A century of cinema would not have happened without a century of cinema machines. From the heavy metal machines that ran film reels throughout the twentieth century to the modern digital devices, the development of film projectors has gone hand in hand with the development of film as one of the major narrative forms of our time. The projectors on display represent a cross-section of the devices that have lit up Slovenian cinemas over the last hundred years and have helped to shape our experience of watching films on the big screen.
Over the course of the twentieth century, film has undergone many changes. For viewers, perhaps the most obvious innovations were the introduction of sound at the end of the 1920s and the gradual dominance of colour. For projector manufacturers and cinema operators, the arrival of wide formats in the 1950s and the change of light source from carbon rods to xenon bulbs in the 1960s were equally important. At the turn of the millennium, the first digital projectors appeared, and pushed film reels out of Slovenian cinemas in just over a decade.
The exhibition offers an insight into the technological changes in film screening from the 1920s to the present day. In addition to projectors for cinemas, there are smaller devices for the narrower, 16 mm filmstrip, as well as special projectors for film and television studios and copying machines. A special place among the exhibited devices is occupied by the only domestic projectors manufactured by the Iskra factory in Kranj, which were used in cinema halls all over Yugoslavia and abroad.
