Montreel-X presents a David Lynch selection this week at Concordia VA-114 cinema for free
“Now if you’re playing the movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You think you will have experienced it, but you’ll be cheated. It’s such a sadness that you think you’ve seen a film on a fucking telephone. Get real!” So states, calmly, the legendary film provocateur David Lynch in an interview on the special features section of his movie Inland Empire (2006).
Montreel-X, a group of passionate cinephiles from the film specialization class at Concordia, have a lovely evening planned out on Nov. 28 for Concordia students and the Montreal community, one that will allow you to sink your teeth into the twisted world of this somewhat eccentric yet undoubtedly talented director.
The group invites everyone to take part in a classic double-bill screening featuring Lynch’s surreal, personal debut feature, Eraserhead (1977), and his polarizing Oz-like Odyssey, Wild at Heart (1990). Eraserhead brings us to an industrial town where one man has to deal with its psycho girlfriend and a mutant baby. Wild at Heart is the epic story of an odd duo trying to resist their tragic and strange fate.
Not only will the screening be free, but both films will be presented in 35mm format. With the rise of digital projection, the ability to experience 35mm has become an increasingly difficult opportunity to come by.
With the impetus of technology around us, it may not come as a grand surprise that the medium of film is quickly being ushered out of the cinema in favour of digital. Granted, digital projection may be more economical (shooting digitally certainly is), but a certain human touch is lost due to the sidelining and disintegration of the film medium.
As the audience would sit perplexed by the shadows and light on the screen above, a lone projectionist used to reclusively operate the projector and switch the reels with the intention of preserving the illusion and magic of the motion picture. It is now a machine that fulfills this task.
Then again, does it really matter whether or not the motion picture is experienced on film or digitally? Whether or not a human element is present? Cinema attendance is drastically decreasing as movie exhibition practices continue to evolve, for better or for worse.
The cinema, as it has often been dictated in its short one hundred year-old history, finds itself once again at a crossroads, a challenging period of redefinition and adaptation. Whether it is via your phone, your tablet, your laptop, or even your home-theatre setting, how you view and interact with motion pictures has been redesigned. Don’t get me wrong, this new accessibility and democratization of the movie has its fair share of advantages, but at the end of the day, nothing is comparable to the big screen experience. Besides the cinema, what else can offer you the enticing, rich and beautiful experience of sinking deep down into a square box of darkness with people who will all excitedly embark upon an adventure of laughter and thrills with you? Going to the cinema is an event. It always has been. There is something to be said about strangers, or friends, gathering in order to experience the unknown. Other viewing media fail to permit this.
Come experience the power and beauty of the cinema, and if this is not a solid enough reason, they will be serving homemade cherry pie. So drop your phone for a few hours and “get real!”
The event will take place from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 28 at the VA-114 cinema (on the corner of Réné-Levesque Blvd. and Crescent St.). For more information check out montreelx.tumblr.com.
