the room

The Stacks.

Cinema's memory, kept alive and asked anything.

9,453 films on the shelf · 11 fully read by PACCS · thousands more arriving as the archive is catalogued

○ world cinema · ✦ curated · ★ deeply read · ◆ PIFF archive

One line — a feeling, a memory, half a thought — and the desk finds the films: ours and the world's.

The Projectionist walks both shelves — ours + all of cinema.
The Projectionist takes the note … Walks the shelf … Consults the wider room … Setting cards on the desk …
Room 03 · the shelf

Forgotten cinema, read and returned.

Every master was once a first-timer. Every forgotten film was once someone's first idea worth chasing. The Library reads them the way we read you, and puts them back on the shelf.

Currently on the shelf

Debuts · Edition No.1

Ten first features chosen because the director's whole voice arrives in one film. Hover a spine.

Hover a spine. A card will be drawn from the drawer.

Cans waiting to be catalogued

Nominated titles for the next Edition. Curator's review before they stand on the shelf.

Notes on movements

Nouvelle Vague, New Hollywood, the Iranian New Wave. Folders that grow when a debate demands it.

Letters received

The certificates every reading leaves behind — proof the panel considered a film, kept together on the desk.

Presences on the shelf

Names the machine has read into. Each one a real row we hold, at least as identity. Not all clickable yet.

  • Borg
  • Buster Keaton
  • Diop
  • Dziga Vertov
  • Ed Wood
  • Fritz Lang
  • F. W. Murnau
  • Gavron
  • George A. Romero
  • Hagar Ben Asher
  • Herk Harvey
  • Robert Wiene
  • Roger Corman
  • Rupert Julian
  • Sergei Eisenstein
  • Stanley Donen
  • Victor Sjostrom

This machine has read cinema.

The deep shelf

Everything else the room holds · older prints, PIFF seasons, the world catalogue · thousands, receding.

Too many shelves? Tell the desk a feeling — it knows the way.

Return to the desk →

Your film gets the same read.

Add yours →