Excerpt from Albany Journal

The next morning, we drove over to the house around 10:00 a.m. It belonged to a film collector who had once owned an independent movie theater in Albany. In his basement, he had stored film prints and trailers he’d collected over the years, along with film splicers, projector equipment, an inspection table, and a model plane collection. The entire space was a complete mess, with piles of items stacked into different mountains of junk. Fortunately, the collector’s sister had cleaned it up just enough for us to walk between the piles. Apparently, the basement had been in even worse condition before. She told me that it had once been so cluttered that a wire sticking out from one of the piles cut the side of her ankle and left a scar. We were lucky we didn’t have to deal with anything like that. 

Our goal was for the four of us to take back as much film and equipment as possible before the rest was thrown away the Monday after we left Albany. 

Throughout the day, we loaded the van with film reels and boxes of equipment that we knew we could preserve at UNCSA. Most of the reels were stored in boxes rather than in canisters. There were also 

far more trailers than feature films, so most of what we brought back to campus were 35mm trailers. Since the collector’s sister planned to have the entire basement cleaned out after we left, Matt and Eric

allowed Owen and me to take a few items for ourselves. Owen took home a 16mm camera that had been stored in a case, along with several 35mm trailers. I took home a portable 16mm projector. The collector had three of them in his basement, and on Matt’s recommendation, I chose the one that seemed most likely to work. Ever since I brought it back, I’ve been wanting to find time to test it out. Matt told me he’d love to teach me how to use it with some old 16mm film that the school no longer preserves. Aside from a couple of 35mm trailers, the 16mm projector was the only thing I took.