News and Opinion

The Toy Film Museum in Kyoto おもちゃ映画ミュージアム

ProjectorWithFilm

The other week I had to travel to the Kansai area on business and research. I used the opportunity to visit the newly opened Toy Film Museum in the Mibu area of Kyoto. 

What are toy films? They have usually been referred to in Japanese as “omocha eiga” (おもちゃ映画) or “gangu eiga” (玩具映画), and have denoted modes of watching cinema in the home in the early years of the medium. While we are familiar with small gauge films (kogata eiga 小型映画) like 8mm—or the 9.5mm Pathé Baby format popular in the prewar—that came to be defined as the mode for home movies, the motion pictures did not necessarily enter the home in such formats. Much larger gauges—including 35mm film—were actually common as a home movie system confined to projection. You might be surprised at that if you know of the huge projectors that exist (or existed) in theaters for 35mm projection, but in fact from the 1910s, there were small tin 35mm projectors produced in Europe and North America, the first working off of oil lamps, the later ones off of electric light, that could be used at home. With small spools of film and cranked by hand, they could present films a few minutes long. The picture on the left is of a foreign-made projector with the film loaded that is on display at the Museum.

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