The projector whirred as attendees packed into a small West Campus bookstore, folding chairs filling the space while others sat on the floor between shelves. A beam of light cut through the dim room, casting poems and short stories onto a screen as the shop transformed into a miniature cinema.
Friday night, screening series Bat City Cinema partnered with Alienated Majesty for “Literature Through the Lens,” a free 16mm screening of six short literary adaptations inspired by writers like Franz Kafka and Isaac Asimov. The event brought literature and film lovers together to watch adaptations rarely shown in digital formats, marking the series’ 10th anniversary.
“We do a lot of unusual events,” Alienated Majesty’s owner Melynda Nuss said. “When people come here for an event, they find something interesting and new, and what they’re doing with the 16mm films and literature is exactly what we want to see, making literature accessible, fun and interesting.”
Piecing together unusual stories from different genres and styles, Ivan Peycheff, Bat City Cinema’s founder and projectionist, organized the lineup. The screening included adaptations of Maurice Ogden’s poem “The Hangman,” Kafka’s short story “A Hunger Artist,” F.R. Scott’s poem “The Examiner,” W.P. Kinsella’s “The Job” and Asimov’s sci-fi story “The Ugly Little Boy.” One of the rarest and most striking selections was a documentary exploring Kafka and his reflections on German society preceding WWII.
“They all have at least some sort of strange element to them that ties everything together,” Peycheff said. “There’s some sort of oddity … but still a sense of fun.”
Known for stories that explore alienation, bureaucracy and surreal dread, Kafka’s work inspired the term “Kafkaesque,” used to describe situations that feel absurdly complex or oppressive. Attendee David Delrie said he tried but failed to track the Kafka documentary online, highlighting the rarity of the program.
“Kafka and Kurt Vonnegut were such important writers to me when I was younger, so it’s interesting to see Kurt Vonnegut get to narrate that for Kafka,” Delrie said. “Having this window into how Kafkaesque (Kafka’s) own childhood was, I thought (it) was really fascinating (and) obviously completely unexpected. I just didn’t think I would be going and watching something like that.”
Peycheff said the analog format adds another layer to the experience. A few of the films in the screening exist only on physical reels, making them difficult — if not impossible — to find digitally.
“(Projecting on 16mm) feels like there’s more life in the image … the history of that particular piece of film (is) imprinted on it,” Peycheff said. “(When) you go to a normal movie theater, you don’t see the projectors … but (in) these shows, since it’s a 16mm projector, it’s set up in the room with the audience and people really like that. They like to see the projector going; people are always coming up, taking pictures of it, asking questions. … It adds an extra layer to the experience.”
For Delrie, that experience reflects why events like this one matter.
“Having these programmers in Austin who are spending all their time tracking down these things just so we can see them is super important for film preservation and also just film watching,” Delrie said. “Especially now, I feel like we live in such a consumer-manufactured society that it’s almost nice to have this tactile thing we can all experience.”
