Five boxes, each weighing more than 31 pounds, sat in a storage room on the second floor of the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center on a recent Friday morning, each package the product of more than $100 million worth of funding, labor and artistic output.

Andrew Tamburrino, charged to take these efforts on the final legs of their journey, lugged the first box across a skywalk hovering over the theater’s lobby into the projection booth that sits above the grand auditorium in Theater No. 1.

He mounted a plastic spool onto one peg of a workbench along the center of the cozy corridor. Then Tamburrino ditched a strand of foam padding and unfurled the filmstrip across the table, threading it into an empty metal cannister mounted on the other end, and began winding it up.

Frame after frame whizzed by above the table that emitted a beam of light. Images of vast California landscapes animated in real time. Leonardo DiCaprio’s face scrunched and grimaced.

Tamburrino, 34, was inspecting the first reel of “One Battle After Another,” a highly anticipated film starring DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Regina Hall among others, directed by critical darling Paul Thomas Anderson. The action thriller opens across theaters nationwide Friday.

But AFI Silver will be one of two dozen theaters in the country that will screen “One Battle” on film, the once standard but bygone medium of cinema. Tamburrino will project it at AFI Silver in 70mm for two showings during the week of Thursday through Oct. 2. “One Battle” also screens three times on weekends, as well as once in digital projection on weekdays.

Film projection has undergone a revival in recent years as blockbusters such as “Sinners” and “Oppenheimer” have been presented in 70mm. The number refers to the width of each frame — for much of the past century, 35mm was the standard across theaters. The larger canvas allows filmmakers like Anderson, who shot the movie on the more obscure VistaVision, to capture greater depth of colors and details onscreen that can be lost in the transfer of film to digital and other formats.

“I think there’s the sort of tangibility of it, the fragileness of it makes it that much more special,” Tamburrino, a contract projectionist with AFI Silver, said before using an analogy he admitted is imperfect.

“It’s like: Would you rather look at a real-life van Gogh painting or a reproduction? You always want to see the real thing as much as you can and not necessarily a copy or a derivative of it.”

‘If we don’t do it, who will?’

His goal on this day was to spend a few hours to get the projectors running and run the film reels for a few minutes to ensure the framing and volume were up to standard — and adjust as necessary less than a week before the movie opens.

Tamburrino’s path to projectionist wasn’t so direct. He majored in Islamic and international studies in college and had standard suit-and-tie jobs in D.C. But the Ellicott City native eventually got into working with small film festivals around the city and landed a job at Rockville’s Colorlab, which helps process and restore film for clients that range from major Hollywood productions to individuals with old film canisters in their attics or basements. The nature of that job allows him the flexibility to work as a projectionist on the side.

It used to be that handling film at a movie theater was as common a seasonal job for younger people as a lifeguard. But that hasn’t been the case for decades, and many have wondered why Tamburrino took up the craft and how he gained the skills needed for film preservation and projection as the work has become more niche.

“I remember the first time I came in [to AFI], I said hi to someone at the ticket booth and they said, ‘Oh, you’re a lot younger than I thought you would be,’” Tamburrino said.

AFI Silver has existed since 2003 after the American Film Institute moved its operations to Silver Spring from its previous home at the Kennedy Center. The theater’s building dates to 1938. It was around 2012 when AFI Silver and theaters around the world were confronted with the seismic shift of film to digital projection, said Todd Hitchcock, executive director of AFI Silver.

Since then, the theater hasn’t employed a full-time projectionist. It relies on contractors including Tamburrino, who started working with AFI in 2022. This group maintains the technical know-how to exhibit prints of new films like “One Battle” or older ones that have recently screened at AFI Silver, such as “The Searchers” and “Vertigo.”

Hitchcock said AFI Silver is one of a handful of movie theaters across the country that has permanent film projectors capable of showing 70mm prints. “That’s something we’re proud of, but also there’s a responsibility to use it,” he said.

“It’s something that I think of as one of those ‘well if we don’t do it, who will’ kind of programming decisions,” Hitchcock said. “But what really makes the whole thing go is the fact that the audience comes out and supports these opportunities.”

Projecting the subtleties

One of those supporters was Tamburrino, even before he started working behind the scenes.

He was unfurling the second reel of “One Battle” and standing in the projection booth. Tamburrino recalled a fond memory of when he played hooky from a previous job and sat in the audience at AFI Silver for a 70mm presentation of “Lawrence of Arabia,” a movie he had seen plenty before. He said watching different screenings of the same film wasn’t quite like being in the audience for a play, but he highlighted how unique subtleties emerge across multiple viewings.

“I think just sitting in a theater with an audience, whether film or digital or whatever else, I would love to get back to a point where we can all not talk and sit and have a communal experience,” Tamburrino said. “That seems to be lost but may be on the comeback.”

Tamburrino fed the first reel of “One Battle” through a short, zigzagging path of knobs and wheels through one of two 70mm projectors in the booth. A vent fan whirred to keep the 6,000-watt bulb cool. He dimmed the lights and descended the stairs to the theater.

The frame bled a little onto the left side of the screen, but the volume was about right, Tamburrino said. This could all be tweaked in short order.

The show could go on.

An earlier version of this story mistakenly described the 70mm projector's bulb. It is 6,000 Watts.