>>5290295Anything saved within the National Film Registry, Criterion Collection and other prestigious film preservation organizations/societies largely survived the Cataclysm. But largely, as a whole, most of the Old World's cinema has been lost to the Cataclysm, specifically the EMP waves that destroyed server rooms and digital archives.
Last thread, Sinleq mentioned that some of the adaptations of Charles Dickens' novels survived on a flash drive, and Gully remarked how she saw the Hornblower TV show off a Terran Union merchant's datapad. Beyond critically preserved films, a film survives the Cataclysm based on how well its media storage was protected. Ironically, cult films like the "Sorcerer (1977)" had as good a chance of surviving as their critically acclaimed counterparts due to the dedicated fanbase it might have, preserving copies on hundreds of thousands of storage media.
But then the problem isn't as much selecting films to screen as much as whether or not a city has the means to screen them. Physical, cellulose reels of film at this point in time have melted or degraded into dust. DVDs/Blu-Rays are more than likely found with cracks or scratches. Films preserved on salvaged smartphones and tablets aren't easy to extract without certain software and are at risk of being corrupted via a botched recovery. Projectors - digital and traditional alike - were cannibalized for spare parts during the 'Mad Max'-esque era of the Dark Winter.
The Méliès Theater in Upper Garden is notable for having ten theaters with digital projectors, although they originally started with sixteen at the city's founding. The projectors themselves are an irreplicable technology, as the parts to keep them running haven't been made in a hundred years. When one breaks down, it's considered a terrible tragedy. Projector operators are almost a cult in of themselves in how they zealously protect them and refuse to let anyone that isn't part of their inner circle into the booths.
Searching for a copy of a particular film that the theater doesn't have would likely require venturing out of Babylonia. Contemporary cargo ships have dedicated 'movie lockers' with hundreds of DVDs. Depending on how they sank, there might be air pockets where the lockers haven't been touched, and a pristine collection of movies would be Sinleq's and/or Gully's for the taking and enjoyment if they've got a player. Otherwise, one would have to go to the Terran Union Remnant to barter and haggle, as they've got the second densest collection of Old World technology in their territory, right after Babylonia, even though the Khanate that usurped them made off with the hardware in the vaults and caches of Mount Everest.
Writing...
