Vlissingen 2024 Review: FILM IS DEAD, LONG LIVE FILM Proves There Is Still Life In Celluloid

Director Peter Flynn is most well known for The Dying of the Light, a film about projectionists that depicts their lives and work as a dying art. In that film, film projectionists are the last defenders of an art form (film shot on celluloid) that is having its last death gasps. It's a requiem for celluloid, slightly before it's final passing. Film Is Dead, Long Live Film, a follow-up or companion piece of sorts, might suggest a post-mortem, according to its title, but also a rebirth or renewal. It is neither of those: instead it is sidestep into the culture of film collectors, who are holding on to film as if it's still fully alive. This isn't a film about life or death, but about resuscitation. Celluloid culture is only dead once these people have given up.

The interesting thing about Film is Dead, Long Live Film is the unspoken subtext that Peter Flynn subtly interweaves in the interviews with his subjects. These avid collectors are shown in a variety of ways, some of them as heroic, sometimes as affable oddballs. They do not merely buy blurays, like most cinema buffs, but have large collections of film reels on celluloid. They are hunting down holy grails by going to auctions of drive-ins, looking into inheritances, and searching storage units for nuggets of gold. There are moments in which you truly feel that these people are saving and preserving cinema history by not only collecting all-but-lost materials, but doing everything they can to have those materials restored. But Peter Flynn isn't telling the story of these collectors as just one of great people fighting a war against indifference. That would be (self-)aggrandizing and there are nuances and shades to this story that are brought to the forefront in a myriad of ways.

One of these nuances is that, in the same way that these film collectors might be preserving the past of cinema, they might be also holding on to their own youth in a way that isn't necessarily healthy. Some of these collectors are clinging to the past in a way that gets close to a form of arrested development, fighting for cinema, because that is one of the ways in which they interact with the world. Some of these men have antisocial tendencies, a fact the film recognizes (and this reviewer recognizes in themselves), using cinema as a way to socialize. A fun fact the film mentions is that the term 'basement dwellers' developed out of the film clubs that cinema nerds held in their (parents) basements, as cinema truly dwells well in dark environments.

Still, the fact is that these anti-social tendencies are mostly harmless. Some of the interviewees basically act like they are in a film, answering as if they are performing their lines. A lovely moment is when one of them interacts with his mother, praising the ways in which she allowed his hobby to develop in a lifelong fascination with some lifelong friendships attached to that, even though he almost burned down the house with the celluloid film stock at one time. She answers with a dead-pan matter-of-factness that is as funny as it is touching.

That is one of the things that sets Film is Dead, Long Live Film apart from some of the other documentaries on cinema: the sense of humor and the genuine emotion in here don't come from quick lines of film scholars or film makers one-upping each other with their wit and knowledge. It comes from the genuine humanity that Peter Flynn finds in his subjects. There is a rather touching moment here, where a collector and his wife bicker over his exceedingly large collection, and Flynn asks her what this collection would be for him. She answers, with tears in her eyes, that this is "his legacy". These words and tears aren't tinged with regret, even though Flynn also features moments of families being torn apart by this expensive hobby. No, this is a moment where she is clearly proud, but also reminded of his mortality.

That mortality, of these collectors, becomes front and center during the latter part of the documentary. These collectors are aging, and the celluloid they collected is aging with them. Some of them are trying to preserve their collection as a way to secure their legacy and the legacy of the film material. In some truly informative segments we see what kind of deep knowledge these people have of their own collections, often focused on one specific type of film or media. Without them, these films would've been lost, and will be lost.

It is a race against the clock to preserve some of these materials, but Flynn does his part by using his documentary as a vessel for all kinds of interesting historic movie material. There is an abundance of richness in the footage here. Film is Dead, Long Live Film makes a grand case for the legacy of collectors, showing his subjects in a complex, nuanced and truly human way. If this was a mere puff piece, it wouldn't have had half the impact. But by actively acknowledging the complexities of film collecting, and those who collect, Flynn lands on something truly profound.

The juxtaposition in the title, of film being both dead and alive, is a dichotomy that is present in the film itself. Why would someone bother to fight what feels like a battle that has been already lost? Or: why don't enough people care about a battle that still can be won if we actively put our money, time and energy behind it in the same way these collectors do? Flynn doesn't give a pat answer, and that makes it all the more powerful. Film is not dead, nor alive. It is a flickering ghost. You can see it, but it is ephemeral, and you can't fully grasp it. Flynn does not try to grasp it, but instead just shows, and the results are beautifully haunting.