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Scratch Projection / September 23, 2025

WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: GUEST PROGRAM BY DAVID WHARRY

At 29 Boulevard Saint-Martin in Paris, a plaque states that “Georges Méliès, creator of the cinematographic spectacle, conjurer, inventor of numerous illusions, was born in this building on 8 December 1861”.

The first films were shot in 1888 with a camera constructed by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, but the conjurer Georges Méliès was the first to fully exploit what has since been widely put to one side in “experimental” film, that cinema is essentially a theatrical “spectacle”. There are its constitutive elements: the reel of film, the projector, the beam of light, the image on the screen, the dark room, but there is above all us, the audience, we who “suspend disbelief”. From the beginning, Méliès’ fantasies, Feuillade’s crime serials, Nosferatu, Sirk’s melodramas and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre have all depended on this collusion.

Working as a projectionist, I understood that a film – the same strip of celluloid passing repeatedly through the same projector in the same auditorium – is never the same twice. When there was only one person in the audience, his or her presence was enough for the “spectacle”, the “illusion” to take place, and without whom the film does not exist. We are the principal accomplices in the cinematographic crime. – David Wharry

WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

Tuesday September 23, 2025, 20:30

	FANTÔMAS (EXTRAIT) Le Vol du Royal-Palace-Hôtel by Louis FEUILLADE 1913 / DCP / b&w / silent / 8' 10
	À PLATE COUTURE General Picture - Episode 2 by David WHARRY 1979 / DCP / b&w / silent / 3' 40
	AUTOPHOBIA by Paulo ABREU 2009 / DCP / b&w / sound / 4' 30
	EX- by Jacques MONORY 1968 / 16mm / color / sound / 4' 00
	HOLD ME WHILE I'M NAKED by George KUCHAR 1966 / 16mm / color / sound / 17' 00
	MARVO MOVIE by Jeff KEEN 1967 / DCP / color / sound / 5' 00
	ANATOLE LACOSTE ET L'ŒIL DU CALAMAR (PARTIES 1-5) General Picture - Episode 13 by David WHARRY 1986-2023 / DCP / b&w / silent / 32' 30

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