CINEMA HITS THE ROAD
Sep. 14th, 2010 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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nebris ]: A fully restored mobile cinema van is patrolling Devon, England.
Then:
Now:
Background:
The other six units are presumed scrapped and gone forever, so this is the only one left in existence.
There’s something indescribably cool about this. Maybe in these days of home theatre systems, Blu-Ray and VOD – to say nothing of the general horror of multiplex movie houses – this may seem like a quaint throwback. And to be fair, it is, so maybe you have to be a certain age to appreciate it.
But I know that as a kid, or even as a university student, I’d have been thrilled if one of these things pulled up at my school. Film days in class were one of the few highlights of my education, so going out to a van to watch movies would have been super-cool.
And I can see the value of something like this touring the smaller towns as a portable film festival showcasing independent films (including local productions) that the multiplex near you is probably never going to screen. It’d never make any money, sure. But it’d still be pretty cool.
Roll film,
This is dF
nebris ]: A fully restored mobile cinema van is patrolling Devon, England. Then:
Now:
Background:
The Ministry of Technology built seven of these custom mobile cinema units in the late 1960s, to tour the country, promoting modern production techniques to British industry. The seven Bedfords were operated by PERA, or the Production Engineering Research Association. Films would be played within the cinema, with supporting displays shown in the trailer that accompanied the towing unit as they toured the nation’s factories.
The other six units are presumed scrapped and gone forever, so this is the only one left in existence.
There’s something indescribably cool about this. Maybe in these days of home theatre systems, Blu-Ray and VOD – to say nothing of the general horror of multiplex movie houses – this may seem like a quaint throwback. And to be fair, it is, so maybe you have to be a certain age to appreciate it.
But I know that as a kid, or even as a university student, I’d have been thrilled if one of these things pulled up at my school. Film days in class were one of the few highlights of my education, so going out to a van to watch movies would have been super-cool.
And I can see the value of something like this touring the smaller towns as a portable film festival showcasing independent films (including local productions) that the multiplex near you is probably never going to screen. It’d never make any money, sure. But it’d still be pretty cool.
Roll film,
This is dF
