Film fans fight against cinema's digital takeover (From Wirral Globe)

Film fans fight against cinema's digital takeover

1:42pm Monday 28th November 2011 in News

As traditional cinemas across the UK close down and the equipment that screened a thousand blockbusters is scrapped to make way for the digital revolution, a group of Wirral enthusiasts is battling to keep the projected film image flickering.

Ex-projectionist Mike Taylor, co-ordinator for a picture trust which operates Wirral’s last remaining cinema facility at Birkenhead town hall, said: “The history of the cinema, the technical experience of the projectionists and the scrapping of millions of pounds of valuable equipment, is all being consigned to the scrap heap.”

Mike, who worked 50 years for the Rank Organisation, went on: “Cinema, as we know it is gone forever.

"The people who run the film industry today are not cinema people. It is run by accountants who know nothing about the technical side of the business.

“It is the end of an era – the industry is being destroyed.”

Mike and other members of The Projected Picture (Trust North West region) tour scrap yards to salvage projectors and other equipment dumped in the wake of the digital takeover.

He said: “We are responsible for keeping cinema alive and for protecting the valuable memorabilia that is being destroyed. "Celluloid cinema is being replaced with digital images that are projected electronically.

“This system will be used at all new cinemas such as the one at New Brighton.

“However the trust is moving all the time. We are expanding in all areas of our work. We are restoring historic equipment which is getting dumped and we are saving lots of films for our archives.”

The trust has secured space for a Museum of Cinema Technology at Bletchley Park Buckinghamshire – the complex where scientists cracked the German Enigma Code.

Educational visits are arranged at the complex and schools have taken advantage of hands-on experience with the equipment and gained knowledge from trust members.

Further regional centres are being opened – including the one at Birkenhead town hall – for local schools, media colleges and other establishments that have an interest in moving and still images.