TARANTINO IN AN ABANDONED FILM WAREHOUSE

 A few days ago, I had to step into a place that felt ripped from a cinephile’s darkest dream: an old 35 mm film depot, shut down in 2014 and left catatonic ever since. For decades, this was the final resting place for countless theatrical prints from independent distributors—works never reclaimed for recycling, but left to slumber here, like a morgue of celluloid’s living dead.

The building had little façade, but an endless depth that seemed to dissolve into shadow. Light filtered faintly through, slicing across dust that had settled over more than ten years of neglect. Narrow aisles, mountains of rusting metal cans, and the acrid stench of vinegar—the telltale breath of triacetate’s fatal disease. Walking there was like wandering through a mausoleum, where every can held not just a film, but the memory of those who had projected it, applauded it, dreamed it. Some reels seemed cursed relics: corroded tins, labels blurred, films condemned to disintegrate slowly and silently.

Yet amid the decay, I found miracles: polyester prints perfectly preserved, protected in plastic cases that had endured like hermetic capsules. Survivors, now destined to leave Galicia for faraway archives. A heritage slipping from our hands… but such is the fate of a culture when those in power see no further than tomorrow’s convenience.

I had accepted this appraisal (on behalf of the buyer of the lot) without payment, with only one condition: the right to choose a single film to keep. And there, among dust, silence, and rust, I found my treasure: a flawless 35 mm polyester LPP print of Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino. The title, the atmosphere, the place—they all aligned with eerie perfection. In that shadowed warehouse, among corroded cans and celluloid ghosts, Tarantino’s film gleamed like an ironic jewel, alive and waiting to be reborn in the beam of a true projector.