photographer, and seems to enjoy Wai's splendid cinematography. Watching a
movie from the booth, though, is a challenge. It's especially hard tonight,
since Yue is running two projectors by himself. Usually, a subdirector oversees
a projectionist, checking the film threading and the changeover between reels.
At the end of one reel, one person closes one douser and stops the reel while
the other the starts up the other reel. Yue has some room for error - there
are about thirty seconds of opaque film at the end of a reel - but with no one
to help him out, he still has a lot of running around to do.
Despite being in a certain "chicken with his head cut off" mode, Yue seems to be having fun. "I happen to like working with film," he says as he works. Apart from the technical aspects, he feels good about showing movies. "It's neat to work with a medium that brings enjoyment to people." A large audience, he says, "makes it seem worthwhile." |
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