The Last Projectionist – Part 1: Reel One

The cinema had twelve seats occupied and four hundred empty, and the projectionist ran the film anyway.

Graça stood at the back of the Cinema Aurora in Porto, a bag of paper tickets in her hand, watching a flickering black-and-white romance throw silver light across the dark. She was sixty-one, a retired seamstress, newly volunteering to keep the old place open. The roof leaked. The carpet was threadbare. The velvet seats sagged like tired animals.

"It's a terrible business," said the usher, a teenager, shrugging. "Alberto won't stop though. He runs it every night."

"Who is Alberto?"

"The projectionist. Up there."

She climbed the narrow stair to the projection booth. It was a cave of machines, whirring and clicking, thick with dust and warm with the smell of hot film. A man in shirtsleeves stood at the great projector, one hand on a reel, his silver hair gleaming in the beam of light.

"Boa noite," said Graça.

He turned. He was sixty-five, tall and spare, with deep-set dark eyes and long, careful hands. "Visitors aren't allowed."

"I volunteer."

"Ah." He smiled, slowly. "Then you may stay."

She watched him work: threading the film through the gate, adjusting the arc, listening to the machine as another man might listen to a child. Through the small window, the screen glowed with a woman's face, silver and enormous.

"This is the last reel," said Alberto. "Thirty-five millimetre. Very rare. I'm the last in Porto who can run it."

"Why do you keep going?"

"Because someone should." He glanced at her. "And because it's company."

Graça sat on the old stool beside him, and watched the film through the little window. The light flickered over their faces.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Yes."

"May I come again tomorrow?"

"Green?" said Alberto, a word from the film's subtitle.

"Green," said Graça, laughing. "Very green."

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Final Screening.