This evening Terry and I attended the Saturday Night Screening Room event at Gerhard's home. The Saturday Night Screening Room is a club composed primarily of film collectors, and some film buffs, who gather on the third Saturdy of each month at one of the members homes for a movie showing. Most of the members have built movie theatres in their basements; with a projection booth and actual movie theatre seats.

This evening I attended my first showing at Gerhard's home. Gerhard is an avid film collector and his day job is doing something at Washington University with the human genome project or something like that. Gehard is the only movie collector in the club who shows 35mm films! He has a 35mm movie projector in his home theatre that dates back to 1948. It was used in an actual movie theatre for over 30 years and, still today, runs flawlessly!

Gerhard's theatre has seating for only about 12 people (in actual movie theatre seats) for a private showing on a xenon 35mm projector on about an 8 foot screen. It is simply incredible! Tonight's showing was the film "Cider House Rules" which was a wonderful movie. One of the other members of the club, Roger, had purchased the film and this was it's first showing for the club. Not only was it the first showing for the club, it turned out to be the first showing *EVER*! The film was literally brand new and had never been threaded through a projector ever before! Gerhard put it together on two large platters, a total of eight reels, and had only one intermission. The print was brand new and to watch a 35mm print projected from no more than about 15 feet was mind blowing! On top of that, it used dolby 5.1 digital sound! The film had subtitles, but was in English.

I took some photographs to record the event and they follow. Please remember that I am hosting the Saturday Night Screening Room event on March 20th. I will be showing my mint condition 16mm print of "Empire of the Sun" by Steven Spielberg. I have plenty of seating, but please let me know if you are planning to come.




A wonderful photograph of Gerhard standing by his 35mm projector.




SNSR club members standing in front of the movie screen before the showing



A nice shot of the 35mm projector and the 16mm projector sitting by it's side.



Gerhard is a lovely host and had prepared soda, freshly popcorn, and candy for his guests.



Some of Gehard's movie posters on the wall.



Phil Steinberg, president of SNSR and our illustrious leader.



Another fantastic shot of Gerhard and his movie projector. He should clearly be the poster boy for SNSR with this brilliant shot!



This was a photograph I snapped, without flash, from my seat during the showing. Can you believe how crisp and bright this image is!



Another shot of the projected film, showing a crystal clear Tobey Maguire.

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