Cinema against all odds: A review of “The Return of The Projectionist”6 min read
Orkhan Aghazade’s The Return of The Projectionist is an ode to cinema and to loving it against all odds. The film follows the journey of Samid, a retired projectionist, and Ayaz, a young high school student, as they come together to overcome obstacles and keep the spirit of cinema alive.
Exiting the screening hall after watching The Return of The Projectionist (Kinomexanikin qayıdışı), I found myself sharing in the director’s love of cinema – this complex art form rooted in illusion and mutual creation. Cinema brings us closer than any other art form to reproducing reality, particularly in documentary film, where we expect a faithful rendering of life. For cinema to come to life, one needs, at a minimum, people, equipment, and a projector in a screening room — even in the digital age, as Aghazade’s docu-fiction, set against the rural landscape of Azerbaijan’s Talysh mountains, reminds us.
In Aghazade’s film, Samid and Ayaz’ roles as master and apprentice are fluid, showing that age doesn’t define knowledge, as captured by the common Azerbaijani proverb: “Ağıl yaşda deyil, başdadır” (Intelligence is in the head, not in the age). Samid teaches Ayaz about analogue cinema, likely introducing him to the medium for the first time, while Ayaz — an aspiring animation artist — shares his own innovations, including a homemade digital projector fashioned from his phone, cardboard, and everyday materials.
At its core, the film illustrates the continuity of knowledge across generations. In conditions of scarcity, Samid and Ayaz are resourceful, exploring every possible method to make cinema happen. Yet their motivations diverge: Ayaz is driven by a desire to create moving images, while Samid wants to depict them. Their paths mirror each other as they experience both loss and renewed hope, ultimately brought back together by their shared passion for cinema.
The film navigates conflicts and moments of grief, yet it is also laced with humor that raised loud laughter from the audience in Berlin’s Sinema Transtopia. One of the highlights is a scene in which Samid’s majlis of friends debate what kinds of films should be shown by him. They argue for decency in films, insisting there should be no explicit scenes — then proceed to rewatch the “obscene” love scene to “double-check.”
Set in the mountainous village of Sim, the main languages spoken in The Return of the Projectionist are Talysh and Azerbaijani, with sprinkles of Russian. The Talysh people, who reside in the south of Azerbaijan, as well as in Iran, speak a unique language from the Northwest Iranian group. It’s heartening to see a film that showcases Talysh as the main language of communication among most of its characters.
Yet, small oversights in the description of the film in cinemas have revealed gaps in regional knowledge. For example, the Talysh language was inaccurately labeled as Persian in one cinema, while another misspelled the film’s title, omitting the important ‘ı’ characters in the original title in Azerbaijani. These might seem like trivial mistakes, but they underscore a lack of understanding of Azerbaijan’s culture.
It’s worth noting that cinemas and film screenings in Azerbaijan are not as physically accessible today as they were during the Soviet era. In the Soviet Union, there was an institution known as the Дом Культуры (House of Culture). These spaces were designed to educate and entertain the proletariat and were widespread, found in nearly every town and village, even in remote places like Sim. Unlike cinemas, which were rapidly constructed all over towns and cities of the Soviet Union and the Socialist bloc, Houses of Culture were a presence in the majority of villages.
Sadly, many old cinema buildings have since been closed or even demolished, as was the case with the famous Vətən (Motherland) cinema in Baku. Today, most cinemas in Azerbaijan are concentrated in the capital city of Baku and are primarily multiplex cinemas, leaving smaller towns and villages with limited access to film screenings. The problem of dubbing and subtitles in cinemas and lack of Azerbaijani language options for foreign films is a topic for another long essay and also briefly appears in the film.
In The Return of the Projectionist, the protagonist Samid worked as a projectionist in a House of Culture. After the recent tragic events in his personal life, he turns to his past vocation in an effort to forge a future and numb his pain. His mission is to revive the tradition of collective film-watching, a practice that villagers remember fondly, singing the famous chorus from the cult classic Indian film Disco Dancer: “Jimmi Jimmi, Aja Aja.” To achieve this, Samid needs a special bulb for the projector, a room, a screen, and a film — and permission from both authorities and the community to host the screening.
The film is visually stunning, and Daniel Guliyev’s cinematography deservedly earned the German Camera Award (Deutscher Kamerapreis). The diagonals of the Talysh mountains and the overall aura of the village are captured immaculately, especially under the blanket of snow and during the Novruz celebrations. Guliyev’s camera often peers into Samid’s and Ayaz’s lives through various windows, symbolising the film’s transient and layered temporality.
In this timespace, stubborn horses serve as a means of transportation to a mountaintop, where a laptop is pulled out to connect to the internet and search for the bulb to the projector. The scene seamlessly transitions between temporal layers: from the past (the horse) to the present (the laptop and internet) and back to the past (the old bulb for the film projector). Meanwhile, the analogue Soviet-era projector screens a film, the ending of which has been crafted using digital tools. This final film screened by the protagonists under the title “Truth Always Wins” featuring live dubbing and an unexpected finale is deserving of its own review as a separate experimental decolonial artwork.
Aghazade’s film employs the shot-reverse-shot technique during dialogue — a hallmark of fictional cinema, among many other tricks that are usually seen in fiction. This style may feel out of place for a documentary, and it might raise a question about the nature of documentary film and its ‘real’ representational responsibilities. However, there is not a single moment in this film that feels fake. The magic of cinema lies in its ability to create the illusion of reality, which the film crew has achieved brilliantly.
The Return of the Projectionist, which deservingly won the prize for best documentary film at the Torino Film Festival, encapsulates the magic of cinema, weaving together themes of tradition, innovation, and intergenerational collaboration. With its meticulous storytelling and stunning visuals, the film reminds us that even in the face of loss and change, the shared love of cinema builds connections across time and space as well as generations and borders.
The Return of the Projectionist (Kinomexanikin qayıdışı) screened in Kino Krokodil and Sinema Transtopia in Berlin on 30 and 31 October 2024.
