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Analog Film in the Digital Age

On Archiving and Projection

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Limited capacity. Application until May 1st 2024. Schedule subject to change.

Total workshop fee of 25,00 € which includes materials and lunch.


In the digital age and with ever fewer analog film prints available, there is a fundamental divide in archival and curatorial ideologies: Restricting access and storing film prints for long term survival with digitization vs. loaning and projecting analog films as much as possible. However, these two are not necessarily polar opposites. Best practice in archiving promotes long term access to rare prints, while a trained projectionist with proper equipment can make a worn film print projectable once again and screen it many times without damage. To secure the existence of the analog film experience, knowledge both in archival and projection practices is urgently needed.

This workshop aims to promote hands-on training on how to build and care for an analog film archive. At the same time, it will give you an insight on the tasks of a film projectionist. In three days you will get a behind-the-scenes look on how to establish an independent cinema and film archive and get a chance to work with the SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA film collection. Projectionist Florian will teach you a basic understanding of how and why analog film is archived and best practices in its preservation and projection. Through inspecting and projecting 16mm and 35mm film prints, you will develop a feeling for the unique qualities of celluloid film and what it means to run an analog film show.

Two evening programs - a selection of 16mm films of SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA’s archive and Bette Gordon’s 1983 feminist classic VARIETY projected on 35mm - will accompany the workshop and will bring the opportunity to experience analog film history on screen.


Florian Höhensteiger is a film archivist at Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives) by day and a film projectionist at Sinema Transtopia by night. He holds a MA in Film Heritage from the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf and is a graduate of the Certificate Program of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman Museum in Rochester (USA). As a projectionist he has already run nitrate film for the Nitrate Picture Show at the George Eastman Museum and taught the art of film projection in cooperation with the Film Heritage Foundation and Goethe-Institute in Mumbai (India).

Funded by the Berliner Projektfonds Kulturelle Bildung