Ashcraft carbon arc-lamp projector (1960's) - at Hong Kong Film Archive
22The Queen's is dead, long live the Queen's. Well, at least parts of it. The Queen's Theatre closed September, 2007 ahead of plans to demolish the old Luk Hoi Tong Building that it occupied to make way a new office block. But the cinema's legacy lives on in Sai Wan Ho, a 30-minute bus ride away from the cinema's original lodgings on Theatre Lane in Central.
It's on the ground floor of the Hong Kong Film Archive that one of Queen's Theatre's film projectors now rests, the last relic of one of the most revered cinemas in Hong Kong. The Ashcraft carbon arc-lamp projector dates back to the 1960s, making it the cornerstone of operations in the cinema's last incarnation in Luk Hoi Tong Building. The Queen's has existed in various guises since 1911 and moved to its last home when the building was completed in 1961. The projector was used to screen Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest classics from the 1960s to the 80s.
It's one of the few items that staff from the Film Archive managed to salvage when the Queen's closed.
'What makes the acquisition special is how the piece comes in its entirety and is still in perfect working condition,' he says. 'We've seen similar projectors in [the now defunct] Yau Ma Tei Theatre in the past, but they were in a really bad state. This one is quite spotless - the peripherals are all here, including the water-tank cooler and the transformer.'
The projector was used up until the day the Queen's closed, though only for commercials before screenings.
Lam says the owners were 'very, very generous' in donating the Ashcraft machine to the archive, as 'it's an antique and it could fetch them quite a bit of money if they were to put it on the market'.
In recent years many local cinemas have closed their doors, but it's been difficult for archivists to retain crucial elements of Hong Kong's cultural history.
Lam says the Film Archive is in constant contact with the Hong Kong Theaters Association, which represents local cinema owners, to find out about cinema closures. That is how it learned of the fate of Queen's Theatre in 2006, before rumors begin circulating about its demise.
Lam acknowledges this as he mulls over how the archive in Sai Wan Ho, which was completed in 2000, was not built to house the remnants they could scavenge from historic movie houses. 'When plans were made for the film archive [in the 1990s] the aim was to have a professional library of films, and the storage space was designed with that in mind - we just don't have a giant warehouse for big artifacts,' says Lam.
Fu says the archive wasn't conceived as a museum. And even if it could find room for large objects there's no space for them to be shown to the public. 'It's difficult for us to take large numbers of these items - if we get 100 seats from a cinema, how are we to keep them or display them?' says Lam.
In that sense, the exhibition of the Queen's Theatre projector is more an exception than the norm at the Film Archive - but an important step nevertheless, says Fu.
'We hope that the first thing that grabs people's attention when they step into the archive is a machine that has historical significance in the understanding of Hong Kong's history of filmmaking,' she says, pointing to how the Ashcraft projector is displayed on the ground floor at the archive, beside the lifts which carry visitors to the cinema and the resource centre upstairs.
'We hope students will be brought here and look at this artifact as part of this building, and begin a trip into the history of Hong Kong's film industry.'
The original Queen's Theatre opened in 1924 with 1,200 seats. It was closed on 1st July 1958, and redeveloped in the late-1950's, and demolished.
A second Queen's Theatre was was built on the site, which opened in July 1961 with seating for 902 in stalls and circle levels.
After the Queen's Theatre was divided in around 1995, the main stalls floor of the Queen's Theatre was closed and converted into retail space. The balcony was still used as a 303-seat cinema, but the spirit of this old Hong Kong palace had been compromised.
It was closed in October 2007 and was demolished in 2008. In March 2010, a new building was being constructed on the site.