Threading the projector
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Threading the projector
Curator’s note
Backwards Films collects short films whose meaning arrives late — on the second pass, running the other way. It is a museum rather than a feed: things are filed, numbered and labelled, and you are expected to stand in front of them.
The idea
Reversal is the cheapest special effect there is and the only one that still surprises people. Milk climbs back into a glass. A demolition becomes a construction. A fall becomes a flight. The trick is older than sound and it costs nothing, which is exactly why it deserves a room rather than an algorithm.
So the works here are filed in six wings, each for a different job the reversal does, and each carries the same two lines: what was filmed forward, and what it becomes played backward. That pair of sentences is the whole exhibit label.
The rule
The rule this museum is built to is simple and it is not negotiable: a work is shown by embedding it from wherever its creator published it, with the creator credited and the source linked. Nothing is re-hosted here, nothing is re-cut, and a request to take a work down is answered rather than argued with.
Not built