FILM IS DEAD, LONG LIVE FILM!

FILM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FILM! explores the vanishing world of private film collecting — an obsessive, secretive, often illicit world of basement film vaults, piled-high with forgotten reels, inhabited by passionate cinephiles devoted to the rescue and preservation of photochemical film.

Condemned as pirates and hounded by the FBI, film collectors have long lurked in the shadows. Yet their efforts have resulted in the survival of countless films that would otherwise have been lost to history. Archives and studios now look to private hands for long-lost titles and many collectors have begun restoring and releasing films themselves. As analog film fades from memory, the basement-dwellers and bootleggers of old are finally being given their due.

FILM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FILM! is a lively tribute to the private film collector, a celebration of the fetishistic subculture of pre-video movie-love, and a timely reminder of the glories of analog film.

Director: Peter Flynn teaches media production and film history at Emerson College in Boston, MA. His documentary films include Blazing the Trail: The O’Kalems in Ireland (2011) and The Dying of the Light (2015).

Special Guest: Peter Flynn