ABSTRACT
Before films were distributed on video, it was difficult to explore their spaces unless
one had access to specialised equipment – an ‘analytical’ projector or an editing table.
The continual and often rapid succession of images that generally constitutes the
experience of watching a film is not very conducive to accurate recollection, especially
of anything peripheral to a narrative, and it is difficult to draw or make notes in the
darkness of a cinema. Perhaps this is why, with a few significant exceptions, archi-
tects’ theoretical engagement with film was delayed until recent decades. With the
introduction of domestic video recorders, and the refinement of the possibility to
pause and search, cinema became more accessible for architectural exploration.1
