“My life behind the projector is like in Tornator.”

Ark (Bilunu) – Falcade: Lanfranco Janz At the sweet age of seventy-nine, he reopened the Cinema Dolomiti, after three and a half years of closure. Yesterday evening the premiere with “The Little Mermaid”, which will also be shown today and Sunday) with shows on weekdays only at 21.15 while on holidays there will be two shows at 17 and 21.15. This is the only cinema currently operating in Agordino and one of the few in the province.

the challenge
Lianfranco could have enjoyed his well-deserved retirement and, instead, at the age of almost 80, wanted to participate by restoring to Falcade and the Agordino district its privileged cinema, which opened its doors in 1947 thanks to the foresight of Father Marino and Mother Anna Zavaloni. «Let’s say it’s a challenge that I hope will prove me right – explains Lanfranco – I would never have accepted the closure of a cinema due to the pandemic, so as soon as the various rules were abolished, I wanted to try my hand at this task. It wasn’t a walk in the park because in the meantime I was closed to reopen I had to face new fire regulations. It is not easy and very expensive, but in the end I succeeded thanks to the help of some friends and I also know that if I need my brother Flavio is always ready to give me a hand, now I hope everything goes in a good direction. Why did you want to reopen the cinema? Certainly for various reasons, the first is not to see a business that my parents invented with great effort being closed down, the second is that I have been behind the projector since I was thirteen, and the cinema is in my country. blood, the third because at a certain age you need to mingle with people and meet people and the fourth because it keeps me young because every day I wake up and I have something to do, or some problem to solve or someone to meet.

Heaven Cinema
Yes, hearing Lanfranco speak, it seems that he really immerses himself in the famous film by Giuseppe Tornatore “Novo Cinema Paradiso”. I was thirteen years old when my father put me behind a movie projector. I loaded 3,000m reels of 35mm celluloid. They weighed nearly forty kilograms, and I often had to stand on tiptoe to get them into the rack. It was then necessary to roll up the film, divide it by time, and if it burns, be prepared to cut it and put it back together, otherwise the audience in the theater would start to make noise. That was real cinema for me, digital cinema today, let’s say it’s more comfortable, but it’s not real cinema ».

date
“When my father set out on this cinematic adventure, it was the years immediately after the Second World War. There was a lot of poverty but also a great desire to have fun. The hall was simple with a few seats and a few chairs, but people came to the cinema and it was happy. He was so austere that on one occasion, during a performance, a great noise was heard in the auditorium, a cat was chasing a mouse up the ceiling, and on one occasion the cat misplaced a paw and this fell upon the audience. Cinema worked well until the 2000s, then there were choppy periods, but I would still say satisfactorily, enough to stabilize. Certainly it is no longer possible to make forecasts all year round as in the past but it was necessary to choose the periods of tourists for the flow. However, the Dolomiti cinema is now open, waiting for everyone who wants to come to visit me, as I am always present in my place behind the projector ».