julian_craster

Obituary: David Gillespie

by Ronald Grant
The Guardian,
Tuesday June 17 2008


David Gillespie, who has died aged 86 of cancer, lived and breathed old films. He worked as a projectionist in various London cinemas, including the Walpole, Ealing, where, when he was cleaning the projector with a duster, the cloth caught on moving parts and was pulled into the machinery, stripping the teeth from the gears. He also had a spell at the Gaumont Palace, Hammersmith, Shepperton Studios and Technicolor. His final post was as media resources officer with the Inner London Education Authority.

A cultured man with a strong interest in music and opera, David went into teaching but found it impossible to keep order. During the war he was stationed at a mobile library on the Faroe Islands, but after endless requests managed to become the projectionist in the local cinema showing films to the forces. On demobilisation he returned to the neighbour who had kept his collection of films in a coal bunker, only to find that they had been destroyed, either by German bombs or by vandalism, he never discovered which. He just started collecting again, and soon his house in Barnes, south-west London, was full - upstairs and down.

Later, he gave regular screenings at his house, and film historians and enthusiasts from all over the world came to see his rare celluloid treasures. After a fire, some of his stock was transferred to the Cinema Museum, and is currently being processed by the National Film and Television Archive.

I first met David in the mid-1960s. He had a wonderful memory and was very entertaining about his life of collecting films. Recently, two friends started to record these stories on video, and when it became clear that he had only weeks to live, they assembled a cut of 75 minutes for him to see in the lounge of the Trinity Hospice, in Clapham, south-west London, with a group of friends. It may be screened at this year's silent film festival in Pordenone, Italy, which he attended annually.

penfold

A lovely tribute. DG was a smashing old boy, lived and loved old films....of course, they weren't that old when he first saw them. He had been struggling a bit the last year or so, he needed a lot of help from his friends to get to the festivals, and his eyes were going. But get talking to him about his favourites from the twenties or thirties and he became really alive. I saw a bit of a rough cut of the documentary at a birthday celebration for him earlier in the year - a select gathering in the little cinema in the bowels of the BFI's headquarters, suitably.
Fortunate that we will have the documentary to preserve some of that incredible library of memories. RIP David.
There's a nice tribute to him at the Pordenone website...which gives an idea how respected he was there. Not an academic, he never taught (in the formal sense), never wrote... but not just another punter, either.
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2008

Bit of a Bay Window, what??