Eric Aubert isn’t a stranger to being found among the spectators. At the back, never far from his projection booth, taking the pulse, feeling the room react, while the scenes unfold on the white screen. “The emotion depends on the quality of the film but especially on the atmosphere created at each showing: projectionists play an essential role in adjusting the sound and framing that must adapt each time to a place that is not naturally configured for cinema,” depicts this 43-year-old itinerant technician, trained in small independent venues, first in Touraine, before heading to the capital.
Eric Aubert is a sharp cinephile, a devourer of scenarios of all kinds. He is, above all, a craftsman, a lover of “this collective experience” that takes shape in the darkness, declined daily in the rhythm of his travels along the roads of the Centre-Val de Loire region. On Friday, February 13th, he parked his imposing van emblazoned with “Ciné Off,” the association that employs him, and unpacked his equipment at the “Palace,” a popular education center nestled at the foot of an old Benedictine abbey in Cormery, a town of 1,800 inhabitants located southeast of Tours. Despite the pouring rain, a whole village seemed to flock to the only evening show. They offered “The Bojarski Affair,” the latest feature film by Jean-Paul Salomé.
