In the city of Chania, the profession of cinema machine operator is about a century old. The city center of Chania has a long tradition of cinemas and the public has always gathered there by the hundreds. At a time when other cities did not have a single cinema, Chania had six open air and seven regular cinemas.
Apart from the Municipal Cinema “Kipos”, which is the oldest open air cinema in the city – and among the oldest cinemas in the world, there were five other open air cinemas that operated for many years: Attikon, Olympia, Rex, Regina and Orfeas. There were also seven regular cinemas: Olympia, Apollon, Regina, Asteri, Pantheon, Ellinis and Attikon. The apprentice cinema machine operator had to serve as an assistant in a movie theater for about three years.
The films came from distribution offices, packed in metal boxes and distributed to cinemas.
The films were very heavy and very flammable. A two-hour film weighed about thirty kilos. The cinema machine operator placed the film on reels and then the reels were placed on the film projector for projection. In the end, after the screening, the films were put back in the boxes and returned to the distribution offices. Until the early 1950s, two cinema machine operators were required to screen a film. In foreign language films where Greek subtitles were required, the operater would apply them manually. Subtitles were later embedded into the film. Today digital technology has replaced films and all this arduous work is a thing of the past.